GNOME 3 Winning Back Users 267
Mcusanelli writes: GNOME 3, the open source desktop environment for Linux systems that once earned a lot of ire, is receiving newfound praise for the maturity of GNOME Shell and other improvements. The recent release of version 3.14 capped off a series of updates that have gone a long way toward resolving users' problems and addressing complaints. One of the big pieces was the addition of "Classic mode" in 3.8, which got it into RHEL 7, and Debian is switching back as well.
Personally I still like the KDE Philosophy (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally I still like KDE's way of thinking about things, that you are far better off creating multiple workspaces all based on a common desktop environment that suit different types of hardware (Desktop, Netbook and future touch interfaces) rather than creating a monolithic interface that tries to bridge across all types of hardware it might be used on.
In any case anything is better than Unity and they both beat the rubbish Windows 8 interface.
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I'll take another look at it. (Score:2)
But if it still tries to force someone else's idea of how a desktop should behave I doubt that I will move back. Really, why do Gnome developers find it so hard to allow users to change things to their likings anyway?
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Re:I'll take another look at it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Gnome's reduction of customizability began in the early millennium when it partnered with some large companies who had carried out formal UI studies and found that for the vast majority of users, options only confuse them. Yes, power users like being able to tweak everything, but there are already a number of *nix graphical interfaces for nerds, and why shouldn't ordinary people get a desktop for them too?
Quite. I really don't get why folk need to hate on someone else's user interface. If it's not for you, move on: the diversity of Linux is a strength, not something to get angry about.
It might be an unpopular view, but I really, really like Unity, for example. It fits in with my workflow and I forget it's there - just what should happen with a desktop environment. It also works well for my mother-in-law, my father and my wife: none of them are computer literate and they enjoy its simplicity.
I've been looking again at Gnome 3 and I also can see its appeal. The way it handles multiple desktops is great, for example, and some of the default apps superficially appear to be excellent. It might not be for everyone, but it has its niche. I might yet be persuaded.
Similarly, I can see the appeal of XFCE, KDE and LWM. They're not for me, but I can understand why people like them. Sometimes you need customisability (KDE) or something that doesn't need loads of RAM or hardware-enabled graphics acceleration (XFCE/LWM). If they work for you, then great.
Why the negativity? I know what I don't like, and I have very little interest in hearing what you don't like; what interests me is the chance of discovering the good stuff out there that I don't yet know about.
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The negativity was turning one product into an entirely brand new product. If you hate XFCE, then you also hate Gnome 2, which was largely the same. The hate as you'd put it was that they decide they didn't want to be an Apple anymore, instead they wanted to produce Oranges. They just assumed that everyone should be eating Oranges now because... why? They were perfectly in their right to build the best Orange they can, but assuming that they wouldn't piss off their entire existing userbase of Apple eaters i
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Gnome's reduction of customizability began in the early millennium when it partnered with some large companies who had carried out formal UI studies and found that for the vast majority of users, options only confuse them.
And it's probably true - give most people a system that is set up for them and they are probably happier than having lots of options. The problem with this, of course, is that "set up for them" is different for each user, and out of the box it isn't really set up right for anyone.
They also made some bonkers design decisions that didn't reduce the configurability but not the complexity of the UI - for example, for a long time they claimed no one needed to turn off DPMS, so the "turn off screen" option just
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Simple: If they do that, they will be replaced by other Window-Managers (and yes, despite their claims of grandeur, Gnome and KDS are just Window-Managers and can be replaced) that have had great user freedom forever. Personally, I see zero need for either Gnome or KDE. fvwm had all features I need back in 1993 and I am still using a modified version of its config that I did back then on SunOS. And yes, incidentally, it has had well-working virtual desktops back then and they are an absolute killer feature
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Only moderately so. The only Gnome application I use knowingly is gparted and that should not be to difficult to move to a different toolkit. Also, the Gnome toolkit is not Gnome with its insane dependency on systemd and its broken desktop and a lot of other foolishness from apparently inexperienced designers. The toolkit is also much more stable.
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GTK is not the Gnome Toolkit, it is the Gimp Toolkit. That it sort of was absorbed into the Gnome project is rather a sad reality. While the Gnome 2 days it seemed like an OK trade of. But as they purposefully broke Windows support in GTK 3 for Gnome 3, the writing was on the wall. Although they brought Windows and Mac OS support back in line, GTK stopped being the reliable UI library it once was.
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There has been a lot of work on the Win32 backend over the past year or so. It's much better now.
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You are entirely correct of course.
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You are right. This whole cabal seems to have forgotten what made Unix reach things way back that other OSes still try to do.
But Still (Score:2, Insightful)
No matter what Gnome does, systemd is still driving people away from Linux and toward other unices. Debian will eventually be a fringe distro.
Re:But Still (Score:4, Insightful)
No matter what Gnome does, systemd is still driving people away from Linux and toward other unices. Debian will eventually be a fringe distro.
Well, that's what I came to say. If GNOME3 did have a chance to win me back, they flushed it with systemd. First they castrate the interface, then they shit up my init. No thanks, GNOME. You had your chance, and you blew it. Prepare for also-ran status.
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Maybe the developers of those "other operating system" should do something about it then. As far as I know some FreeBSD people have a prototype working, not sure how far they have come though.
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It would be nice if they could have done better by forking distros and working out the bugs and showing us it's better, such that it would be naturally adopted by users. It would win on merit. Instead it's buggy, bloated, breaks all sorts of simple tasks (like parsing log files, really?) and has been shimmied into popular distros via slimy political means. Now I have to either put up with their unproven bullshit or switch distros. I liked Debian.
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But most importantly, while several Committee memebers were upset in the moment, the discussion stayed remarkably on topic and avoided decending into "No, you're stupid".
Too late (Score:2)
Quality of Slashdot discourse in death-spiral (Score:5, Insightful)
Look slashdot: If you don't like something stop being whiny luddite bitches and fix it. That's what open source is about.
And while you're at it stop trashing good work that's going on in other projects - even if you don't agree with the direction it's going in.
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Why in the world should people have to FIX something (e.g. Gnome or systemd) which they not only don't LIKE, but don't even WANT or USE on their computers? That makes no sense.
Do YOU make a habit of fixing stuff which you neither like nor want nor use?
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Your comment makes no sense. If you don't like or want to use it then don't! What a bizarre notion. You act as if you're forced to use it. Besides all that you're using something that is provided for free! How dare they mess with my precious linux! If you don't like it, move on. Use something better. You might have to pay for it, but that's the way the world works. Windows 9 with classic shell isn't that bad.
What the op is saying is that whining about free software makes you a freeloader, plain and s
Re:Quality of Slashdot discourse in death-spiral (Score:4, Funny)
Do YOU make a habit of fixing stuff which you neither like nor want nor use?
Yes, I'm a Windows sysadmin.
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Linux with something as gnome3 as UI (and yes I tried), binary log files, and no network transparency (I use it every day and it works perfectly) and - even worse - broken backwards compatibility, indeed as no appeal to me anymore.
Now, I am not complaining that people develop such stuff - they are - of course - free to develop whatever they want. The problem I people have is that it is forced down on us on a regular upgrade path - instead of offered as an option. I also hate the lying and FUD (e.g. the netw
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People would rather give excuses which reveal they haven't even done a cursory review of the technical aspects involved. People confuse passion with effort, and actually working on open source takes effort.
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These people don't understand X! - wait what? it's by X developers? No way.
To be fair, the x.org guys have never been known for quality project management.
Re:Quality of Slashdot discourse in death-spiral (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you are telling us that we should be praising open source software just because it's open source? You guys have become so fanatic, you are blinded.
What makes you think I'm one of these guys? I have nothing to do with them. I don't even run Gnome 3 right now.
It's the polarised, non-technical, non-contributing circle-jerk that this whole conversation has become.
Some people here think there is a problem - one so bad that it fills them with anger. So being geeks you'd think they'd scramble to construct technical solutions. But noooooo... that would be far to useful. No instead they spend the whole time carping on web-forums.
Look - if you think there's a problem in the world, then the solution starts with you. Not the people over there in OSS project that you don't contribute to, or running the distribution you don't help with - it starts with you.
That's why I respect Mate, Cinnamon, LXDE, Xfce and Gnome3 folks. They're doing each doing good work - not all of it to my taste, but I respect the achievements. But I will never respect the spoutings of the giant crowd of trolls that now gather around this issue.
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I'm a programmer, so it's quite possible I could help out with any number of open source projects. I have in the past and I will in the future. Even the stuff I'm currently working on will no doubt become open source once I feel it's ready.
I mainly use Windows, but that's because all the applications I need to run are on Windows. I also run Unbuntu 14.04 on a virtual machine, Raspbian or two Raspberry Pi boxes, and some flavour of Ubuntu on 3 Beaglebone Black boxes. I've used Linux on and off for 20+ years.
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Yes yes yes we know. UX people are teh suck. Everyone's been saying so for months, so it much be the truth.
But noone is forcing you to use Gnome 3. If you don't like it, don't. STFU and use Mate, Cinnamon, KDE, Xfce, LXDE, fvwm or whatever the hell you want to use. Support them. Contribute. File bugs. Fix bugs. But don't sit here whining about a project you don't use. Use something else and get on with it.
Also why not have a little class? Gnome 3 isn't to your taste? Oh well never mind. But some people have
Okay, has it changed in ways that matters to me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice to see the primary article admit that the launch was immature I guess.
Once again, the media around Gnome seems to display tone-deafness. The third article gave not a single specific other than Linus uses it though he still has problems. The first article lists all the "improvements" that are supposed to lure me back into the fold. Let's see how they stack up.
FTFA:
1) Classic mode offers "enough familiarity" -- at this point XFCE does what I need it to do. I don't need to use Gnome's idea of how the "old folks" used to work. I heard enough times that "classic" was going to die anyway -- too much risk in switching to something with no clear future.
2) "Weather app" -- okay. Yeah that increases my productivity!
3) Evince has less interface -- great. You guys do realize it was the LACK OF CONTROLS on your apps that drove me away, right?
4) Multitouch support -- worthless to me, no touch interfaces, don't want them.
5) Photo app gained support for Google accounts -- so it reached feature parity with my smartphone. Yay!
6) "Captive portal handling" -- this was an actual problem? I don't recall every failing in that task.
Are you kidding me? That adds up to a lot of shined poo.
Neither article answered a single question I actually would have:
Can I configure it simply without third party plugins?
Can I kill the hot corners? In fact, the whole "Fisher Price Activities" screen?
Can I set unchangable defaults on the launcher instead of it deciding incorrectly what I think is important.
Can I change the terminal and screen layout so my 30" monitor is not trying to make one huge xterm all the time?
Can I get a "heads up display" of my multiple desktops that I don't have to cycle through buttons or move the mouse to see?
Does the terminal launcher continue to assume I need just one terminal and unhelpfully bring up the last instance when I actually wanted a new one?
Does the file browser do something sane finally?
Do I still have to have a global menu?
Can I have focus follows the fricking mouse please? I have a huge legacy program that won't work if this doesn't and I am not rewriting it.
Nope. I don't see a lot of evidence from the articles that it is worth my time to come back. Gnome's new design was for intro users who wanted lots of pizzaz. They were VERY clear about how my problems were because I knew nothing about how I should use the computer. The problem is, I know what jobs I am trying to do, and Gnome just didn't work.
I just hope we all learned something here.... (Score:2)
The Gnome Project's true value is as a cautionary tale about knowing your user base. The Gnome foundation badly misjudged who would use their stuff and were so sure that they'd tap into millions of normal users that they didn't mind being really insulting to the users they lost in the process.
Today's articles seem to admit they are not reaching "normal users doing things normal users do" and since they need some sort of user base back, they must appeal to the ones they drove away. Really, it's right ther
Save Gnome by Ending The Nonsense (Score:3)
The problems:
Standard Gnome 3 is desktop/power user hostile.
Mate and Cinnamon don't do touch screens.
Cinnamon depends on Gnome 3
Because of it's Gnome 2 underpinnings, Mate does not scale well, but I am sure they can add to the final product.
Reform the Gnome organization, giving the Cinnamon and Mate devs a good voice in the final product.
BTW, I am using Cinnamon right now.
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MATE has dumped most of the old libraries, and will soon work with GTK3
Can't forgive. (Score:4, Insightful)
Gnome 3 may be getting better... and I do think that many of the their engineering decissions were addressing real needs even if I personally would have preferred addressing them differently. But I still don't care for the UI and I can NEVER forgive Gnome for the way they pulled the rug out under my workflow. I had something that worked, that was well tuned to my needs, and these self-righteous ASSHOLES just plain simply and utterly BROKE it. For a year and a half after Gnome 3 went into Fedora I stayed with Gnome 2 by not upgrading my system, but I needed up-to-date apps, security fixes, etc. I did give Gnome 3 a chance... but aside from hating the UI it was missing features I needed and worse, at the time it was unstable on the graphics in my laptop! For a while I ended up using Xfce, which is ok but getting rather stale, then I switched to MATE which I'm still using now.
But the real point of this message is this... by breaking my desktop the Gnome people cost me hundreds of hours of lost productivity, and the same was probably true for tens of thousands of other Linux desktop users, so we're talking about millions of lost hour of productivity, amounting to probably several billion dollars. The sheer arrogance of this is staggering to me. Linus never did anything like this, it was always a principle of Linux development not to break userland exactly for this reason. Yeah, Gnome is "only UI", but it isn't as easy as just switching some habits... people have developed workflows around their UIs, so it amounts to the same thing... breakage.
So I'll never forgive Gnome, I'll never trust my productivity to them again. And I'm that many other Linux desktop uses feel the same way... although most of us are techies, we want to work, not wrestle with our desktop UI. I suspect this debacle has been a massive setback for Linux on the desktop. I'm as hardcore an open source you'll find, I haven't run a closed-source OS in over 20 years, but I was almost ready to throw in the towel and install Windows during the height of this!
Can't forgive. (Score:2)
This is an attitude that I see a lot and no doubt will come up multiple in times in this thread, and I've got to say - I just don't get it.
When Gnome 3 came out I hated it as well so I switched to Xfce and I've been happy with that. I didn't rant and rave about the Gnome guys though because the way I see it, they're volunteers. The attitude above is tinged with a real sense of entitlement like they owe you something, but they absolutely don't.
I'm sorry that you don't like their changes, I didn't either. How
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Sorry, but that's nonsense.
First of all, I have contributed code to many Open Source projects, including Gnome (just fixes here and there, but in all it wasn't an insignificant amount of my time). Secondly I'm not complaining about them not implementing features I want... I'm complaining about them wantonly killing a product that I and thousands of others had a lot of investment in. And there's no other way to put it... they killed Gnome 2 and replaced with something completely incompatible and feature-in
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I can't agree more. It is not that they are not free to develop whatever they want or that they are not free to stop working on Gnome 2.. The issue is that they misused the trust people put into Gnome 2 to switch people over to their completely incompatible and different Gnome 3 - breaking user experience.
Compare that with the philosophy of the Linux kernel:
"The biggest thing any program can do is not the technical details of the program itself; it’s how useful the program is to users. So any time any
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I didn't rant and rave about the Gnome guys though because the way I see it, they're volunteers.
Actually, they're not. Most of them are employed by Red Hat. Why RH thinks that the broken-by-design Gnome3 desktop is going to help them earn the business of corporations (Red Hat's target market), I have no idea at all; a Windows clone makes far more sense here if you want to get corporation to adopt desktop Linux, and Gnome3 doesn't make any sense at all for servers, their primary market.
I suppose you could
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I suspect this debacle has been a massive setback for Linux on the desktop. I'm as hardcore an open source you'll find, I haven't run a closed-source OS in over 20 years, but I was almost ready to throw in the towel and install Windows during the height of this!
I did exactly this... I run linux on just about every non-GUI bit of equipment I have - virtualisation, the lot - but everything that I actually have to look at a screen for, I use Windows 7 again. Gnome 3 killed it for me... I have 3 x 24" 1920x1080 screens that Gnome 3 could never handle right. I was running Fedora 20 until Gnome 3.
TBH, XFCE would be perfect IF it was using wayland. The graphics tearing issues I had with my tri-head video card + XFCE was horrible. The sad fact was the only real fix was th
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Shouldn't bother to reply to an anonymous coward, but it does help to clarify... it wasn't the moment Gnome 3 was released that the assholes broke my computer. It was the moment I *had* to upgrade from Fedora 14 to something more recent because Fedora 14 wasn't supported any more and there was no way to keep Gnome 2 at the time, and Gnome 3 was still feature incomplete and even just plain crashed on some of my hardware.
At that time MATE wasn't quite ready for primetime, I tried it at the time, but hey the
Took me a while (Score:2)
Why does Gnome continue using horizontal panels? (Score:4, Interesting)
In this age of widescreen LCDs, the vertical space is limited. Yet, Gnome seems to be wasting it with not just one, but two horizontal panels. Wouldn't it make more sense to make them vertical?
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yes
Classic, huh? (Score:2)
I wonder, how far back the "Classic" goes... Does it offer the look-and-feel of Motif X-sessions of the early 1990ies — or the skimpy twm? Or the fvwm of the slightly later years? What exactly is "classic" today?
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A Gnome 2-inspired look and feel.
Gnome Version Hell (Score:2)
Have they fixed it yet?
Gnome 3 may be great, but if they make an update to it and that breaks all the apps or components whose support groups can't keep up with releases, who cares?
Hatred of Gnome (Score:2)
I think Gnome 3 is the New Coke of the DE world. It wasn't so much that it was a horrible idea... taste tests seemed promising, and change is good, right? It just seems to be what happens when makers 'mess' with a product. Now that they've reintroduced Gnome 'Classic', (see where I went with the Coke thing?), people are simmering down a bit and reluctantly muttering, "Oh, well.... that's okay then, I guess. Watch it - we've got our eyes on you!"
Where it's nothing like New Coke is that the Gnome develope
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And systemd had nothing to do with it. (Score:4, Interesting)
There really is no need to use Gnome (or KDE) on Debian. I have used it with fvwm for more than a decade now, no problems. This is not Windows, you know, where you are tied to whatever broken Window-Manager the manufacturer forces you to use.
As to Debian, itself, I fear this might just be more bad strategic technical decisions that follow from the systemd disaster.The current Debian technical committee has its head up its backside. No, I do not think they have been bought, but I do think they have been successfully manipulated from the outside. Fortunately, my Linux desktop will look&feel just the same on Gentoo, when systemd-free Debian eventually will run out of support.
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As a fellow gentoo user who is also trying to avoid systemd, we've got a hell of a fight before us.
Systemd wants to be it's own platform and it's snaking it's way into everything. Running a non-systemd system on gentoo, even where openrc is the default and systemd is just an alternative, is becoming a pain. I've had to rejuggle packages and use the blacklist for the first time in many years because (McBain voice) THE USE FLAGS, THEY DO NOTHING!
As more and more stuff adds dependencies on the systemd virus, i
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If you have to go though all this mess just to get rid of Systemd then why don't you just move to Systemd? Com on, at the end of the day it's just an init system; it's not like it's the end of the world. It's not really that important, yes really.
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The problem imo is specifically that it's not just an init system. It's morphing into it's own thing that wants to take over all routine system behaviour, and the attitude of the devs is not encouraging (too lazy to find the link, but an oft quoted comment regarding log file corruption illustrates this quite well).
Linux (at least in my opinion) is all about choice. Don't like the way something works, use something else or write your own. Systemd is becoming a huge chunk that can't easily be swapped out for
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s/linux/open source/g
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The problem imo is specifically that it's not just an init system. It's morphing into it's own thing that wants to take over all routine system behaviour, and the attitude of the devs is not encouraging (too lazy to find the link, but an oft quoted comment regarding log file corruption illustrates this quite well).
You say that as if it's a bad thing that stuff can be made to work well together if it's developed together.
Linux (at least in my opinion) is all about choice. Don't like the way something works, use something else or write your own. Systemd is becoming a huge chunk that can't easily be swapped out for something else. I'm really against that.
I have not tested but it looks like you can swap it out for something else on at least Debian:
https://packages.debian.org/je... [debian.org]
And importance is relative. If you just want a functioning system, I agree that none of this is really that important and I'd probably just use ubuntu or mint or hell just windows or mac. I use gentoo specifically because I like my system "just so". Most people probably fall somewhere in between these points, with some past where they care about systemd and some not. I think this is perfectly healthy. If no one cared about init systems or boot loaders, no one would be developing them!
Indeed.
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You say that as if it's a bad thing that stuff can be made to work well together if it's developed together.
It's a trade-off. Mac, and to some degree Windows, benefit greatly from tight integration, but it comes at the cost of flexibility. The preference of flexibility over user friendliness and even functionality was what drew me to Linux and specifically Gentoo in the first place.
Systemd is probably not a terrible idea by itself, it just goes against the traditional linux mindset, which is probably why it's hitting so much resistance from people like me who bought into that mindset more so than the functioning
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I have not tested but it looks like you can swap it out for something else on at least Debian: https://packages.debian.org/je [debian.org]... [debian.org]
The problem is likely the same as on gentoo. Sure you don't have to install systemd, but a shit tonne of stuff will depend on it, or have dependencies that depend on it. I imagine the situation will be far worse on binary based distros as they tend to pull in a shit tonne of libraries and sometimes actual programs because of some minor but tightly coupled feature that didn't warrant a patch or a -non-<whatever> version. As I said in a prior post, on gentoo I had to straight up blacklist the systemd pa
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If it were just an init system, it would be easy to use just another init system instead. It is not. It is a cancerous, malicious growth that tries to encompass and suffocate anything it can get its hands on. You see, if systemd were actually good, then it would be easy to avoid.
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It's not text editor. Clearly it does not want to be everything. It's an init system, which in a modern system involves parts which used to be developed as separate projects, but since everyone uses them it's better to collect everything under one roof where it's easier to make things work well together.
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And with any luck, someday you'll have a bootloader and a single binary named linux?
I'm sure they'll add a text editor sooner or later. The systemd operating system will rise if we don't slay it now!
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And with any luck, someday you'll have a bootloader and a single binary named linux?
Not likely anytime soon, but I can see some use for that in embedded systems.
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SysV Init is actually a pretty good init system, as its long history and high flexibility shows. But there are always those that scream for more features and more complexity, despite that being the road to hell.
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Well, if nothing else helps, I will move to one of the xBSDs. I use Linux to have something very much Unix-like, not to have a bad copy of Windows.
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Our only hope is that systemd implodes and everything just goes back to the way it was.
in short; we're fucked.
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You can go out of your way to not use a particular init system but you can't spend five minutes learning grammar?
Priorities.
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Re: And systemd had nothing to do with it. (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, who wants to be one of those losers that communicate properly. Rules are for morons, right?
Your original comment didn't make you an idiot. Your last one definitely did.
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You set yourself up for this dammit, so for once I don't feel even a trifle bad about playing the grammar nazi: You painted the big red bullseye on yourself.
That should be "Here though, the only person who looks stupid if I use poor grammar is me, ..."
Thanks for making my whole morning.
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I don't know it make me think that maybe systemd is trying to be it's all the time when sometimes people just want its because it makes more sense.
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Don't worry. These morons routinely have nothing else to contribute, but do not have what it takes to shut up. Quite a few will also be sadists that thrive on putting others down. Not people that words should be wasted on, they are not part of polite society.
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I'm pretty happy with the XFCE on Ubuntu Studio. There is a lot of Gnome and KDE under the hood, as dependencies of specific apps that I favor, but that doesn't seem to be increasing my render times or anything (rendering CG in Blender is my most demanding work).
That said, I'm toying with the idea of trying the newest Gnome GUI. I liked Gnome. I hope they have it working again.
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Indeed. One issue may be that all those that know there are alternatives have long ago moved to them and just do not care about the latest desktop insanity from the wannabe-like-Windows crowd.
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Just as an outside observer, I think there are two major reasons why Debian likes Gnome so much.
I would say that accessibility is one of the most important reasons from the bits and pieces I've read on the Debian mailing lists that discussed the matter. There's of course many other reasons as well, but that's a big one.
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From everything I've read, Gnome is horribly slow while KDE is quite fast, even on older machines as long as they have sufficient memory (it's not "lightweight" though like some of the truly lightweight desktops). C++ just doesn't carry the performance penalty you think it does. In addition, Qt is very popular on embedded devices; why would that be the case if it were slow? Finally, at least one project (LXDE) has actually switched from GTK to Qt. Considering that LXDE is a low-resource desktop, they wo
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I use adblock, but explicitly block by site and by ad provider.
Slashdot made it on the blacklist when they started experimenting with those annoying ads that slide in from the bottom.
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I had no idea, mostly because I don't care about ads, but I run requestpolicy because, I consider the whole mode of operation on the web these days a bit like if every time you ran into a person you knew with a group of their random friends who you may or may not have met before, you went and immediately gave oral sex to each person in the group every time.
If they want me to see ads, they should host them on the same site I wanted to load, otherwise I am not going to see it. Sorry I don't trust that every a
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Privacy Badger. I just let it manage my blocking automatically and I don't see ads here.
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Install APK's Host Files Engine v. 37.0.
Re:change is baaaaaaaad (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux sheeple only like familiar things. Want security blanket! Made of penguin wool! Gimmee me precioussss!!
GNOME 3, bad.
Slashdot Beta, bad.
systemd, bad.
Windows 8, bad.
Unity, bad.
PulseAudio, bad.
Wayland, bad...
You know, AC has a point there. It seems that every slightly larger framework coming to Linux gets opposed. To me the funniest part is that many of the opponents do not even seem to precisely know why they are opposing the thing, they just quickly learn to robotically chant the same thing than everyone else. I mean, there are still people who are against Unity because "it is a mobile UI". That just shows that they have never used it, at all.
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I couldn't tell you quite when it happened, but at some point in my life, I slowly came to realize that the tools I use on a daily basis exist to perform a specific set of tasks. The tool has value for what it does for me, not for its own inherent newness or shininess.
Whether I use systemd or init really makes no difference; whether I use Gnome or KDE, completely irrelevant to whether or not I ca
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Windows 8, bad.
PulseAudio, bad.
Wayland, bad...
You know, AC has a point there. It seems that every slightly larger framework coming to Linux gets opposed. To me the funniest part is that many of the opponents do not even seem to precisely know why they are opposing the thing, they just quickly learn to robotically chant the same thing than everyone else.
I think Pulse Audio got a bad reputation because it was pushed on people way too early. I can certainly remember upgrading a few systems and finding my audio completely broken in a practically unfixable way (short of wiping and downgrading again) because distros had rolled out PulseAudio and it was so well integrated into stuff that you couldn't just rip it out again. These days it seems to work well and more or less sets out to do what it was designed to do (although I don't think I get a huge amount of
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Nah, I hate Unity / Gnome 3 because they were quite clearly Apple desktop and tablet clones. Not that there's anything wrong with those UI's, they just don't fit my workflow. Instead of adding options to support *shocked* many application styles, they said fuck you, this is the way, or you can go jump off a roof. Having a project so hostile to their community is probably the fastest way of losing them.
Re:Responding to feedback (Score:4, Insightful)
The interesting trend is that it seems to take losing users/slow adoption in droves and mass rioting to get the ball rolling.
Both gnome 3 and windows 8 have seen their user bases outright revolt over their UI changes, and both largely ignored it as "people hate change but they'll learn to love it" until numbers started actually dropping significantly and people started leaving.
You could say the same with slashdot beta. It took mass protests and the creation of an alternate site for dice to accept that people didn't like what they were doing and wern't going to learn to like it.
This all seems to reflect a growing mentality of "this is what the users want, we just have to wait until they realize it" and a kind of egotistical "we did everything right, so they must be wrong" attitude.
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The interesting trend is that it seems to take losing users/slow adoption in droves and mass rioting to get the ball rolling.
Both gnome 3 and windows 8 have seen their user bases outright revolt over their UI changes, and both largely ignored it as "people hate change but they'll learn to love it" until numbers started actually dropping significantly and people started leaving.
It seems to be really good PR actually... Everyone says "Windows 10 is really good", and quietly ignoring the "...because they ripped out all the crap Windows 8 introduced, leaving it identical to Windows 7" bit. :)
To be honest, I don't really buy the "people hate change" thing - sure, some people hate change, but a lot of the time changes are good. Change for the sake of change is often bad, but a lot of change doesn't fit into that category and actually improves things. From my perspective, I think Gnom
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I don't really buy the "people hate change" thing - sure, some people hate change, but a lot of the time changes are good.
While the "people hate change" argument is misused and overstated, there is truth to it. Changing your work habits and routines is always painful to some degree, and people hate pain. Regardless of that, people will willingly change their habits when they see a value to doing so that is greater than the pain of the change.
Where both Windows 8 and Gnome 3 (and a few other Linux DEs) went wrong is a combination of two things: for most users the changes they presented did not offer benefits that exceeded the a
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I felt that early Gnome 3 releases (3.0, 3.2, 3.4) was a bit rough, but starting around 3.6/3.8 things actually started to become really nice. Using Gnome 3.14 right now and all I can say is that if you liked 3.8 from CentOS then you will really like the next release.
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systemd
Nvidia Optimus
Touch pads with no buttons
Cars infested with unwarranted tech
This is where all tech is heading.
No, it isn't. Maybe most Linux distros are heading towards systemd, but the other examples are pretty lame.
Nvidia Optimus is not making its way into all laptops, it's geared solely at higher-end laptops. If you don't want it, just don't buy it. Get a laptop with Intel video instead. Intel video supports Linux just great BTW.
Touchpads with no buttons are the same. Don't get a laptop like t
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A bunch of young women got paid for some make-work projects, what's not to like about that? Doesn't that make you want to open your wallet and send in a nice, fat donation so you can sponsor more make-work projects?
However, to be fair, I thought that a good portion of that spending was actually given to them specifically for that purpose, and was not allowed to be redirected to other tasks.