4 ms·

Distribution-friendly tactics in the desktop wars

50 points by corbet 11y ago

martey 11y ago
"[Thomas Pfeiffer] acknowledged that the GNOME project has gained some credibility after the controversial 3.0 release by "constantly providing great releases." But, he said, one of the things that makes it easy to produce those great releases is that the GNOME developers don't really have to care about anything outside of the GNOME world." While I would agree that every new GNOME release since 3.0 has been better than the last, the "not caring about anything outside of GNOME" part is very concerning to me. I have the impression that GNOME 2.X was a "big tent" consisting of both core GNOME applications and GTK applications that used their infrastructure, but that GNOME 3 is all about "GNOME apps" which often are less stable or have less features than their predecessors. As a non-enterprise user, it has been disappointing to see GNOME invest more resources into immature apps like GNOME Music, GNOME Photos, and GNOME Web instead of trying to ensure that standard Linux applications without GNOME branding (like Rhythmbox or Banshee, Shotwell, or Chromium) are first-class citizens in their desktop environment.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  I tend to agree I'm afraid. The amount of reinventing of screens that don't need redesigning seems to me to be rather out of hand. I hope I'm wrong, but what does Gnome bring to the table that makes it better than anything else? Why would I want to use it over Gnome 2.x? Genuine question - hopefully I don't get downvoted too much...
  - tP5n 11y ago
    > Why would I want to use it over Gnome 2.x? GTK+ 3.0 with all the things it brings with it nowadays, eg. wayland support, opengl rendering, css-based themes...
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      That tells me why I would go with GTK+ 3.0 though... I was more thinking - what features does GNOME bring to the table?
  - stymaar 11y ago
    > Why would I want to use it over Gnome 2.x? That's why Gnome 2 has been forked 4 years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_(software)) and is still actively maintained and used.
- pjc50 11y ago
  As a non-enterprise user, it has been disappointing to see GNOME invest more resources into immature apps like GNOME Music, GNOME Photos, and GNOME Web instead of trying to ensure that standard Linux applications without GNOME branding (like Rhythmbox or Banshee, Shotwell, or Chromium) are first-class citizens in their desktop environment. Poetteringification: it's to GNOME's advantage (in some people's opinion as expressed by their actions) if the GNOME apps are better than the non-GNOME apps, so they're quite happy to break the non-GNOME apps because they're NIH.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  I think the basic problem is that quite a number of the core Gnome people are RH employees and use Fedora as their testbed. The whole thing thus turn into a echo chamber involving Fedora, Gnome and Freedesktop (with Red Hat looming in the background). Meaning that if you want your distro to be Gnome and Freedesktop compatible, you effectively have to turn it into a Fedora clone.
mlvljr 11y ago
XUbuntu for those who gave up [on all this], fellas; or even Slackware with XFCE, may be.
braderhart 11y ago
KDE for AR/VR anyone? https://lwn.net/Articles/683379/ https://lwn.net/Articles/683379/

50 points by corbet 11y ago

"[Thomas Pfeiffer] acknowledged that the GNOME project has gained some credibility after the controversial 3.0 release by "constantly providing great releases." But, he said, one of the things that makes it easy to produce those great releases is that the GNOME developers don't really have to care about anything outside of the GNOME world." While I would agree that every new GNOME release since 3.0 has been better than the last, the "not caring about anything outside of GNOME" part is very concerning to me. I have the impression that GNOME 2.X was a "big tent" consisting of both core GNOME applications and GTK applications that used their infrastructure, but that GNOME 3 is all about "GNOME apps" which often are less stable or have less features than their predecessors. As a non-enterprise user, it has been disappointing to see GNOME invest more resources into immature apps like GNOME Music, GNOME Photos, and GNOME Web instead of trying to ensure that standard Linux applications without GNOME branding (like Rhythmbox or Banshee, Shotwell, or Chromium) are first-class citizens in their desktop environment.

chris_wot 11y ago
I tend to agree I'm afraid. The amount of reinventing of screens that don't need redesigning seems to me to be rather out of hand. I hope I'm wrong, but what does Gnome bring to the table that makes it better than anything else? Why would I want to use it over Gnome 2.x? Genuine question - hopefully I don't get downvoted too much...
- tP5n 11y ago
  > Why would I want to use it over Gnome 2.x? GTK+ 3.0 with all the things it brings with it nowadays, eg. wayland support, opengl rendering, css-based themes...
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    That tells me why I would go with GTK+ 3.0 though... I was more thinking - what features does GNOME bring to the table?
- stymaar 11y ago
  > Why would I want to use it over Gnome 2.x? That's why Gnome 2 has been forked 4 years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_(software)) and is still actively maintained and used.
pjc50 11y ago
As a non-enterprise user, it has been disappointing to see GNOME invest more resources into immature apps like GNOME Music, GNOME Photos, and GNOME Web instead of trying to ensure that standard Linux applications without GNOME branding (like Rhythmbox or Banshee, Shotwell, or Chromium) are first-class citizens in their desktop environment. Poetteringification: it's to GNOME's advantage (in some people's opinion as expressed by their actions) if the GNOME apps are better than the non-GNOME apps, so they're quite happy to break the non-GNOME apps because they're NIH.
digi_owl 11y ago
I think the basic problem is that quite a number of the core Gnome people are RH employees and use Fedora as their testbed. The whole thing thus turn into a echo chamber involving Fedora, Gnome and Freedesktop (with Red Hat looming in the background). Meaning that if you want your distro to be Gnome and Freedesktop compatible, you effectively have to turn it into a Fedora clone.

mlvljr 11y ago

XUbuntu for those who gave up [on all this], fellas; or even Slackware with XFCE, may be.

braderhart 11y ago

KDE for AR/VR anyone? https://lwn.net/Articles/683379/ https://lwn.net/Articles/683379/