8 ms·

I'm not mincing my words here but Gnome 3 is just an unpolishable turd and needs to go away. It's just trying to be original and clever but has missed the mark

by setquk 9y ago

I'm not mincing my words here but Gnome 3 is just an unpolishable turd and needs to go away. It's just trying to be original and clever but has missed the mark so incredibly far that makes it the most frustrating thing possible to use on a daily basis. I have tried on and off for 2 years and it is just eye gouging pain to use. I crawl back to xubuntu and XFCE in the end every time as it does the service of getting out of my way. Honestly they need to actually provide a desktop that isn't a piece of crap, isn't some new paradigm and one where every UI element isn't an inch across (munged up shitty titlebar/toolbar hybrid) or virtually invisible (scrollbars) or has pointless transparency somewhere, isn't built on a stack of processes and packages deeper than a Java enterprise stack trace and actually has some quality control. What we have at the moment, including the terrible QC of systemd, is a travesty which simply discredits the excellent kernel and userland underneath.

IAmEveryone 9y ago
UI is simply terribly hard. And the open source “bazaar” model also happens to be at its worst in UI work. You kinda need a dictator with taste to get UIs right, and the Linux community has neither dictators nor taste.
- andrepd 9y ago
  A counterexample to that is the many other DEs done right: Xfce, Cinnamon, etc.
  - VMG 9y ago
    Why do you think they are less popular? Maybe it's a matter of taste?
  - megaman22 9y ago
    It's not like there isn't decades of prior art out there on what works well... A decade ago I was quite happy with the Gnome2 desktop. Since then, I either go with Xubuntu and XFCE or Mint, which was Cinnamon last time I checked.
  - yellowapple 9y ago
    Maybe this is different nowadays, but my initial experiences with Cinnamon a few years back (right when I first switched to Mint in light of Ubuntu's Amazon Lens debacle) were very strongly negative. It was ugly, unstable, slow, difficult to customize, and in general just as shitty as GNOME 3 was at the time. MATE, on the other hand, was/is fantastic. GNOME 2 already was just about perfect for me, and though I was willing to give Unity a try, I was disappointed that it was so different from GNOME. MATE filled that void in my heart like no other DE could. Xfce is also excellent, and is what I'm using at work right now (though I'm looking into switching back to a tiling WM, since I feel like I'm more productive with it).
    - deathanatos 9y ago
      > MATE, on the other hand, was/is fantastic. GNOME 2 already was just about perfect for me, and though I was willing to give Unity a try, I was disappointed that it was so different from GNOME. MATE filled that void in my heart like no other DE could. I'm a MATE user presently, and I have to agree with this. It does what I need with minimal BS. Unity, in particular, felt to me like a Linux DE trying to be OS X, but not really succeeding at it. (I'm not particular fond of OS X, either; I don't really don't care for the single-menu-at-the-top paradigm and the icon dock on the side never seemed to really work right.) But hey, it's Linux. IDK about Ubuntu these days, but in Gentoo (what I use presently), you can pretty much run whatever DE you want. If people want OS X-ish, that's their choice.
    - andrepd 9y ago
      Cinnamon has matured quit a lot in the last years. You should give it another go. I agree that Xfce is excellent. It's my go-to choice for any older/underpowered machines.
- datalus 9y ago
  you can make tiled managers look pretty tasteful... https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/
- cat199 9y ago
  gnome community seems very much to have strong leadership.. where they want to lead on the other hand..
- setquk 9y ago
  I think that's overcomplicating the problem. The problem is that there are established UI paradigms that work for power users, which to be honest is most of the userbase. But those paradigms are static and boring compared to the possibilities, so people invest time in playing with the possibilities instead of delivering what the end user needs.
- deltron3030 9y ago
  The main problem I see with Linux is the barrier for contributors. Somebody who works as UI designer or web / app developer wouldn't want to to go back to arcane ways of coding UIs, but would want to learn and build upon the skills he needs for his profession. This chasm between how the real world works, and how it works in the Linux ecosystem has to be closed first. Something like React Native for Linux could help, or maybe a distro that is focused on full stack web/app development, and sets the standards for the rest of the Linux ecosystem in this regard.
oblio 9y ago
> terrible QC of systemd I haven't had any problems with systemd. YMMV?
- setquk 9y ago
  systemd really is fine until you have a hosed system or it does something wrong or a scary bug is deemed a feature by the totalitarian maintainer and then it's like fighting your way through a dungeons and dragons adventure book written by someone who has been on the crystal meth.
  - ninkendo 9y ago
    Could you try to make that point again but without the hyperbole and with some specifics? It's possible you're trying to engage in a real discussion here but it reads like you're just venting.
    - setquk 9y ago
      I believe it deserves as much respect as the systemd maintainers treat their users with. 1. Hosed system down. All systemctl commands fail with "Failed to get D-Bus connection: Operation not permitted". Only option was to reinstall it from scratch, like a Windows machine 2. Does something wrong. So many random weird bugs like "failed to start reboot.service" ffs. Answer is always "upgrade systemd" which is a problem when you're running CentOS. 3. Totalitarian maintainer. Pwnies award for lamest vendor response 2017 covers my complaints there. Edit: just a point I wish to add. The idea that systemd embodies is the right direction, but the architecture and implementation sucks as do the maintainers.
      - chimeracoder 9y ago
        > 3. Totalitarian maintainer. Pwnies award for lamest vendor response 2017 covers my complaints there. It really doesn't. One of the pull requests they link to as the "lamest vendor response" literally has only three comments from Poettering, one which says "Looks great otherwise", one which says "excellent! thanks a ton for fixing this!", and one which answers a question about why a local variable is named MTU. Seriously, this is the thread itself: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/6214 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/6214 There's another linked thread where he admits that they misjudged a commit as irrelevant, but explains that they can't rewrite git history, which is unfortunate but hard to take serious issue with. And a third where he says that systemd will defer to validating input according to POSIX and other common cross-distribution requirements, instead of enforcing its own, stricter set of requirements that would actually break other systems. It's not even hard to find places where Poettering has said something that makes him look less sympathetic than this stuff. But referring to these as the "lamest vendor response" really just makes it look like they're searching for anything to take issue with for Poettering himself, regardless of the topic at hand.
solarkraft 9y ago
> munged up shitty titlebar/toolbar hybrid I agree on this one, mostly disagree on the rest. I use Pantheon, which solves the above mentioned problem.
pweissbrod 9y ago
^^^ This needed to be said. I feel lucky that 95+% of everything I need can be done in terminator and/or firefox. For that time where the window manager is needed just something basic and familiar like XFCE or a plain old windows start menu. Success is measured by the quickness of getting the job done and staying out of the users way and reinventing the UI wheel repeatedly works against that
VMG 9y ago
Just to balance this out: I suspect for every passionate Gnome-3-hater there are 10 users who think it's fine.
- throwawaymanbot 9y ago
  thats just coz we are too lazy to change from it due to having other things to do with our work time. I disliked Unity but now I appreciate the effort. Too late of course.
- okket 9y ago
  I bet with systemd it is even higher, 100:1 or 1000:1, but the few haters are extremely noisy.
  - throwawaymanbot 9y ago
    >I bet with systemd it is even higher, 100:1 or 1000:1, but the few haters are extremely noisy.< this comment... lol..Its always the same reply about haters from systemd fanbois. never an actual recognition that QC is shoddy at times. The post stated the QC (Quality Control)) was an issue. Its not about for or against Systemd. That argument is over. Its here whether we like it or not. But posting reply's like this when people question, and RIGHTLY question QC of systemd is pathetic.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > I bet with systemd it is even higher, 100:1 or 1000:1, but the few haters are extremely noisy. People who have positive things to say about systemd have learned long ago to stay away from most discussions about it on places like Hacker News, because they'll just get drive-by-downvoted. They're still around, and they still like (or at least appreciate) systemd; you just won't see them commenting much on those sorts of threads.
    - mst 9y ago
      There are a lot of valid reasons to praise systemd. There are a lot of valid reasons to criticise systemd. However, actually discussing those requires a level of nuance and consideration of the trade-offs involved, especially around forward progress versus reliability, that seems in this case to invariably get utterly derailed by screaming assholery from the far ends of the spectrum. (signed, somebody who has more negative than positive things to say about systemd, but has also given up trying to engage about such things on here)
AsyncAwait 9y ago
Checking in as someone who likes the lean nature GNOME Shell quite a bit, yes, it's different, but not bad. XFCE is just too clunky, not with it, (i.e. Wayland),old-school feeling for me and pretty ugly without serious work. Plasma is in the best position here, as you can make of it what you want, but GNOME is great for a quick setup and isn't too hard to learn. Complainers will of course be heard the loudest, but by GNOME usage numbers, I'd say many think it's at least ok, since it's fairly easy to swap desktops in Linux land and I still see many people on GNOME.
cabalamat 9y ago
> I crawl back to xubuntu and XFCE in the end every time as it does the service of getting out of my way. I started using xcfe when KDE replaced 3.5 (which was nice) with KDE 4 and onwards. I've tried GNOME and Unity but didn't like them much. Xcfe works the way I like it and most importantly it does feel a need to remake itself few years to pursue whatever is the latest fashion in UI design.
didibus 9y ago
I don't hate it, but KDE Plasma is so good, that I can't use anything else anymore. I recommend others to try. Also, shout out to OpenSuse if you want a good KDE distro.
- azangru 9y ago
  KDE Neon is decent too :-)
- setquk 9y ago
  I will have a look at this. Thank you for the suggestion. Last KDE I used was 1.1 a very long time ago :)
- fus 9y ago
  Made a fresh reinstall of Kubuntu 18.04 (previously I had Kubuntu 16.04 on my primary desktop). Everyting works, drivers were detected (including nvidia). Multiscreen setup works, no DPI problems, fonts are clear, performance is better. Default plasma setting are way better than 16.04. Experience is very smooth. Disclaimer: I'm not using sleep/hibernate, so no comment there. BTW: it seems that most of binaries are being build as PIE, which also becomes the default mode for gcc (-pie/-no-pie).
jhoechtl 9y ago
You terribly exagerate. Actually Gnome3 is currently the only desktop environment which gets Wayland somewhat right. I fear they got where they are by doing some false turns like a global lock in the compositor and client side decorations. Your systemd utterings completely lack any architectural or technological reasoning
- setquk 9y ago
  I'm not concerned with architectural concerns but usability. The end user, me included doesn't really care if it's Wayland or X underneath, as long as it works properly and is productive. Really anything behind the toolkit is of no concern to me. I'm not going to turn this into a debate on systemd but they managed to win the "Lamest vendor response" prize at the 2017 Pwnies. And clearly you've never been with a system down and got greeted with "Failed to get D-Bus connection: Operation not permitted" and no log entries at all. Yes adding complexity to a risky process was a fantastic idea.
  - hart_russell 9y ago
    https://media.giphy.com/media/LFlT04CTtrwc/giphy.gif https://media.giphy.com/media/LFlT04CTtrwc/giphy.gif
    - gknoy 9y ago
      I appreciate the "popcorn" feeling, but HN normally strives to avoid responses like this, as they don't add quality to a conversation. This is probably why you are getting downvotes.
  - bwat49 9y ago
    The user will care when gnome-shell crashes and takes out their entire session, or when their cursor is lagging/skipping. Gnome-shell wayland session still needs a lot of work imo.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- 9y ago
patrickg_zill 9y ago
You're absolutely correct... I am making this post from a PowerBook G4 running MacOS 9. The entirety of the OS including the window manager etc. is currently using 80MB. How much RAM are the various Gnome 3 daemons and window manager taking up? Even accounting for some bloating because of X11's more chatty protocol and network independence, does it make sense to take up 3x of MacOS9 with Finder interface RAM usage?
cweagans 9y ago
Totally disagree. I was a mac user for 10 years before finally making the switch this year to Arch, and Gnome is definitely the most polished DE option I found. All software has warts, but I haven't come across anything in Gnome other than the memory leak (which is already fixed and awaiting release) - even that doesn't bother me too much.

by setquk 9y ago

IAmEveryone 9y ago

UI is simply terribly hard. And the open source “bazaar” model also happens to be at its worst in UI work. You kinda need a dictator with taste to get UIs right, and the Linux community has neither dictators nor taste.

andrepd 9y ago
A counterexample to that is the many other DEs done right: Xfce, Cinnamon, etc.
- VMG 9y ago
  Why do you think they are less popular? Maybe it's a matter of taste?
- megaman22 9y ago
  It's not like there isn't decades of prior art out there on what works well... A decade ago I was quite happy with the Gnome2 desktop. Since then, I either go with Xubuntu and XFCE or Mint, which was Cinnamon last time I checked.
- yellowapple 9y ago
  Maybe this is different nowadays, but my initial experiences with Cinnamon a few years back (right when I first switched to Mint in light of Ubuntu's Amazon Lens debacle) were very strongly negative. It was ugly, unstable, slow, difficult to customize, and in general just as shitty as GNOME 3 was at the time. MATE, on the other hand, was/is fantastic. GNOME 2 already was just about perfect for me, and though I was willing to give Unity a try, I was disappointed that it was so different from GNOME. MATE filled that void in my heart like no other DE could. Xfce is also excellent, and is what I'm using at work right now (though I'm looking into switching back to a tiling WM, since I feel like I'm more productive with it).
  - deathanatos 9y ago
    > MATE, on the other hand, was/is fantastic. GNOME 2 already was just about perfect for me, and though I was willing to give Unity a try, I was disappointed that it was so different from GNOME. MATE filled that void in my heart like no other DE could. I'm a MATE user presently, and I have to agree with this. It does what I need with minimal BS. Unity, in particular, felt to me like a Linux DE trying to be OS X, but not really succeeding at it. (I'm not particular fond of OS X, either; I don't really don't care for the single-menu-at-the-top paradigm and the icon dock on the side never seemed to really work right.) But hey, it's Linux. IDK about Ubuntu these days, but in Gentoo (what I use presently), you can pretty much run whatever DE you want. If people want OS X-ish, that's their choice.
  - andrepd 9y ago
    Cinnamon has matured quit a lot in the last years. You should give it another go. I agree that Xfce is excellent. It's my go-to choice for any older/underpowered machines.
datalus 9y ago
you can make tiled managers look pretty tasteful... https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/
cat199 9y ago
gnome community seems very much to have strong leadership.. where they want to lead on the other hand..
setquk 9y ago
I think that's overcomplicating the problem. The problem is that there are established UI paradigms that work for power users, which to be honest is most of the userbase. But those paradigms are static and boring compared to the possibilities, so people invest time in playing with the possibilities instead of delivering what the end user needs.
deltron3030 9y ago
The main problem I see with Linux is the barrier for contributors. Somebody who works as UI designer or web / app developer wouldn't want to to go back to arcane ways of coding UIs, but would want to learn and build upon the skills he needs for his profession. This chasm between how the real world works, and how it works in the Linux ecosystem has to be closed first. Something like React Native for Linux could help, or maybe a distro that is focused on full stack web/app development, and sets the standards for the rest of the Linux ecosystem in this regard.

oblio 9y ago

> terrible QC of systemd I haven't had any problems with systemd. YMMV?

setquk 9y ago
systemd really is fine until you have a hosed system or it does something wrong or a scary bug is deemed a feature by the totalitarian maintainer and then it's like fighting your way through a dungeons and dragons adventure book written by someone who has been on the crystal meth.
- ninkendo 9y ago
  Could you try to make that point again but without the hyperbole and with some specifics? It's possible you're trying to engage in a real discussion here but it reads like you're just venting.
  - setquk 9y ago
    I believe it deserves as much respect as the systemd maintainers treat their users with. 1. Hosed system down. All systemctl commands fail with "Failed to get D-Bus connection: Operation not permitted". Only option was to reinstall it from scratch, like a Windows machine 2. Does something wrong. So many random weird bugs like "failed to start reboot.service" ffs. Answer is always "upgrade systemd" which is a problem when you're running CentOS. 3. Totalitarian maintainer. Pwnies award for lamest vendor response 2017 covers my complaints there. Edit: just a point I wish to add. The idea that systemd embodies is the right direction, but the architecture and implementation sucks as do the maintainers.
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      > 3. Totalitarian maintainer. Pwnies award for lamest vendor response 2017 covers my complaints there. It really doesn't. One of the pull requests they link to as the "lamest vendor response" literally has only three comments from Poettering, one which says "Looks great otherwise", one which says "excellent! thanks a ton for fixing this!", and one which answers a question about why a local variable is named MTU. Seriously, this is the thread itself: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/6214 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/6214 There's another linked thread where he admits that they misjudged a commit as irrelevant, but explains that they can't rewrite git history, which is unfortunate but hard to take serious issue with. And a third where he says that systemd will defer to validating input according to POSIX and other common cross-distribution requirements, instead of enforcing its own, stricter set of requirements that would actually break other systems. It's not even hard to find places where Poettering has said something that makes him look less sympathetic than this stuff. But referring to these as the "lamest vendor response" really just makes it look like they're searching for anything to take issue with for Poettering himself, regardless of the topic at hand.

solarkraft 9y ago

> munged up shitty titlebar/toolbar hybrid I agree on this one, mostly disagree on the rest. I use Pantheon, which solves the above mentioned problem.

pweissbrod 9y ago

^^^ This needed to be said. I feel lucky that 95+% of everything I need can be done in terminator and/or firefox. For that time where the window manager is needed just something basic and familiar like XFCE or a plain old windows start menu. Success is measured by the quickness of getting the job done and staying out of the users way and reinventing the UI wheel repeatedly works against that

VMG 9y ago

Just to balance this out: I suspect for every passionate Gnome-3-hater there are 10 users who think it's fine.

throwawaymanbot 9y ago
thats just coz we are too lazy to change from it due to having other things to do with our work time. I disliked Unity but now I appreciate the effort. Too late of course.
okket 9y ago
I bet with systemd it is even higher, 100:1 or 1000:1, but the few haters are extremely noisy.
- throwawaymanbot 9y ago
  >I bet with systemd it is even higher, 100:1 or 1000:1, but the few haters are extremely noisy.< this comment... lol..Its always the same reply about haters from systemd fanbois. never an actual recognition that QC is shoddy at times. The post stated the QC (Quality Control)) was an issue. Its not about for or against Systemd. That argument is over. Its here whether we like it or not. But posting reply's like this when people question, and RIGHTLY question QC of systemd is pathetic.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > I bet with systemd it is even higher, 100:1 or 1000:1, but the few haters are extremely noisy. People who have positive things to say about systemd have learned long ago to stay away from most discussions about it on places like Hacker News, because they'll just get drive-by-downvoted. They're still around, and they still like (or at least appreciate) systemd; you just won't see them commenting much on those sorts of threads.
  - mst 9y ago
    There are a lot of valid reasons to praise systemd. There are a lot of valid reasons to criticise systemd. However, actually discussing those requires a level of nuance and consideration of the trade-offs involved, especially around forward progress versus reliability, that seems in this case to invariably get utterly derailed by screaming assholery from the far ends of the spectrum. (signed, somebody who has more negative than positive things to say about systemd, but has also given up trying to engage about such things on here)

AsyncAwait 9y ago

Checking in as someone who likes the lean nature GNOME Shell quite a bit, yes, it's different, but not bad. XFCE is just too clunky, not with it, (i.e. Wayland),old-school feeling for me and pretty ugly without serious work. Plasma is in the best position here, as you can make of it what you want, but GNOME is great for a quick setup and isn't too hard to learn. Complainers will of course be heard the loudest, but by GNOME usage numbers, I'd say many think it's at least ok, since it's fairly easy to swap desktops in Linux land and I still see many people on GNOME.

cabalamat 9y ago

> I crawl back to xubuntu and XFCE in the end every time as it does the service of getting out of my way. I started using xcfe when KDE replaced 3.5 (which was nice) with KDE 4 and onwards. I've tried GNOME and Unity but didn't like them much. Xcfe works the way I like it and most importantly it does feel a need to remake itself few years to pursue whatever is the latest fashion in UI design.

didibus 9y ago

I don't hate it, but KDE Plasma is so good, that I can't use anything else anymore. I recommend others to try. Also, shout out to OpenSuse if you want a good KDE distro.

azangru 9y ago
KDE Neon is decent too :-)
setquk 9y ago
I will have a look at this. Thank you for the suggestion. Last KDE I used was 1.1 a very long time ago :)
fus 9y ago
Made a fresh reinstall of Kubuntu 18.04 (previously I had Kubuntu 16.04 on my primary desktop). Everyting works, drivers were detected (including nvidia). Multiscreen setup works, no DPI problems, fonts are clear, performance is better. Default plasma setting are way better than 16.04. Experience is very smooth. Disclaimer: I'm not using sleep/hibernate, so no comment there. BTW: it seems that most of binaries are being build as PIE, which also becomes the default mode for gcc (-pie/-no-pie).

jhoechtl 9y ago

You terribly exagerate. Actually Gnome3 is currently the only desktop environment which gets Wayland somewhat right. I fear they got where they are by doing some false turns like a global lock in the compositor and client side decorations. Your systemd utterings completely lack any architectural or technological reasoning

setquk 9y ago
I'm not concerned with architectural concerns but usability. The end user, me included doesn't really care if it's Wayland or X underneath, as long as it works properly and is productive. Really anything behind the toolkit is of no concern to me. I'm not going to turn this into a debate on systemd but they managed to win the "Lamest vendor response" prize at the 2017 Pwnies. And clearly you've never been with a system down and got greeted with "Failed to get D-Bus connection: Operation not permitted" and no log entries at all. Yes adding complexity to a risky process was a fantastic idea.
- hart_russell 9y ago
  https://media.giphy.com/media/LFlT04CTtrwc/giphy.gif https://media.giphy.com/media/LFlT04CTtrwc/giphy.gif
  - gknoy 9y ago
    I appreciate the "popcorn" feeling, but HN normally strives to avoid responses like this, as they don't add quality to a conversation. This is probably why you are getting downvotes.
- bwat49 9y ago
  The user will care when gnome-shell crashes and takes out their entire session, or when their cursor is lagging/skipping. Gnome-shell wayland session still needs a lot of work imo.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
9y ago

patrickg_zill 9y ago

You're absolutely correct... I am making this post from a PowerBook G4 running MacOS 9. The entirety of the OS including the window manager etc. is currently using 80MB. How much RAM are the various Gnome 3 daemons and window manager taking up? Even accounting for some bloating because of X11's more chatty protocol and network independence, does it make sense to take up 3x of MacOS9 with Finder interface RAM usage?

cweagans 9y ago

Totally disagree. I was a mac user for 10 years before finally making the switch this year to Arch, and Gnome is definitely the most polished DE option I found. All software has warts, but I haven't come across anything in Gnome other than the memory leak (which is already fixed and awaiting release) - even that doesn't bother me too much.