5 ms·

I think the major distros defaulting to GNOME is not going to end well. I tried very hard to use (and like) GNOME Shell for a while, and put it on my wife's com

I think the major distros defaulting to GNOME is not going to end well. I tried very hard to use (and like) GNOME Shell for a while, and put it on my wife's computer as well. I always ended up finding completely wrong for the way I want to interact with my computer. And my wife long complained "why don't you switch my machine to the nice interface you use" and finally last week I did switch her off of GNOME and she's much happier.

jeff_petersen 8y ago
> I think the major distros defaulting to GNOME is not going to end well I agree. While standardization has its benefits, I think homogeneity also has significant drawbacks. Unfortunately, rare is the Linux desktop environment that gets things right for me. KDE comes close, I guess. > And my wife long complained "why don't you switch my machine to the nice interface you use" and finally last week I did switch her off of GNOME and she's much happier. What did you switch her to?
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  > I agree. While standardization has its benefits, I think homogeneity also has significant drawbacks. Unfortunately, rare is the Linux desktop environment that gets things right for me. KDE comes close, I guess. I haven't seriously tried KDE, though I've heard lots of good things about it recently. I don't know why Ubuntu chose GNOME over Mate, the latter seems a perfectly fine typical desktop environment paradigm. > What did you switch her to? AwesomeWM (which is technically a windows manager and not a desktop environment, but it's full-featured enough to be essentially like a DE), which I keep coming back even after trying other DEs/WMs. I had hesitated to put her on it since its configuration isn't user-friendly (it's a .lua text file..), but I just essentially copied over my configuration, and she's been much happier than on GNOME.
  - mcny 8y ago
    I've recently started playing with i3. It is very nice. I don't know how to do a lot of things. I have to Google how to connect to a new WiFi connection every time on my phone. However, I like it a lot. Worst case scenario, I have to reboot and log in with gnome. Personally, I am all for standardization and homogeneity. We need standards and homogeneity. I would gladly steamroll over all the people who oppose "monoculture" for the sake of opposing something. You can't please everyone but I think gnome is the right answer for most people. Don't like something? Come join the discussion at https://gitlab.gnome.org https://gitlab.gnome.org (I hope I got that right) Better link https://gitlab.gnome.org/groups/GNOME/-/issues https://gitlab.gnome.org/groups/GNOME/-/issues
    - groovy2shoes 8y ago
      I haven't used i3 in a long time, but if it's got support for systray icons, you can run the NetworkManager applet and manage your network settings there as you would in any ol' desktop environment. I do this with awesome, and it works well. It's a one-liner in rc.lua: awful.spawn.with_shell "nm-applet" Also good for volume control applets :)
    - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      > You can't please everyone but I think gnome is the right answer for most people. Don't like something? Come join the discussion at https://gitlab.gnome.org https://gitlab.gnome.org (I hope I got that right) The problem is I think the deep issues I have with Gnome are not things which are easily fixed, e.g. "stop leaking memory", "don't be a single-threaded Javascript process", "allow me to control workspaces independently on each monitor/screen", &c. &c. I would love to see Gnome improve though, even if I never end up using it, but I am not currently seeing any obvious signs that this will occur.
      - mcny 8y ago
        I have seen these problems as well and yes the community seems dismissive of the issues with various *-factories https://askubuntu.com/questions/480753/remove-evolution-calendar-factory-from-startup https://askubuntu.com/questions/480753/remove-evolution-cale... I mean I still can't get over the asinine comment covered here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4757077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4757077 Very poor choice of words which will hurt us for a long time. Archived at https://archive.fo/NbzkY https://archive.fo/NbzkY This is the opposite of the standardization and cooperation across desktop environments and window managers that I want!
ploggingdev 8y ago
I'm interested to learn why they chose to switch to Gnome instead of KDE plasma. What was the thinking behind it? Why wasn't the community involved in the decision? Gnome has the backing of Redhat and is the default DE on Fedora, so Canonical backing an alternative would have been desirable. I'm biased, but Plasma or even Mate would have been much better choices. Plasma has been so good lately and seems to take community feedback seriously. Stability has been great, it's extremely lightweight and the customization options make me...happy. I've been kicking myself for not switching from Gnome to plasma sooner. For anyone skeptical of plasma, I urge you to give it a try : kubuntu, kde neon, fedora kde, arch + plasma, opensuse are all great.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  I've heard lots of good things about KDE lately. For Canonical: I suppose it sort of makes sense from a historical perspective in that before Unity they used Gnome, so they were returning to Gnome. But given that Gnome appears to be a single-threaded Javascript engine with memory leaks, I'm not convinced it's a great choice. Still, Gnome is backed by Red Hat and just got a $1 million donation ( https://www.gnome.org/news/2018/05/anonymous-donor-pledges-1m-donation-over-two-years/ https://www.gnome.org/news/2018/05/anonymous-donor-pledges-1... ), so in theory it should get better....but I've been thinking "it should get better soon" for a while, so who knows.
  - yoodenvranx 8y ago
    > I've heard lots of good things about KDE lately Modern KDE (e.g. 5.12+) is amazing! It's slim, it's fast, it lets you configure tons of stuff and it looks beautiful. If you haven't used it in the last two years you should give it a try!
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jabl 8y ago
I think the point of the article wasn't to argue which desktop env is the bestest, but rather that as far as canonical is concerned the desktop can go DIAF (except as a gateway drug for their server/iot stuff). They are focusing on cloud / iot. So they dumped their own thing. Since unity was partially based on gnome, they used gnome before, and somebody else (rh) keeps pumping resources into it, it seems like a natural choice.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  > So they dumped their own thing. Since unity was partially based on gnome, they used gnome before, and somebody else (rh) keeps pumping resources into it, it seems like a natural choice. Of course. But unfortunately I think that what makes sense from a historical and resource-evaluation standpoint ends up falling down in terms of real-world usability.
sjellis 8y ago
I'm a GNOME loyalist, but if I was going to set up a system for a non-technical user today, I would go for MATE and set the theme that emulates the OS that they used before, or to suit their preferences. MATE has really impressed me with the last couple of releases.
krylon 8y ago
I may be old-fashioned, but to me, GNOME 2 was the best desktop environment I ever used, no matter what OS. GNOME 3 was basically the main reason I switched from GNU/Linux to a Mac in 2013. Then I discovered MATE. =D I have switched back to GNU/Linux with a MATE desktop since, and I could not be happier. To my taste, it gives both Windows and macOS a run for their money. Out of curiosity: what is that "nice interface you use" your wife asked about?
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  MATE/Mate (I'm unsure of the current preferred typefacing) seems very nice, and I don't fully understand why Canonical chose to go with GNOME Shell rather than Mate, especially as one of their own employees (Martin Wimpress) is own of the driving forces behind Mate. I suppose it's because they figure GNOME has the financial backing of Red Hat. But I think in this case the financial position of GNOME Shell is misleading as to the current state of its technology and usability. The 'nice interface I use' which I switched my wife to is AwesomeWM. Not that user-friendly to configure, but really pleasant to use.

jeff_petersen 8y ago

> I think the major distros defaulting to GNOME is not going to end well I agree. While standardization has its benefits, I think homogeneity also has significant drawbacks. Unfortunately, rare is the Linux desktop environment that gets things right for me. KDE comes close, I guess. > And my wife long complained "why don't you switch my machine to the nice interface you use" and finally last week I did switch her off of GNOME and she's much happier. What did you switch her to?

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
> I agree. While standardization has its benefits, I think homogeneity also has significant drawbacks. Unfortunately, rare is the Linux desktop environment that gets things right for me. KDE comes close, I guess. I haven't seriously tried KDE, though I've heard lots of good things about it recently. I don't know why Ubuntu chose GNOME over Mate, the latter seems a perfectly fine typical desktop environment paradigm. > What did you switch her to? AwesomeWM (which is technically a windows manager and not a desktop environment, but it's full-featured enough to be essentially like a DE), which I keep coming back even after trying other DEs/WMs. I had hesitated to put her on it since its configuration isn't user-friendly (it's a .lua text file..), but I just essentially copied over my configuration, and she's been much happier than on GNOME.
- mcny 8y ago
  I've recently started playing with i3. It is very nice. I don't know how to do a lot of things. I have to Google how to connect to a new WiFi connection every time on my phone. However, I like it a lot. Worst case scenario, I have to reboot and log in with gnome. Personally, I am all for standardization and homogeneity. We need standards and homogeneity. I would gladly steamroll over all the people who oppose "monoculture" for the sake of opposing something. You can't please everyone but I think gnome is the right answer for most people. Don't like something? Come join the discussion at https://gitlab.gnome.org https://gitlab.gnome.org (I hope I got that right) Better link https://gitlab.gnome.org/groups/GNOME/-/issues https://gitlab.gnome.org/groups/GNOME/-/issues
  - groovy2shoes 8y ago
    I haven't used i3 in a long time, but if it's got support for systray icons, you can run the NetworkManager applet and manage your network settings there as you would in any ol' desktop environment. I do this with awesome, and it works well. It's a one-liner in rc.lua: awful.spawn.with_shell "nm-applet" Also good for volume control applets :)
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    > You can't please everyone but I think gnome is the right answer for most people. Don't like something? Come join the discussion at https://gitlab.gnome.org https://gitlab.gnome.org (I hope I got that right) The problem is I think the deep issues I have with Gnome are not things which are easily fixed, e.g. "stop leaking memory", "don't be a single-threaded Javascript process", "allow me to control workspaces independently on each monitor/screen", &c. &c. I would love to see Gnome improve though, even if I never end up using it, but I am not currently seeing any obvious signs that this will occur.
    - mcny 8y ago
      I have seen these problems as well and yes the community seems dismissive of the issues with various *-factories https://askubuntu.com/questions/480753/remove-evolution-calendar-factory-from-startup https://askubuntu.com/questions/480753/remove-evolution-cale... I mean I still can't get over the asinine comment covered here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4757077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4757077 Very poor choice of words which will hurt us for a long time. Archived at https://archive.fo/NbzkY https://archive.fo/NbzkY This is the opposite of the standardization and cooperation across desktop environments and window managers that I want!

ploggingdev 8y ago

I'm interested to learn why they chose to switch to Gnome instead of KDE plasma. What was the thinking behind it? Why wasn't the community involved in the decision? Gnome has the backing of Redhat and is the default DE on Fedora, so Canonical backing an alternative would have been desirable. I'm biased, but Plasma or even Mate would have been much better choices. Plasma has been so good lately and seems to take community feedback seriously. Stability has been great, it's extremely lightweight and the customization options make me...happy. I've been kicking myself for not switching from Gnome to plasma sooner. For anyone skeptical of plasma, I urge you to give it a try : kubuntu, kde neon, fedora kde, arch + plasma, opensuse are all great.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
I've heard lots of good things about KDE lately. For Canonical: I suppose it sort of makes sense from a historical perspective in that before Unity they used Gnome, so they were returning to Gnome. But given that Gnome appears to be a single-threaded Javascript engine with memory leaks, I'm not convinced it's a great choice. Still, Gnome is backed by Red Hat and just got a $1 million donation ( https://www.gnome.org/news/2018/05/anonymous-donor-pledges-1m-donation-over-two-years/ https://www.gnome.org/news/2018/05/anonymous-donor-pledges-1... ), so in theory it should get better....but I've been thinking "it should get better soon" for a while, so who knows.
- yoodenvranx 8y ago
  > I've heard lots of good things about KDE lately Modern KDE (e.g. 5.12+) is amazing! It's slim, it's fast, it lets you configure tons of stuff and it looks beautiful. If you haven't used it in the last two years you should give it a try!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

jabl 8y ago

I think the point of the article wasn't to argue which desktop env is the bestest, but rather that as far as canonical is concerned the desktop can go DIAF (except as a gateway drug for their server/iot stuff). They are focusing on cloud / iot. So they dumped their own thing. Since unity was partially based on gnome, they used gnome before, and somebody else (rh) keeps pumping resources into it, it seems like a natural choice.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
> So they dumped their own thing. Since unity was partially based on gnome, they used gnome before, and somebody else (rh) keeps pumping resources into it, it seems like a natural choice. Of course. But unfortunately I think that what makes sense from a historical and resource-evaluation standpoint ends up falling down in terms of real-world usability.

sjellis 8y ago

I'm a GNOME loyalist, but if I was going to set up a system for a non-technical user today, I would go for MATE and set the theme that emulates the OS that they used before, or to suit their preferences. MATE has really impressed me with the last couple of releases.

krylon 8y ago

I may be old-fashioned, but to me, GNOME 2 was the best desktop environment I ever used, no matter what OS. GNOME 3 was basically the main reason I switched from GNU/Linux to a Mac in 2013. Then I discovered MATE. =D I have switched back to GNU/Linux with a MATE desktop since, and I could not be happier. To my taste, it gives both Windows and macOS a run for their money. Out of curiosity: what is that "nice interface you use" your wife asked about?

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
MATE/Mate (I'm unsure of the current preferred typefacing) seems very nice, and I don't fully understand why Canonical chose to go with GNOME Shell rather than Mate, especially as one of their own employees (Martin Wimpress) is own of the driving forces behind Mate. I suppose it's because they figure GNOME has the financial backing of Red Hat. But I think in this case the financial position of GNOME Shell is misleading as to the current state of its technology and usability. The 'nice interface I use' which I switched my wife to is AwesomeWM. Not that user-friendly to configure, but really pleasant to use.