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In my experience Gnome is the worst major FOSS project for this. Ever since Gnome 3 the design philosophy of all of their projects seems to be "find out what th

In my experience Gnome is the worst major FOSS project for this. Ever since Gnome 3 the design philosophy of all of their projects seems to be "find out what the users want and do the opposite."

Lammy 6y ago
Case in point: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell-list/2011-June/msg00110.html https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell-list/2011-June/m... "Facilitating the unrestricted use of extensions and themes by end users seems contrary to the central tenets of the GNOME 3 design."
dancek 6y ago
I've heard this from a couple of power users before. But maybe GNOME does not optimize for power users?
- 72deluxe 6y ago
  I remember following the GNOME blog for some time and finally decided I'd never go back after the article on how gEdit was being "improved" by completely hiding the menubar, the toolbar and basically any usable controls. It was written such that "focus" and "distraction-free" computing was the ultimate goal and that UI controls were somehow "distracting".... The file open/save dialog involves multiple clicks before it is usable because obviously a path edit box is WAY too distracting... I don't ever remember cursing my Windows 3.11 machine that the scrollbar and toolbar icons were distracting in File Manager, nor do I crash my car when the speedometer changes and wish that the distraction of the speedo and rev counter was removed. I remember using GNOME2 and loving it. I often wonder constitutes a "power user" - someone who wants to actually get stuff done and not fight the UI to discover things?? I wonder when iOS became the ideal - blindly fumble around whitespace to see if some text is actually a button or if there is some unfathomable control hidden that you need a magic incantation to discover (swipe left on a list control is delete - my mum still doesn't know this)? Is a "power user" someone who has learned all the different ways of interacting with a modern user interface? You used to learn: click, double-click and scrollwheel. Now every interaction with a control is different and impossible to learn or discover simply by using it. Absymal.
- betterunix2 6y ago
  What is a "power user?" Sounds like the same nonsense we hear from proprietary software vendors all the time, "That feature is for enterprise users." Gnome more or less optimizes for minimal configurability, the theory being that most users want the UI to be as clean as possible. They do not particularly care if someone would like to be able to change some annoying behavior, because they thought that behavior made sense and they feel the cost of adding a button to disable it, or even burying a configuration bit in gconf, is far too high. Of course, they do not have the resources needed to run actual user studies the way Apple, Google, and Microsoft do, so their idea of what users want is mostly based on their own ideas about what users want (since they usually dismiss feature requests from their actual users, because those are "power users").
  - Miraste 6y ago
    With apologies to Joseph Heller: "There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own UI in the face of flaws that were real and immediate was the process of a power user. Orr was an average user and could be listened to. All he had to do was write a feature request; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be an average user and would have to be ignored."
- yongjik 6y ago
  For example, GNOME doesn't support session save out of box. I think it's an incredibly helpful feature, especially for beginners - but maybe GNOME developers simply know that, deep down, all of us yearn for a clean blank slate whenever we restart our box, and showing the apps we've been using five minutes ago will only confuse our brain. Also it doesn't even show hibernate button on the "start menu" (or whatever it's called these days) - because apparently the ability to actually power down the box while keeping all states is too confusing to have!
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
Yeah seriously. The Gnome project is go-to example of non-ad-driven user-hostile FOSS software development.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  I have no idea why it has become so common on here to dog on GNOME for being "user-hostile" because they targeted a different kind of user than the average HN engineer/startup person. You can use one of the "GNOME 2 revival" type desktop environments if that's your fancy.
  - Macha 6y ago
    Because the user they were hostile to were the users that had been until then the majority of Gnome's users. It may be a good business move to ditch your existing userbase in favour of a potential larger one but the userbase you've moved on from have no obligation to be happy about that
    - cycloptic 6y ago
      I don't expect the community to be happy, I would say I more expect a community of engineers to be realistic. The ship has unfortunately sailed long ago and it's not coming back.
  - Miraste 6y ago
    That's their justification, but put a non-technical user in front of a gnome system and you will find nothing but confusion. It doesn't operate like any other OS GUI, nor is it intuitive or discoverable, nor does it have feature parity. They must be designing gnome for someone, but I don't know who.
    - cycloptic 6y ago
      I don't know, last time I tried stock Ubuntu I found it to be pretty similar to current macOS with the launchpad and mission control. In any case, the answer to those problems you're describing would be more and more breaking changes, not less.
cbpowell 6y ago
Agreed. And yet it's somehow ascended to being the default environment for Fedora, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS...

In my experience Gnome is the worst major FOSS project for this. Ever since Gnome 3 the design philosophy of all of their projects seems to be "find out what the users want and do the opposite."

Lammy 6y ago

Case in point: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell-list/2011-June/msg00110.html https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell-list/2011-June/m... "Facilitating the unrestricted use of extensions and themes by end users seems contrary to the central tenets of the GNOME 3 design."

dancek 6y ago

I've heard this from a couple of power users before. But maybe GNOME does not optimize for power users?

72deluxe 6y ago
I remember following the GNOME blog for some time and finally decided I'd never go back after the article on how gEdit was being "improved" by completely hiding the menubar, the toolbar and basically any usable controls. It was written such that "focus" and "distraction-free" computing was the ultimate goal and that UI controls were somehow "distracting".... The file open/save dialog involves multiple clicks before it is usable because obviously a path edit box is WAY too distracting... I don't ever remember cursing my Windows 3.11 machine that the scrollbar and toolbar icons were distracting in File Manager, nor do I crash my car when the speedometer changes and wish that the distraction of the speedo and rev counter was removed. I remember using GNOME2 and loving it. I often wonder constitutes a "power user" - someone who wants to actually get stuff done and not fight the UI to discover things?? I wonder when iOS became the ideal - blindly fumble around whitespace to see if some text is actually a button or if there is some unfathomable control hidden that you need a magic incantation to discover (swipe left on a list control is delete - my mum still doesn't know this)? Is a "power user" someone who has learned all the different ways of interacting with a modern user interface? You used to learn: click, double-click and scrollwheel. Now every interaction with a control is different and impossible to learn or discover simply by using it. Absymal.
betterunix2 6y ago
What is a "power user?" Sounds like the same nonsense we hear from proprietary software vendors all the time, "That feature is for enterprise users." Gnome more or less optimizes for minimal configurability, the theory being that most users want the UI to be as clean as possible. They do not particularly care if someone would like to be able to change some annoying behavior, because they thought that behavior made sense and they feel the cost of adding a button to disable it, or even burying a configuration bit in gconf, is far too high. Of course, they do not have the resources needed to run actual user studies the way Apple, Google, and Microsoft do, so their idea of what users want is mostly based on their own ideas about what users want (since they usually dismiss feature requests from their actual users, because those are "power users").
- Miraste 6y ago
  With apologies to Joseph Heller: "There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own UI in the face of flaws that were real and immediate was the process of a power user. Orr was an average user and could be listened to. All he had to do was write a feature request; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be an average user and would have to be ignored."
yongjik 6y ago
For example, GNOME doesn't support session save out of box. I think it's an incredibly helpful feature, especially for beginners - but maybe GNOME developers simply know that, deep down, all of us yearn for a clean blank slate whenever we restart our box, and showing the apps we've been using five minutes ago will only confuse our brain. Also it doesn't even show hibernate button on the "start menu" (or whatever it's called these days) - because apparently the ability to actually power down the box while keeping all states is too confusing to have!

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

Yeah seriously. The Gnome project is go-to example of non-ad-driven user-hostile FOSS software development.

cycloptic 6y ago
I have no idea why it has become so common on here to dog on GNOME for being "user-hostile" because they targeted a different kind of user than the average HN engineer/startup person. You can use one of the "GNOME 2 revival" type desktop environments if that's your fancy.
- Macha 6y ago
  Because the user they were hostile to were the users that had been until then the majority of Gnome's users. It may be a good business move to ditch your existing userbase in favour of a potential larger one but the userbase you've moved on from have no obligation to be happy about that
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    I don't expect the community to be happy, I would say I more expect a community of engineers to be realistic. The ship has unfortunately sailed long ago and it's not coming back.
- Miraste 6y ago
  That's their justification, but put a non-technical user in front of a gnome system and you will find nothing but confusion. It doesn't operate like any other OS GUI, nor is it intuitive or discoverable, nor does it have feature parity. They must be designing gnome for someone, but I don't know who.
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    I don't know, last time I tried stock Ubuntu I found it to be pretty similar to current macOS with the launchpad and mission control. In any case, the answer to those problems you're describing would be more and more breaking changes, not less.

cbpowell 6y ago

Agreed. And yet it's somehow ascended to being the default environment for Fedora, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS...