5 ms·

Am I the only one who feels that Gnome, somewhat hilariously, is unable to get basic consistent UI over 2.5 decades - something that KDE nailed down at ... what

Am I the only one who feels that Gnome, somewhat hilariously, is unable to get basic consistent UI over 2.5 decades - something that KDE nailed down at ... what was it? ... KDE 1.1? I mean it is kind of sad, but educational - you get the project without clear goal, with zero consistency, without any regard to backward compatibility - and after 25 years you end up effectively with a mediocre window manager and a bunch of programs with wildly inconsistent UIs (which predictably break next time your UI toolkit goes from 2.4.8 to 2.4.9 making a migration to the new minor release a multi-year saga which invariably loses features that worked before)... Say what you want about rms but he indeed has a talent of ruining a successful (and free) software project with his religious views (Gnome vs KDE, Guile vs Tcl, the list goes on)...

MichaelCollins 4y ago
They had it nailed in Gnome 2.x, but they let self-styled designers constantly churn the UX. Designers who will never admit that UX churn is bad UX.
kzrdude 4y ago
Well, KDE is still stubbornly sticking to the wrong order of OK/cancel buttons. It's quite puzzling.
- Narishma 4y ago
  There is no wrong order.
pengaru 4y ago
> Say what you want about rms but he indeed has a talent of ruining a successful (and free) software project with his religious views (Gnome vs KDE, Guile vs Tcl, the list goes on)... To blame rms of all people for what you've described demonstrates a lack of understanding his scope of influence and participation in gnome especially in this era. I can get behind blaming rms for gcc's missed opportunities, ultimately ceding its dominant position to clang/llvm. He clearly overplayed his hand there. But when it comes to gnome I recall little more than mailing list bickering over gnome being a GNU project or not and what the G in GNOME stands for. Perhaps my memory is failing here, but it feels crediting rms with anything more than wasting a bit of gnome devs time and frustration would be overstating it. Not that any FOSS devs need more of that with how entitled and obnoxious users already can be, but they tend to have developed thick enough skin to ignore rms's aspy silliness. Can you provide any examples to the contrary?
- Postosuchus 4y ago
  My memory might be failing me but the whole raison d'être for GNOME project was the call by RMS. The premise was as follows: Qt was not truly free (despite promises by TrollTech at the time to address) and thus KDE could not be considered free desktop software.
  - pengaru 4y ago
    rms wasn't alone in this view that a non-gpl DE was unacceptable at the time. Also don't forget we're talking about an era where C++ was still largely despised for being a terrible and poorly supported language. The folks working on gtk/gnome were going to be living in C regardless of what fell out of rms.
zasdffaa 4y ago
Those who can't, will criticise and attempt to bring others down to their level. Their lack of worth is a disease they have to spread.

MichaelCollins 4y ago

They had it nailed in Gnome 2.x, but they let self-styled designers constantly churn the UX. Designers who will never admit that UX churn is bad UX.

kzrdude 4y ago

Well, KDE is still stubbornly sticking to the wrong order of OK/cancel buttons. It's quite puzzling.

Narishma 4y ago
There is no wrong order.

pengaru 4y ago

> Say what you want about rms but he indeed has a talent of ruining a successful (and free) software project with his religious views (Gnome vs KDE, Guile vs Tcl, the list goes on)... To blame rms of all people for what you've described demonstrates a lack of understanding his scope of influence and participation in gnome especially in this era. I can get behind blaming rms for gcc's missed opportunities, ultimately ceding its dominant position to clang/llvm. He clearly overplayed his hand there. But when it comes to gnome I recall little more than mailing list bickering over gnome being a GNU project or not and what the G in GNOME stands for. Perhaps my memory is failing here, but it feels crediting rms with anything more than wasting a bit of gnome devs time and frustration would be overstating it. Not that any FOSS devs need more of that with how entitled and obnoxious users already can be, but they tend to have developed thick enough skin to ignore rms's aspy silliness. Can you provide any examples to the contrary?

Postosuchus 4y ago
My memory might be failing me but the whole raison d'être for GNOME project was the call by RMS. The premise was as follows: Qt was not truly free (despite promises by TrollTech at the time to address) and thus KDE could not be considered free desktop software.
- pengaru 4y ago
  rms wasn't alone in this view that a non-gpl DE was unacceptable at the time. Also don't forget we're talking about an era where C++ was still largely despised for being a terrible and poorly supported language. The folks working on gtk/gnome were going to be living in C regardless of what fell out of rms.

zasdffaa 4y ago

Those who can't, will criticise and attempt to bring others down to their level. Their lack of worth is a disease they have to spread.