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It is not a "user-hostile attitude" to remove features. Every project that does some kind of user study will do this eventually, because: 1. Not every feature

It is not a "user-hostile attitude" to remove features. Every project that does some kind of user study will do this eventually, because: 1. Not every feature is equally useful 2. No one is using the feature, and so maintaining it is a waste of time 3. Sometimes developers discover a better way to implement a feature 4. Some features can turn out to be just harmful and misleading 5. There is no one available who wants to maintain the feature and so it slowly deteriorates and breaks over time, and must be removed to prevent further breakage And so on. If you program in your day job, I bet you can think of a few other valid reasons you have removed a feature at work, too. GNOME has not done anything out of the ordinary here, and it is incorrect to describe it this way. If you believe they have taken specific actions that were hostile towards you, then you should say what those actions are. But the mere act of changing or removing a feature that you happened to use is not a display of hostility, it is just the normal development process working as intended. >and then it’s available — unlike in Gnome 3+ This is incorrect, Gnome 3+ can be configured with shell extensions.

ginko 4y ago
- Crysstalis 4y ago
  No, I do not work for Red Hat and I have never worked for Red Hat. I am just a person who uses GNOME and systemd, and while I do have my own complaints about them, I have enough experience to respond to most of the common complaints. Are you aware that there are many Linux distributions besides RHEL and Fedora that are shipping GNOME and systemd? I also do not appreciate you looking through my comment history to try and pick something out to seemingly dismiss what I am saying. Is it inconceivable that I do not have a financial interest, and I just happen to be knowledgeable in these areas?
- tadfisher 4y ago
  This is against the rules on HN.
phkahler 4y ago
>> No one is using the feature, and so maintaining it is a waste of time. I wish they would drop more features that I don't like. I have a 55" monitor, so I dont use workspaces. I also dont need every window to shrink and move about when I want to bring up the launcher. Also, drop the hiding the launcher feature. In the other direction I would like the application menu back ;-) Otherwise I'm still mostly content with it.
- Crysstalis 4y ago
  I wish they would drop and add some features too, but unfortunately no one can please everyone...
- eptcyka 4y ago
  There are application menu plugins, but I'm almost certain you are aware of them. I wish they'd fix performance degradation issues, but I think the issue might require a holistic effort across a deep stack of components. That, and make the Wayland compositor restartable.
hitekker 4y ago
I thought the flagged sibling comment was harsh but wow, 9 angry comments in just the last hour. That's not healthy
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
traverseda 4y ago
> It is not a "user-hostile attitude" to remove features. Every project that does some kind of user study will do this eventually, because: I'd argue that it's not necessarily user hostile. You can definitely do it in a way that is user hostile however.
bcrl 4y ago
You are making assumptions that are wrong. Just because you think a feature isn't used, that doesn't mean that there aren't users of that feature. Not every user participates in developer mailing lists to advocate for working features they currently use. Gnome has consistently made user hostile changes, like the time a minor release update changed key bindings from Unix style to Windows style for cut / paste / edit. Was nobody using keyboard shortcuts? I sure as damned hell don't think that was the case. I used to change the window decorations to something smaller than the default, because I like having more of my screen real estate available for actual content rather than useless UI padding. The current iterations of Gnome are unusable to me, when Gnome was visually appealing and highly usable 20 years ago. Window transitions and icon docks have done nothing to improve usability, and bigger borders are not better borders. Thankfully other desktops have far better feature retention rates.

ginko 4y ago

Crysstalis 4y ago
No, I do not work for Red Hat and I have never worked for Red Hat. I am just a person who uses GNOME and systemd, and while I do have my own complaints about them, I have enough experience to respond to most of the common complaints. Are you aware that there are many Linux distributions besides RHEL and Fedora that are shipping GNOME and systemd? I also do not appreciate you looking through my comment history to try and pick something out to seemingly dismiss what I am saying. Is it inconceivable that I do not have a financial interest, and I just happen to be knowledgeable in these areas?
tadfisher 4y ago
This is against the rules on HN.

phkahler 4y ago

>> No one is using the feature, and so maintaining it is a waste of time. I wish they would drop more features that I don't like. I have a 55" monitor, so I dont use workspaces. I also dont need every window to shrink and move about when I want to bring up the launcher. Also, drop the hiding the launcher feature. In the other direction I would like the application menu back ;-) Otherwise I'm still mostly content with it.

Crysstalis 4y ago
I wish they would drop and add some features too, but unfortunately no one can please everyone...
eptcyka 4y ago
There are application menu plugins, but I'm almost certain you are aware of them. I wish they'd fix performance degradation issues, but I think the issue might require a holistic effort across a deep stack of components. That, and make the Wayland compositor restartable.

hitekker 4y ago

I thought the flagged sibling comment was harsh but wow, 9 angry comments in just the last hour. That's not healthy

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

traverseda 4y ago

> It is not a "user-hostile attitude" to remove features. Every project that does some kind of user study will do this eventually, because: I'd argue that it's not necessarily user hostile. You can definitely do it in a way that is user hostile however.

bcrl 4y ago

You are making assumptions that are wrong. Just because you think a feature isn't used, that doesn't mean that there aren't users of that feature. Not every user participates in developer mailing lists to advocate for working features they currently use. Gnome has consistently made user hostile changes, like the time a minor release update changed key bindings from Unix style to Windows style for cut / paste / edit. Was nobody using keyboard shortcuts? I sure as damned hell don't think that was the case. I used to change the window decorations to something smaller than the default, because I like having more of my screen real estate available for actual content rather than useless UI padding. The current iterations of Gnome are unusable to me, when Gnome was visually appealing and highly usable 20 years ago. Window transitions and icon docks have done nothing to improve usability, and bigger borders are not better borders. Thankfully other desktops have far better feature retention rates.