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This is news to me. I remember that the Linux desktop seemed to be on the ascendancy back in 2006. GNOME 2 and KDE 3 were very nice desktops; while they weren

This is news to me. I remember that the Linux desktop seemed to be on the ascendancy back in 2006. GNOME 2 and KDE 3 were very nice desktops; while they weren’t Mac OS X Tiger (which still holds up as an amazing desktop), they were solid contenders to Windows XP. But then came GNOME 3 and KDE 4, which were major fumbles that set back the Linux desktop for years. If it’s true that GNOME’s radical direction beginning with version 3 is the result of threats from Microsoft to change its desktop to avoid influences from Windows, then that definitely changes my assessment of the era, and my distaste for Microsoft’s anti-competitive behavior only deepens (this is the same Microsoft that complained about Apple’s look-and-feel lawsuits).

dijit 4y ago
This is my impression to, as a person deep into the Linux desktop ecosystem from back then. I even managed to give gnome2 to my mum at one point and she remarked how nice everything was and easy to find. I had more difficulty than she did since I was much more into computers and had learned all the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of Windows. Then gnome3 came and was a huge regression in terms of flexibility, ease of use, aesthetics and performance. Plasma was the same, though, subjectively it looked better and was a lot less antagonising than gnomes radical redesign, it was still really heavy and buggy compared to kde3 (or whatever the predecessor was, I think 3). Plasma/KDE was also very windows-like, so I don’t buy the argument that Microsoft was the cause, it was mostly gnome devs thinking that they could get a radical touch-first redesign in before anyone else. This is a very long way of saying: the parent is correct in my opinion.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  > Plasma/KDE was also very windows-like, so I don’t buy the argument that Microsoft was the cause, it was mostly gnome devs thinking that they could get a radical touch-first redesign in before anyone else. The article does touch on that, apparently Suse signed a patent deal with MS which sidestepped the issues so they could continue the design as usual. Gnome and Redhat refused. If this is true it kinda reinforces my feeling that Gnome 3 was a redesign for the sake of it. I hate almost everything about it though I'm not married to the windows concept. But everything about it just feels wrong. The huge "touch-friendly" title bars, the menus hidden in hamburger buttons, the lack of configuration options like macOS. And I really tried to like it. When I moved back to FOSS from Mac it was my first choice. I love KDE though only recently, I thought KDE 3 was too cluttery. It feels like it only came into its own right with Plasma. And I don't find it all that Windows-like though the taskbar certainly is more Windows-like than other DE's. But a taskbar doth not a windows make. Overall I find it distinctly different from Windows. The control panel is definitely a lot better than that mashup of different styles in Windows.
  - TingPing 4y ago
    SUSE doesn't even use KDE, they use GNOME... Sounds unlikely.
    - uncletaco 4y ago
      In 2006 SUSE was the KDE distribution. Unambiguously. While other distros had community editions that shipped KDE (as the article mentions) when you wanted KDE with no frills and everything working out of the box you used SUSE or OpenSUSE.
      - giantrobot 4y ago
        IIRC SUSE had been using KDE as the default DE since its inception. I know KDE was the default environment around 2000 when I first used it. YaST 2 was also written against Qt.
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago
      The article also touches on that, at the time SUSE used KDE, and after they acquired Ximian they became more Gnome-friendly. Even now KDE is one of the 3 default DEs, the others are Gnome and XFCE. Like I said in another comment, I'm not sure how much is true of the reasoning of the Gnome redesign the article mentions but this part seems to pan out.
      - TingPing 4y ago
        SUSE only supports GNOME. Any other DE is community maintained and only in OpenSUSE.
    - lproven 4y ago
      I wrote the article and I specifically covered why that happened. Novell bought SUSE. Then Novell bought Ximian, the GNOME company that wrote Nautilus ("Files") and Evolution. The Novell forcibly merged SUSE and Ximian. https://www.arnnet.com.au/article/12755/ https://www.arnnet.com.au/article/12755/
- flomo 4y ago
  AFAIK, Gnome2 was the only foss desktop to receive extensive user testing. (Sun dogfooded it with their employees.) Lots of little workflow issues were identified and resolved.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Same experience, so this history must be told from a very specific perspective. I've had over two decades of Linux use on the desktop and remember something similar to you guys.
  - lproven 4y ago
    I wrote it, and the specific perspective that I wrote it from is a matter of published record. What more do you want? https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/patent-suit-against-red-hat-novell-threatens-open-source-world-59806.html https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/patent-suit-against-red-h... https://www.theregister.com/2004/11/18/ballmer_linux_lawsuits/ https://www.theregister.com/2004/11/18/ballmer_linux_lawsuit...
    - renewiltord 4y ago
      Well, either one of the following things must be true: - I am misremembering the past - The published record misrepresents the past - The motivations at the time were not visible to the community (i.e. the published record is correct and I am not misremembering but that's because the user community never saw it) I suppose the last one is really the most likely.
cube00 4y ago
At the time I remember the discussions seemed to be "this how the GNOME team have decided things will be, it's better, deal with it" There was no discussion I saw that they doing all this under the threat of legal action, although maybe they didn't want to paint an even larger target on their backs by naming Microsoft or be seen trying to change things just enough to avoid the patents.
- toyg 4y ago
  Plenty of stuff in the Linux world was done naming Microsoft in adversarial terms - that was definitely not the case on the desktop. All three main groups (GNOME, KDE, and Unity) always, always stated they were making bold design choices for practical reasons related to UX. To claim otherwise, today, seems very disingenuous.
  - hitekker 4y ago
    I'll go a step further. The author of the article is deceiving himself and his audience to apologize for terrible decisions in OSS, separate from Microsoft, which is no saint either. This is historical revisionism that the creator of GNOME, in this very comment thread, throws out. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32258035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32258035
  - vesinisa 4y ago
    Yes, I frankly find this blog quite dubious. I have followed the Linux landscape very keenly for over 20 years and never before heard the claim that the infamous new UI paradigms in Gnome 3 & Unity had anything to do with Microsoft patents. It was instead framed as open source taking the design initiative for next generation "convergent" UIs, which was all the rave back then (one design/OS for workstation, laptop, tablet, phone, TV, etc.) Microsoft's interpretation of the same trend was Windows 8 and later Universal Windows Platform (UWP). They almost all seem to have fallen flat on the face, and especially on the open source side the "bold new direction" seemed to alienate many users. But blaming Microsoft for this sounds like an odd attempt at historical revisionism.
    - 4y ago
int_19h 4y ago
GNOME already changed direction rather radically between v1 and v2. I specifically remember many people complaining about all the simplifications and removal of various configurable options, and blaming GNOME for drinking too much Apple kool-aid. For example, it was GNOME 2 that removed the address (path) textbox in the file picker by default: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=605608 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=605608
thaumasiotes 4y ago
What everyone else said: if this is true, that would mean that every developer involved was willing to take the secret to their grave. It would mean they preferred to take the massive PR hit of issuing public statements saying "why can't you idiots just accept our superior aesthetic sensibilities" than to blame their incredibly unpopular choices on threats from Microsoft. In other words, there's just no way this is true.
sorry_outta_gas 4y ago
Yeah.. I moved to mac for a long while after gnome3 showed up the mess now with a million extensions really sucks still 1\2 the effort of the modern linux desktop is screwing up your WM until it's in a normal state
tcmart14 4y ago
I don't think GNOME's radical redirection was necessarily a product of threats from Microsoft. This is me reaching back into the old memory bank. I remember a justification for GNOME 3's design was to be touch friendly. I don't think that is necessarily a Microsoft fault. Touch screens were coming to laptops and at the time it felt like every hardware maker was throwing touch screens on laptops. And well, it turned out not to pan out very well for anyone. Here we are and yes, some people may buy laptops with touch screen, but I have yet to run into someone who owns one and uses the touch screen. The exception would something like the Microsoft surfaces.

dijit 4y ago

This is my impression to, as a person deep into the Linux desktop ecosystem from back then. I even managed to give gnome2 to my mum at one point and she remarked how nice everything was and easy to find. I had more difficulty than she did since I was much more into computers and had learned all the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of Windows. Then gnome3 came and was a huge regression in terms of flexibility, ease of use, aesthetics and performance. Plasma was the same, though, subjectively it looked better and was a lot less antagonising than gnomes radical redesign, it was still really heavy and buggy compared to kde3 (or whatever the predecessor was, I think 3). Plasma/KDE was also very windows-like, so I don’t buy the argument that Microsoft was the cause, it was mostly gnome devs thinking that they could get a radical touch-first redesign in before anyone else. This is a very long way of saying: the parent is correct in my opinion.

GekkePrutser 4y ago
> Plasma/KDE was also very windows-like, so I don’t buy the argument that Microsoft was the cause, it was mostly gnome devs thinking that they could get a radical touch-first redesign in before anyone else. The article does touch on that, apparently Suse signed a patent deal with MS which sidestepped the issues so they could continue the design as usual. Gnome and Redhat refused. If this is true it kinda reinforces my feeling that Gnome 3 was a redesign for the sake of it. I hate almost everything about it though I'm not married to the windows concept. But everything about it just feels wrong. The huge "touch-friendly" title bars, the menus hidden in hamburger buttons, the lack of configuration options like macOS. And I really tried to like it. When I moved back to FOSS from Mac it was my first choice. I love KDE though only recently, I thought KDE 3 was too cluttery. It feels like it only came into its own right with Plasma. And I don't find it all that Windows-like though the taskbar certainly is more Windows-like than other DE's. But a taskbar doth not a windows make. Overall I find it distinctly different from Windows. The control panel is definitely a lot better than that mashup of different styles in Windows.
- TingPing 4y ago
  SUSE doesn't even use KDE, they use GNOME... Sounds unlikely.
  - uncletaco 4y ago
    In 2006 SUSE was the KDE distribution. Unambiguously. While other distros had community editions that shipped KDE (as the article mentions) when you wanted KDE with no frills and everything working out of the box you used SUSE or OpenSUSE.
    - giantrobot 4y ago
      IIRC SUSE had been using KDE as the default DE since its inception. I know KDE was the default environment around 2000 when I first used it. YaST 2 was also written against Qt.
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    The article also touches on that, at the time SUSE used KDE, and after they acquired Ximian they became more Gnome-friendly. Even now KDE is one of the 3 default DEs, the others are Gnome and XFCE. Like I said in another comment, I'm not sure how much is true of the reasoning of the Gnome redesign the article mentions but this part seems to pan out.
    - TingPing 4y ago
      SUSE only supports GNOME. Any other DE is community maintained and only in OpenSUSE.
  - lproven 4y ago
    I wrote the article and I specifically covered why that happened. Novell bought SUSE. Then Novell bought Ximian, the GNOME company that wrote Nautilus ("Files") and Evolution. The Novell forcibly merged SUSE and Ximian. https://www.arnnet.com.au/article/12755/ https://www.arnnet.com.au/article/12755/
flomo 4y ago
AFAIK, Gnome2 was the only foss desktop to receive extensive user testing. (Sun dogfooded it with their employees.) Lots of little workflow issues were identified and resolved.
renewiltord 4y ago
Same experience, so this history must be told from a very specific perspective. I've had over two decades of Linux use on the desktop and remember something similar to you guys.
- lproven 4y ago
  I wrote it, and the specific perspective that I wrote it from is a matter of published record. What more do you want? https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/patent-suit-against-red-hat-novell-threatens-open-source-world-59806.html https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/patent-suit-against-red-h... https://www.theregister.com/2004/11/18/ballmer_linux_lawsuits/ https://www.theregister.com/2004/11/18/ballmer_linux_lawsuit...
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    Well, either one of the following things must be true: - I am misremembering the past - The published record misrepresents the past - The motivations at the time were not visible to the community (i.e. the published record is correct and I am not misremembering but that's because the user community never saw it) I suppose the last one is really the most likely.

cube00 4y ago

At the time I remember the discussions seemed to be "this how the GNOME team have decided things will be, it's better, deal with it" There was no discussion I saw that they doing all this under the threat of legal action, although maybe they didn't want to paint an even larger target on their backs by naming Microsoft or be seen trying to change things just enough to avoid the patents.

toyg 4y ago
Plenty of stuff in the Linux world was done naming Microsoft in adversarial terms - that was definitely not the case on the desktop. All three main groups (GNOME, KDE, and Unity) always, always stated they were making bold design choices for practical reasons related to UX. To claim otherwise, today, seems very disingenuous.
- hitekker 4y ago
  I'll go a step further. The author of the article is deceiving himself and his audience to apologize for terrible decisions in OSS, separate from Microsoft, which is no saint either. This is historical revisionism that the creator of GNOME, in this very comment thread, throws out. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32258035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32258035
- vesinisa 4y ago
  Yes, I frankly find this blog quite dubious. I have followed the Linux landscape very keenly for over 20 years and never before heard the claim that the infamous new UI paradigms in Gnome 3 & Unity had anything to do with Microsoft patents. It was instead framed as open source taking the design initiative for next generation "convergent" UIs, which was all the rave back then (one design/OS for workstation, laptop, tablet, phone, TV, etc.) Microsoft's interpretation of the same trend was Windows 8 and later Universal Windows Platform (UWP). They almost all seem to have fallen flat on the face, and especially on the open source side the "bold new direction" seemed to alienate many users. But blaming Microsoft for this sounds like an odd attempt at historical revisionism.
  - 4y ago

int_19h 4y ago

GNOME already changed direction rather radically between v1 and v2. I specifically remember many people complaining about all the simplifications and removal of various configurable options, and blaming GNOME for drinking too much Apple kool-aid. For example, it was GNOME 2 that removed the address (path) textbox in the file picker by default: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=605608 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=605608

thaumasiotes 4y ago

What everyone else said: if this is true, that would mean that every developer involved was willing to take the secret to their grave. It would mean they preferred to take the massive PR hit of issuing public statements saying "why can't you idiots just accept our superior aesthetic sensibilities" than to blame their incredibly unpopular choices on threats from Microsoft. In other words, there's just no way this is true.

sorry_outta_gas 4y ago

Yeah.. I moved to mac for a long while after gnome3 showed up the mess now with a million extensions really sucks still 1\2 the effort of the modern linux desktop is screwing up your WM until it's in a normal state

tcmart14 4y ago

I don't think GNOME's radical redirection was necessarily a product of threats from Microsoft. This is me reaching back into the old memory bank. I remember a justification for GNOME 3's design was to be touch friendly. I don't think that is necessarily a Microsoft fault. Touch screens were coming to laptops and at the time it felt like every hardware maker was throwing touch screens on laptops. And well, it turned out not to pan out very well for anyone. Here we are and yes, some people may buy laptops with touch screen, but I have yet to run into someone who owns one and uses the touch screen. The exception would something like the Microsoft surfaces.