5 ms·

Not sure about that. XFCE started as a clone of CDE. Now compare original CDE with XFCE and it is not really the same thing. Sure, Gnome change from v2 to v3

Not sure about that. XFCE started as a clone of CDE. Now compare original CDE with XFCE and it is not really the same thing. Sure, Gnome change from v2 to v3 was a major change in UI, but mostly for the better and Gnome kept a way to have a more classic behavior.

reidrac 3y ago
Surely is more about slow evolution than revolution.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  But Gnome did only a revolution once and since then it is the same. I personnally totally saw it as a different project as gnome 2 didn't become obsolete immediately and Mate&Cinnamon forks took over so quickly for those looking for a gnome classic evolution that no one was really forced into using gnome 3.
  - Nursie 3y ago
    > I personnally totally saw it as a different project as gnome 2 didn't become obsolete immediately Yeah it did. They announced gnome 3 and deprecated 2 on the same day, and seemed to have made the deliberate choice to not allow them to coexist. As soon as your distro moved, bam, you were done. > Mate&Cinnamon forks took over so quickly After some months. This stuff was not there on day 1. In the mean time, those of us who did not want to work the way Gnome 3 decided we should, had to find an alternative. And when we found a good one (Xfce for me), we stuck with it.
ho_schi 3y ago
Yep. GNOME makes often changes without long term strategy or asking their actual users. The removal of Type-Ahead-Find in Nautilus or background-transparency in GNOME-Terminal where mistakes. On the other hand new applications like Documents or Console required resources but provide no benefit over it counterparts. That said - Nautilus improved a lot in recent years and there are even patches available for Type-Ahead-Find (or Navigation). Same for background-transparency in the GNOME-Terminal. The separated top-bar-menus were also a problem (decoupling menus from application-windows was copied from Apple) but now reverted, they learn. If the design team is aware of the usage and has a plan things fit well! The overview is great for keyboard and mouse users, the dash make simple things simple, they got rid of the useless desktop-metapher (copied from Win95) and also the system-tray (another thing from Win95). The keyboard focused use of GNOME is use core-feature, fast for experienced users and a relieve for novice users. The GNOME-Shell provided a good UI and removed many questionable ideas of the past. Wishlist? Decouple the release cycle of most applications from GNOME, excepting Nautilus and Settings. There is no need to couple Epiphany, Terminal, Maps, Calendar and so. Evolution already skips every second release. And feature-removal should require a good reasoning and not just „I don’t need that myself“. Many options are bewildering, many forks without merges are worse (lost developers and lost users).
- gryn 3y ago
  My biggest gripe with gnome is how dependent each individual app is on installing the whole gnome-shell packages, want to use their email app without using gnome as a DE, well too bad Gmail/office and all other kind of providers won't work. Gnome feels very anti Unix philosophy.
  - tmccrary55 3y ago
    Gnome has always been very wannabe Apple philosophy.
    - bitwize 3y ago
      More like wannabe Windows philosophy, at least in the early days. Their founding document was called "Let's Make Unix Not Suck" and was all about how the Linux desktop should be architected like Windows, COM components and all.
  - ykonstant 3y ago
    Isn't KDE similar in that regard? I don't really know, but when I installed a couple of KDE programs, pacman pulled a hundred KDE packages.
    - sho_hn 3y ago
      I'd argue that is more a symptom of applying the UNIX philosophy, if anything. A lot of those "hundred KDE packages" are very tiny, highly modular libraries that do "one thing". And no, the apps don't depend on the shell. In fact it's often the distros asking us to go a bit more monolithic again to ease the packaging overhead.
    - spookie 3y ago
      Those packages are separate because the system is modular. I assure you, it's more difficult for the team to do it like this, and in many ways it's a welcome feature. The package number might seem insane, but compare the aggregate size of them vs other DEs. It's still not a fair comparison, but it's arguably better than the number of packages. Either way, many package managers provide groups or patterns to make it easier for an end user to maintain their system. Pacman does have such a feature. Look, for example, do you prefer to be able to install SDDM just because you like the themeing capabilities, and be able to do so, with just the bare minimum packages; or, install GDM and having to pull the whole GNOME DE as a requirement?
pantalaimon 3y ago
> Gnome kept a way to have a more classic behavior. Not really, even with Plugins everything is handled by Mutter - you don't have the modularity of Gnome 2 where you can switch out the panel, file browser or window manager as you please. Fortunately Mate forked Gnome 2 to retain the old desktop.
- TheAdamist 3y ago
  MATE is my preferred environment, but is it even viable anymore? Despite being in the package list for fedora(?) on recent versions, It fails to install and talk on the bug thread is just to remove the packages from the repo.
  - silon42 3y ago
    Same here... MATE is the default... can't really migrate to Wayland then.
  - pantalaimon 3y ago
    Ubuntu Mate still seems to be doing fine, but yea the latest mayor update of the desktop was two years ago, development isn't very busy there.
II2II 3y ago
One of the nice things about Linux is that users have choice. A lot of people were put off by the transition to Gnome 3 and continue to be (self included). Which is fine since the desktop environment/window manager can be swapped out. It's nice to see Xfce being added to the mix for Wayland since is is clear that Wayland is going to be the future. As for Xfce changing, that is to be expected since people's needs change over time. It is simply nice when those changes are gradual and not radical.
- Qwertious 3y ago
  >It's nice to see Xfce being added to the mix for Wayland since is is clear that Wayland is going to be the future. It's not clear at all - Wayland is in some ways a regression compared to X (try writing your own WM - tinyWM is 50 LOC, whereas the Wayland equivalent TinyWL is over 1000), and doesn't just "improve" X but changes paradigm entirely. I'd like to see [Arcan](https://www.arcan-fe.com https://www.arcan-fe.com) be the future, it seems more elegant than Wayland.
jcarrano 3y ago
Yes, quite different but roughly the same paradigms. I recently used an old HP-UX workstation with HP VUE and it felt very familiar and intuitive, not to mention the aesthetics were awesome.
kwanbix 3y ago
Oh my. Gnome3 is so beautiful and so weird. WTF with "activities"? And why have the activities menu at the top left? the menu with all the apps is as horrible as the Windows 8 menu, etc. I rather use Mate, Cinnamon, XFCE, or even KDE.
dmitrygr 3y ago
> but mostly for the better Say what now? Gnome 3 is such a shitshow that I switched to XFCE because of it.

reidrac 3y ago

Surely is more about slow evolution than revolution.

prmoustache 3y ago
But Gnome did only a revolution once and since then it is the same. I personnally totally saw it as a different project as gnome 2 didn't become obsolete immediately and Mate&Cinnamon forks took over so quickly for those looking for a gnome classic evolution that no one was really forced into using gnome 3.
- Nursie 3y ago
  > I personnally totally saw it as a different project as gnome 2 didn't become obsolete immediately Yeah it did. They announced gnome 3 and deprecated 2 on the same day, and seemed to have made the deliberate choice to not allow them to coexist. As soon as your distro moved, bam, you were done. > Mate&Cinnamon forks took over so quickly After some months. This stuff was not there on day 1. In the mean time, those of us who did not want to work the way Gnome 3 decided we should, had to find an alternative. And when we found a good one (Xfce for me), we stuck with it.

ho_schi 3y ago

Yep. GNOME makes often changes without long term strategy or asking their actual users. The removal of Type-Ahead-Find in Nautilus or background-transparency in GNOME-Terminal where mistakes. On the other hand new applications like Documents or Console required resources but provide no benefit over it counterparts. That said - Nautilus improved a lot in recent years and there are even patches available for Type-Ahead-Find (or Navigation). Same for background-transparency in the GNOME-Terminal. The separated top-bar-menus were also a problem (decoupling menus from application-windows was copied from Apple) but now reverted, they learn. If the design team is aware of the usage and has a plan things fit well! The overview is great for keyboard and mouse users, the dash make simple things simple, they got rid of the useless desktop-metapher (copied from Win95) and also the system-tray (another thing from Win95). The keyboard focused use of GNOME is use core-feature, fast for experienced users and a relieve for novice users. The GNOME-Shell provided a good UI and removed many questionable ideas of the past. Wishlist? Decouple the release cycle of most applications from GNOME, excepting Nautilus and Settings. There is no need to couple Epiphany, Terminal, Maps, Calendar and so. Evolution already skips every second release. And feature-removal should require a good reasoning and not just „I don’t need that myself“. Many options are bewildering, many forks without merges are worse (lost developers and lost users).

gryn 3y ago
My biggest gripe with gnome is how dependent each individual app is on installing the whole gnome-shell packages, want to use their email app without using gnome as a DE, well too bad Gmail/office and all other kind of providers won't work. Gnome feels very anti Unix philosophy.
- tmccrary55 3y ago
  Gnome has always been very wannabe Apple philosophy.
  - bitwize 3y ago
    More like wannabe Windows philosophy, at least in the early days. Their founding document was called "Let's Make Unix Not Suck" and was all about how the Linux desktop should be architected like Windows, COM components and all.
- ykonstant 3y ago
  Isn't KDE similar in that regard? I don't really know, but when I installed a couple of KDE programs, pacman pulled a hundred KDE packages.
  - sho_hn 3y ago
    I'd argue that is more a symptom of applying the UNIX philosophy, if anything. A lot of those "hundred KDE packages" are very tiny, highly modular libraries that do "one thing". And no, the apps don't depend on the shell. In fact it's often the distros asking us to go a bit more monolithic again to ease the packaging overhead.
  - spookie 3y ago
    Those packages are separate because the system is modular. I assure you, it's more difficult for the team to do it like this, and in many ways it's a welcome feature. The package number might seem insane, but compare the aggregate size of them vs other DEs. It's still not a fair comparison, but it's arguably better than the number of packages. Either way, many package managers provide groups or patterns to make it easier for an end user to maintain their system. Pacman does have such a feature. Look, for example, do you prefer to be able to install SDDM just because you like the themeing capabilities, and be able to do so, with just the bare minimum packages; or, install GDM and having to pull the whole GNOME DE as a requirement?

pantalaimon 3y ago

> Gnome kept a way to have a more classic behavior. Not really, even with Plugins everything is handled by Mutter - you don't have the modularity of Gnome 2 where you can switch out the panel, file browser or window manager as you please. Fortunately Mate forked Gnome 2 to retain the old desktop.

TheAdamist 3y ago
MATE is my preferred environment, but is it even viable anymore? Despite being in the package list for fedora(?) on recent versions, It fails to install and talk on the bug thread is just to remove the packages from the repo.
- silon42 3y ago
  Same here... MATE is the default... can't really migrate to Wayland then.
- pantalaimon 3y ago
  Ubuntu Mate still seems to be doing fine, but yea the latest mayor update of the desktop was two years ago, development isn't very busy there.

II2II 3y ago

One of the nice things about Linux is that users have choice. A lot of people were put off by the transition to Gnome 3 and continue to be (self included). Which is fine since the desktop environment/window manager can be swapped out. It's nice to see Xfce being added to the mix for Wayland since is is clear that Wayland is going to be the future. As for Xfce changing, that is to be expected since people's needs change over time. It is simply nice when those changes are gradual and not radical.

Qwertious 3y ago
>It's nice to see Xfce being added to the mix for Wayland since is is clear that Wayland is going to be the future. It's not clear at all - Wayland is in some ways a regression compared to X (try writing your own WM - tinyWM is 50 LOC, whereas the Wayland equivalent TinyWL is over 1000), and doesn't just "improve" X but changes paradigm entirely. I'd like to see [Arcan](https://www.arcan-fe.com https://www.arcan-fe.com) be the future, it seems more elegant than Wayland.

jcarrano 3y ago

Yes, quite different but roughly the same paradigms. I recently used an old HP-UX workstation with HP VUE and it felt very familiar and intuitive, not to mention the aesthetics were awesome.

kwanbix 3y ago

Oh my. Gnome3 is so beautiful and so weird. WTF with "activities"? And why have the activities menu at the top left? the menu with all the apps is as horrible as the Windows 8 menu, etc. I rather use Mate, Cinnamon, XFCE, or even KDE.

dmitrygr 3y ago

> but mostly for the better Say what now? Gnome 3 is such a shitshow that I switched to XFCE because of it.