3 ms·

Why Gnome 2 Continues to Win the Desktop Popularity Contest (2019)

10 points by bilegeek 2y ago

graemep 2y ago
It seems somewhat contradictory. "many just want a launcher" and "because of Gnome’s size and decades of development, they can also have the ecosystem that DEs like LXDE and Xfce lack" seem contradictory to me. They want just a launcher, but they also want lots of DE specific stuff (presumably widgets and the like). The hostile reception KDE 4 got was more because distros made it the default too early. Activities are an optional feature you need to configure. If the article was correct I would have expected Cinnamon and Trinity to be a lot more popular.
- account42 2y ago
  > The hostile reception KDE 4 got was more because distros made it the default too early. That's 100% on KDE. > Activities are an optional feature you need to configure. Except things that were possible without Activities before were cut in favor of activities.
  - graemep 2y ago
    > Except things that were possible without Activities before were cut in favor of activities. What? I cannot recall anything I noticed myself.
dagelf 2y ago
Xfce is by far the most compatible and easiest to customize, not to mention light weight, both to mention also had decades of dev. And of just wanted a launcher they would've been happy with IceWM. People want stability, interoperability and effortless customizability, with good defaults. Esthetics, nice fonts and themes. Ice has those too, but not in a control panel as such, and rarely bundled.
- happymellon 2y ago
  Does XFCE still code the window border grab area inside the theme, and then ship greybird as the default theme with only a 1 pixel. Awful OOB user experience. Can be made to work great, but full of papercuts for new users.
- wrp 2y ago
  I have for many years helped set up some elderly folks for web access. Since they had less powerful PCs and were familiar with Windows, I used IceWM because it was light and I could make it look like Win98. That took a good deal of configuring, though. As their computers got better, I shifted to Xfce for several years, and have now moved to LXQt. I don't try very hard to make it look like Windows anymore, partly because Windows has become such a mess and partly because I have less energy. If I really wanted a system to look like Classic Windows, I would probably still use Xfce with the XFE tools.

10 points by bilegeek 2y ago

It seems somewhat contradictory. "many just want a launcher" and "because of Gnome’s size and decades of development, they can also have the ecosystem that DEs like LXDE and Xfce lack" seem contradictory to me. They want just a launcher, but they also want lots of DE specific stuff (presumably widgets and the like). The hostile reception KDE 4 got was more because distros made it the default too early. Activities are an optional feature you need to configure. If the article was correct I would have expected Cinnamon and Trinity to be a lot more popular.

account42 2y ago
> The hostile reception KDE 4 got was more because distros made it the default too early. That's 100% on KDE. > Activities are an optional feature you need to configure. Except things that were possible without Activities before were cut in favor of activities.
- graemep 2y ago
  > Except things that were possible without Activities before were cut in favor of activities. What? I cannot recall anything I noticed myself.

dagelf 2y ago

Xfce is by far the most compatible and easiest to customize, not to mention light weight, both to mention also had decades of dev. And of just wanted a launcher they would've been happy with IceWM. People want stability, interoperability and effortless customizability, with good defaults. Esthetics, nice fonts and themes. Ice has those too, but not in a control panel as such, and rarely bundled.

happymellon 2y ago
Does XFCE still code the window border grab area inside the theme, and then ship greybird as the default theme with only a 1 pixel. Awful OOB user experience. Can be made to work great, but full of papercuts for new users.
wrp 2y ago
I have for many years helped set up some elderly folks for web access. Since they had less powerful PCs and were familiar with Windows, I used IceWM because it was light and I could make it look like Win98. That took a good deal of configuring, though. As their computers got better, I shifted to Xfce for several years, and have now moved to LXQt. I don't try very hard to make it look like Windows anymore, partly because Windows has become such a mess and partly because I have less energy. If I really wanted a system to look like Classic Windows, I would probably still use Xfce with the XFE tools.