8 ms·

GNOME Workstation OS

59 points by dananjaya86 14y ago

Paul_S 14y ago
I agree, they should leave the streamlined gimmicky "we know what you want better than you do" approach to Unity and stick to making a developer's desktop. Canonical can invest money in Unity to pay devs - it's beneficial for them to get non-programmers as users. This is not the case for Gnome which relies on users to be programmers and develop it. If they can't use it because it's no longer for them then they will not contribute to it.
- icarus127 14y ago
  I completely agree with this. As a programmer HUD is the only thing keeping me on unity. Gnome 3 is _way_ more stable on all of my computers and I prefer it aesthetically.
igorlev 14y ago
I used GNOME for 10+ years and switched to the Mac a few years ago. The nail in the coffin was the Unity/Gnome Shell craziness that was so poorly executed. Is it just me or this article outlining the most natural path for any Linux desktop? Rather then chase the general consumer, focus on your core audience who is already using your OS for the server. Not only is it a more natural customer base, but you also have an advantage by eating your dogfood. GNOME devs would have 1st hand knowledge of what works and what doesn't for engineers and developers. And this sort of domain knowledge is gold when it comes to designing good interfaces. I would love to see this effort happen, and might even go back to Linux if it really created something great.
- pyre 14y ago
  I tend to agree with Paul_S that while GNOME would be better served focusing on the content production side of things, Linux on the Desktop can still be viable. The issue is that you need someone to throw money at it (e.g. Ubuntu/Canonical) and hire non-developer designers, maybe commission usability studies, etc. Maybe once enough people are actually on Linux, non-developers with professional skill sets will volunteer their time to Open Source projects, and we won't need to necessarily use money to gain access to their skills. For now, most of them are on Windows of MacOS, and are only going to devote time to their current ecosystem, if at all.
  - jshen 14y ago
    There is only one thing stopping me from using Linux, hassle free hardware support. I want sleep/wake, video card, etc, etc, etc to simply work. And please don't pretend this is true already.
    - rrmm 14y ago
      All that stuff works, if you choose your hardware carefully. I've used both apple laptops and now netbooks with linux with great success. The proliferation of hardware using PVR based video chips has been a pain though. No denying hardware support is a pain.
    - subsection1h 14y ago
      Have you tried Ubuntu Certified hardware and encountered problems? Everything works fine on my Ubuntu Certified hardware: a ThinkPad and an OptiPlex desktop that both have Intel GPUs.
      - jshen 14y ago
        I had an optiplex desktop that did not work well. It was a giant pain in the ass to get video working properly, and it would often not wake from sleep.
        pyre 14y ago
        OptiPlex covers a large number of models and hardware, just like "ThinkPad" does. I'd imagine that the Ubuntu Certified Hardware list specifies models that are known to work well.
        jshen 14y ago
        1) It was the computer my employer gave me, I didn't have much choice (well, I could have requested a mac). 2) I don't want to spend $500 to find out if certified really means everything works.
    - 14y ago
hnriot 14y ago
We (hn) have this gnome debate often enough it has been talked out to death. Nobody likes unity except for a few. Many of us using Ubuntu (me included) don't really care much about the desktop GUI, I spend most of my time in shells. Anyone that does care about the windowing likely switched to OSX years ago. That aside, this article seems to think that new media production is being done on Linux. My experience is that this is owned by osx. Adobe's creative suite is the lifeblood of any media development and the Linux equivalents are not as good. If you're commercially invented to create new media then you'll use the best tools for the job. Linux has contributed to media creation in rendering farms and such, but gnome played no part in that decision.
- jfaucett 14y ago
  I think you're probably right about most media production being done on osx, but I'd still love to have something comparable on linux, since you're not blocked by apple decisions as to what you can or not access (no apt-get for instance) also with linux you get open source, better terminals/tools, and more software/lib packages. Projects like Blender are amazing and others mentioned by the author are really almost replacements for Adobe, i really like GIMP's scheme scripting language for example which allows more flexability than proprietary adobe plugins. So I'd personally be really exited if GNOME started going in this direction. Imagine for a second, linux with high quality media content creation tools, there's huge holes especially in video (nothing near comparable to After Effects or Final Cut Pro - forget ffmpeg for that ) Also as for myself I do all my development on Ubuntu / Debian while switching to windows for testing out on that platform (IE for example), but I only do browser/networking stuff. Anyway, I like where he wants to go, and would love to see GNOME head in the direction...
  - berkut 14y ago
    Erm, I don't understand where this impression there's no high quality media content creation tools available for Linux is coming from... I guess it depends what segment of the market you're looking at: 80% of the large VFX houses in the world use Linux to do the modelling, texturing, animation, lighting, rendering, compositing, using programs like: Maya, Mari, Mudbox, SoftImage, Houdini, Katana, PRMan, Arnold, Nuke. All those high-end apps that are used everyday to create feature films (and tv shows and adverts) work on Linux.
darkstalker 14y ago
I don't get all this fuzz about gnome3/unity and all that stuff, been using fluxbox since years and it's all I need, everything else seems redundant
buster 14y ago
He is missing the point that the Gnome projects he listed are indeed Gnome projects but the projects he mentions "we" should focus on are not Gnome projects at all. It's not up to Gnome to make LibreOffice or Blender better. It's up to the Gnome team to work on overall user experience and a solid base on which the programs he mentions run. big difference! He should probably not talk about Gnome but about Ubuntu or RedHat focusing more other stuff or to the libreoffice teams or whatever. Also: So far i enjoy the Gnome experience very much. It may have still some bugs but all in all, in my mind, the Gnome team succeeded with Gnome 3.x and the new design/layout/workflow.
- wmf 14y ago
  I think many of the Linux desktop's problems can be traced to the artificial walls between projects. Everything that ships on the GNOME OS DVD is GNOME's responsibility, including apps like LibreOffice. If an improvement needs to be made, it should be made in the proper place even if that is not "your" project. And if LibreOffice doesn't accept GNOME's patches then GNOME has to fork it.
  - buster 14y ago
    i think it became pretty clear from the latest Gnome articles that such forks are very unrealistic. In my opinion it's the responsibility of the LibreOffice team to deliver a good user experience on the supported operating systems. Gnome develops appropriate APIs and guidelines and it would be Gnomes responsibility to make sure LibreOffice has all the APIs it needs to work as good as possible. Also, this is no artificial wall, this is reality. MS isn't responsible to fix Adobe Photoshop and Gnome isn't responsible to fix Blender.
- jmags 14y ago
  I think it's also important to try and forge connections between software people like and your DE. Photoshop sells Macs even though there were many years when it was better-supported on Windows.
cs702 14y ago
As a full-time Ubuntu user who loves Unity and thinks it has a shot at becoming a third major desktop platform over the next decade, I think this kind of soul-searching is great for the Gnome project. I selfishly hope this leads to better and closer collaboration between Unity and Gnome developers -- and maybe a 'partnership of equals' between Red Hat and Canonical, each playing to their respective strengths, on the further development and improvement of the Free desktop.
- duaneb 14y ago
  Unity felt like a large step backward from gnome 2, adding virtually no functionality and removing most customization. It's the ez-bake oven of window mangers. A toy.
  - velodrome 14y ago
    Ubuntu/Gnome simplified the interface without giving the power users a way to go back. They should have made sure the fallback/classic modes were just as robust as the old to ease transition. Developer mindshare is scattered due to the radical interface change. These developers want the older interface and were left something that was not in a very usable for most power users. Naturally, they moved to desktop environments that resemble the older interface (LXDE,XFCE,GNOME2) or started new projects (MATE,Cinnamon). I find myself in a nomansland. I am constantly changing my DE because of all this bs. They bet the farm. All I want is stable and familiar Gnome2 DE! What a serious waste of time.
    - cs702 14y ago
      velodrome: FWIW, the transition from Gnome 2.x to Unity was neither quick nor easy for me, as I'd been a full-time Gnome user for years prior to the switch. However, I find that I'm more productive now, with Unity, than I ever was with Gnome. In no particular order, I love how Unity (1) gets out of my way (I've set it to hide); (2) maximizes my usable screen real estate; (3) allows me to use complex apps like GIMP and Inkscape without having to remember their menu structures (!); and (4) lets me to do everything (including window placement) very quickly with the keyboard.[1] Yes, Unity is different, but IMO it's also much better. Give it a six-month try! -- [1] Here's a comprehensive list of shortcuts: http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/what-are-unitys-keyboard-and-mouse-shortcuts/28087#28087 http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/what-are-unitys-keyboar...
dkhenry 14y ago
I think its a little misguided to focus on _media_ content creation, that market is locked up not by technical barriers but the industural attitude that if your not using photoshop your an amature. The big area where you can make headway is in the software/application content creation, but that doesn't require flashy new features that get you lots of good press. It requires you to make your enviroment faster and smaller.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Environments like that already exist, Xmonad/Xfce/Whatever. Linux already has massive developer usage, apart from in.Net/Mac/iPhone developers who wouldn't be able to use it anyway. Media creation software doesn't have to be high level pro stuff. Having Gnome ship with software that is great for amateurs who want to make youtube videos, mess around with filters on digital photos, or record themselves jamming on their guitar would be a great start. The existing software like GIMP would certainly be powerful enough for this, the main work would be in reworking it's difficult UI.
  - dkhenry 14y ago
    Right most recently people moved away form GNOME to Xfce because it was more streamlined and lighterweight, but that doesn't mean that GNOME can't do that better. If you wanted to provide a refuge for the amateur then you are playing towards one of your weaknesses. The camera that I buy at BestBuy is not going to have instructions ons on how to use it with linux. If your not targeting teh professional you have already lost.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      "Streamlined" and "lighter weight" are subjective phrases. I think the Gnome team are building what they would consider a streamlined interface, just their idea of what that is differs from some. System resources are not much of an issue anymore, the amount of memory most window managers require compared with other applications is fairly negligible even with "heavyweight" Window managers. Unity+Nautilus together are using ~400MB/8GB on my Ubuntu 12.04 PC. The hardcore "lightweight" WM fans only need a way to tile their terminal and XMonad already provides that. With Ubuntu 12.04 every digital camera I've tried has just worked. I plug it in and and offers to import all of the photos for me straight away, no need for instructions or drivers. Getting professional software would require either persuading enough of the big names in the business like Adobe , Steinberg , Avid etc to port their stuff to the platform or it would require Gnome contributors to create full equivalents for all of these programs from scratch with their already stretched resources so very impractical. Creating an iPhoto type front end for GIMP seems a more achievable goal.
adamtaylor 14y ago
This article is strange: Some parts of it are sooo right, but then some parts are sooo wrong. Yes, the Linux world should stop obsessing about mobile and tablets, since they've basically already lost that battle. (And frankly: Who gives a damn about mobile? Some of us have work to do...) And yes, they should focus on their strengths in the desktop. But their strength is not web design and multimedia. As someone pointed out, they lost that domain to Apple a long time ago. Their strength is the scientific and technical desktop users. CERN uses Linux heavily. Many of the screenshots from the Curiousity landing showed a Linux desktop. I.e. people who need the computing equivalent of a truck, not a car. That's the core audience that desktop Linux should be trying to serve. And frankly, both Unity and the Gnome 3 Shell are steps in the wrong direction. Unity is clearly aimed at netbooks and tablets, and both Unity and Gnome Shell value simplicity over power, which is not what scientific and technical users want. For my money, the recent moves Linux Mint has been making are the most promising ones happening in the Linux ecosystem right now: Don't fix what isn't broken, and make a distribution the just works out of the box. When the Gnome 3 goofballs eliminate yet another piece of useful functionality, do a fork. (And now they've started selling Linux Mint branded hardware, another smart move. One of the real problems with Linux these days is that you just can't buy hardware with Linux pre-installed that is equal in quality to Apple's hardware.) Or at least that's my two cents.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Yes, the Linux world should stop obsessing about mobile and tablets, since they've basically already lost that battle. Well that depends on if you include Android or not and I don't really understand the logic not to.
  - wmf 14y ago
    GNOME definitely does not include Android; it's a completely different OS that happens to share mostly the same kernel.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      Well he said Linux rather than Gnome, not sure which he actually meant. As far as I'm aware Gnome have never really tried to get in on the phone/tablet space. I'm not aware if there is even a phone that you can purchase with Gnome installed.
chrismonsanto 14y ago
I like Unity, it is fairly keyboard friendly. But really, I just don't want changes on the desktop at all. I live in Emacs, the rest should just work.
pan69 14y ago
What I don't understand is, Canonical has a big opportunity to serve the entire Workstation market. But what do they focus on instead, jumping on the mobile/tablet bandwagon. Do they honestly believe they are going to be a major player in that field going up against, Apple, Google and Microsoft? If instead they'd focused on the Workstation market, which currently isn't really catered to by anyone serious, they could have got them selves into a nice little niche.

59 points by dananjaya86 14y ago

I agree, they should leave the streamlined gimmicky "we know what you want better than you do" approach to Unity and stick to making a developer's desktop. Canonical can invest money in Unity to pay devs - it's beneficial for them to get non-programmers as users. This is not the case for Gnome which relies on users to be programmers and develop it. If they can't use it because it's no longer for them then they will not contribute to it.

icarus127 14y ago
I completely agree with this. As a programmer HUD is the only thing keeping me on unity. Gnome 3 is _way_ more stable on all of my computers and I prefer it aesthetically.

igorlev 14y ago

I used GNOME for 10+ years and switched to the Mac a few years ago. The nail in the coffin was the Unity/Gnome Shell craziness that was so poorly executed. Is it just me or this article outlining the most natural path for any Linux desktop? Rather then chase the general consumer, focus on your core audience who is already using your OS for the server. Not only is it a more natural customer base, but you also have an advantage by eating your dogfood. GNOME devs would have 1st hand knowledge of what works and what doesn't for engineers and developers. And this sort of domain knowledge is gold when it comes to designing good interfaces. I would love to see this effort happen, and might even go back to Linux if it really created something great.

pyre 14y ago
I tend to agree with Paul_S that while GNOME would be better served focusing on the content production side of things, Linux on the Desktop can still be viable. The issue is that you need someone to throw money at it (e.g. Ubuntu/Canonical) and hire non-developer designers, maybe commission usability studies, etc. Maybe once enough people are actually on Linux, non-developers with professional skill sets will volunteer their time to Open Source projects, and we won't need to necessarily use money to gain access to their skills. For now, most of them are on Windows of MacOS, and are only going to devote time to their current ecosystem, if at all.
- jshen 14y ago
  There is only one thing stopping me from using Linux, hassle free hardware support. I want sleep/wake, video card, etc, etc, etc to simply work. And please don't pretend this is true already.
  - rrmm 14y ago
    All that stuff works, if you choose your hardware carefully. I've used both apple laptops and now netbooks with linux with great success. The proliferation of hardware using PVR based video chips has been a pain though. No denying hardware support is a pain.
  - subsection1h 14y ago
    Have you tried Ubuntu Certified hardware and encountered problems? Everything works fine on my Ubuntu Certified hardware: a ThinkPad and an OptiPlex desktop that both have Intel GPUs.
    - jshen 14y ago
      I had an optiplex desktop that did not work well. It was a giant pain in the ass to get video working properly, and it would often not wake from sleep.
      - pyre 14y ago
        OptiPlex covers a large number of models and hardware, just like "ThinkPad" does. I'd imagine that the Ubuntu Certified Hardware list specifies models that are known to work well.
        jshen 14y ago
        1) It was the computer my employer gave me, I didn't have much choice (well, I could have requested a mac). 2) I don't want to spend $500 to find out if certified really means everything works.
  - 14y ago

hnriot 14y ago

We (hn) have this gnome debate often enough it has been talked out to death. Nobody likes unity except for a few. Many of us using Ubuntu (me included) don't really care much about the desktop GUI, I spend most of my time in shells. Anyone that does care about the windowing likely switched to OSX years ago. That aside, this article seems to think that new media production is being done on Linux. My experience is that this is owned by osx. Adobe's creative suite is the lifeblood of any media development and the Linux equivalents are not as good. If you're commercially invented to create new media then you'll use the best tools for the job. Linux has contributed to media creation in rendering farms and such, but gnome played no part in that decision.

jfaucett 14y ago
I think you're probably right about most media production being done on osx, but I'd still love to have something comparable on linux, since you're not blocked by apple decisions as to what you can or not access (no apt-get for instance) also with linux you get open source, better terminals/tools, and more software/lib packages. Projects like Blender are amazing and others mentioned by the author are really almost replacements for Adobe, i really like GIMP's scheme scripting language for example which allows more flexability than proprietary adobe plugins. So I'd personally be really exited if GNOME started going in this direction. Imagine for a second, linux with high quality media content creation tools, there's huge holes especially in video (nothing near comparable to After Effects or Final Cut Pro - forget ffmpeg for that ) Also as for myself I do all my development on Ubuntu / Debian while switching to windows for testing out on that platform (IE for example), but I only do browser/networking stuff. Anyway, I like where he wants to go, and would love to see GNOME head in the direction...
- berkut 14y ago
  Erm, I don't understand where this impression there's no high quality media content creation tools available for Linux is coming from... I guess it depends what segment of the market you're looking at: 80% of the large VFX houses in the world use Linux to do the modelling, texturing, animation, lighting, rendering, compositing, using programs like: Maya, Mari, Mudbox, SoftImage, Houdini, Katana, PRMan, Arnold, Nuke. All those high-end apps that are used everyday to create feature films (and tv shows and adverts) work on Linux.

darkstalker 14y ago

I don't get all this fuzz about gnome3/unity and all that stuff, been using fluxbox since years and it's all I need, everything else seems redundant

buster 14y ago

He is missing the point that the Gnome projects he listed are indeed Gnome projects but the projects he mentions "we" should focus on are not Gnome projects at all. It's not up to Gnome to make LibreOffice or Blender better. It's up to the Gnome team to work on overall user experience and a solid base on which the programs he mentions run. big difference! He should probably not talk about Gnome but about Ubuntu or RedHat focusing more other stuff or to the libreoffice teams or whatever. Also: So far i enjoy the Gnome experience very much. It may have still some bugs but all in all, in my mind, the Gnome team succeeded with Gnome 3.x and the new design/layout/workflow.

wmf 14y ago
I think many of the Linux desktop's problems can be traced to the artificial walls between projects. Everything that ships on the GNOME OS DVD is GNOME's responsibility, including apps like LibreOffice. If an improvement needs to be made, it should be made in the proper place even if that is not "your" project. And if LibreOffice doesn't accept GNOME's patches then GNOME has to fork it.
- buster 14y ago
  i think it became pretty clear from the latest Gnome articles that such forks are very unrealistic. In my opinion it's the responsibility of the LibreOffice team to deliver a good user experience on the supported operating systems. Gnome develops appropriate APIs and guidelines and it would be Gnomes responsibility to make sure LibreOffice has all the APIs it needs to work as good as possible. Also, this is no artificial wall, this is reality. MS isn't responsible to fix Adobe Photoshop and Gnome isn't responsible to fix Blender.
jmags 14y ago
I think it's also important to try and forge connections between software people like and your DE. Photoshop sells Macs even though there were many years when it was better-supported on Windows.

cs702 14y ago

As a full-time Ubuntu user who loves Unity and thinks it has a shot at becoming a third major desktop platform over the next decade, I think this kind of soul-searching is great for the Gnome project. I selfishly hope this leads to better and closer collaboration between Unity and Gnome developers -- and maybe a 'partnership of equals' between Red Hat and Canonical, each playing to their respective strengths, on the further development and improvement of the Free desktop.

duaneb 14y ago
Unity felt like a large step backward from gnome 2, adding virtually no functionality and removing most customization. It's the ez-bake oven of window mangers. A toy.
- velodrome 14y ago
  Ubuntu/Gnome simplified the interface without giving the power users a way to go back. They should have made sure the fallback/classic modes were just as robust as the old to ease transition. Developer mindshare is scattered due to the radical interface change. These developers want the older interface and were left something that was not in a very usable for most power users. Naturally, they moved to desktop environments that resemble the older interface (LXDE,XFCE,GNOME2) or started new projects (MATE,Cinnamon). I find myself in a nomansland. I am constantly changing my DE because of all this bs. They bet the farm. All I want is stable and familiar Gnome2 DE! What a serious waste of time.
  - cs702 14y ago
    velodrome: FWIW, the transition from Gnome 2.x to Unity was neither quick nor easy for me, as I'd been a full-time Gnome user for years prior to the switch. However, I find that I'm more productive now, with Unity, than I ever was with Gnome. In no particular order, I love how Unity (1) gets out of my way (I've set it to hide); (2) maximizes my usable screen real estate; (3) allows me to use complex apps like GIMP and Inkscape without having to remember their menu structures (!); and (4) lets me to do everything (including window placement) very quickly with the keyboard.[1] Yes, Unity is different, but IMO it's also much better. Give it a six-month try! -- [1] Here's a comprehensive list of shortcuts: http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/what-are-unitys-keyboard-and-mouse-shortcuts/28087#28087 http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/what-are-unitys-keyboar...

dkhenry 14y ago

I think its a little misguided to focus on _media_ content creation, that market is locked up not by technical barriers but the industural attitude that if your not using photoshop your an amature. The big area where you can make headway is in the software/application content creation, but that doesn't require flashy new features that get you lots of good press. It requires you to make your enviroment faster and smaller.

jiggy2011 14y ago
Environments like that already exist, Xmonad/Xfce/Whatever. Linux already has massive developer usage, apart from in.Net/Mac/iPhone developers who wouldn't be able to use it anyway. Media creation software doesn't have to be high level pro stuff. Having Gnome ship with software that is great for amateurs who want to make youtube videos, mess around with filters on digital photos, or record themselves jamming on their guitar would be a great start. The existing software like GIMP would certainly be powerful enough for this, the main work would be in reworking it's difficult UI.
- dkhenry 14y ago
  Right most recently people moved away form GNOME to Xfce because it was more streamlined and lighterweight, but that doesn't mean that GNOME can't do that better. If you wanted to provide a refuge for the amateur then you are playing towards one of your weaknesses. The camera that I buy at BestBuy is not going to have instructions ons on how to use it with linux. If your not targeting teh professional you have already lost.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    "Streamlined" and "lighter weight" are subjective phrases. I think the Gnome team are building what they would consider a streamlined interface, just their idea of what that is differs from some. System resources are not much of an issue anymore, the amount of memory most window managers require compared with other applications is fairly negligible even with "heavyweight" Window managers. Unity+Nautilus together are using ~400MB/8GB on my Ubuntu 12.04 PC. The hardcore "lightweight" WM fans only need a way to tile their terminal and XMonad already provides that. With Ubuntu 12.04 every digital camera I've tried has just worked. I plug it in and and offers to import all of the photos for me straight away, no need for instructions or drivers. Getting professional software would require either persuading enough of the big names in the business like Adobe , Steinberg , Avid etc to port their stuff to the platform or it would require Gnome contributors to create full equivalents for all of these programs from scratch with their already stretched resources so very impractical. Creating an iPhoto type front end for GIMP seems a more achievable goal.

adamtaylor 14y ago

This article is strange: Some parts of it are sooo right, but then some parts are sooo wrong. Yes, the Linux world should stop obsessing about mobile and tablets, since they've basically already lost that battle. (And frankly: Who gives a damn about mobile? Some of us have work to do...) And yes, they should focus on their strengths in the desktop. But their strength is not web design and multimedia. As someone pointed out, they lost that domain to Apple a long time ago. Their strength is the scientific and technical desktop users. CERN uses Linux heavily. Many of the screenshots from the Curiousity landing showed a Linux desktop. I.e. people who need the computing equivalent of a truck, not a car. That's the core audience that desktop Linux should be trying to serve. And frankly, both Unity and the Gnome 3 Shell are steps in the wrong direction. Unity is clearly aimed at netbooks and tablets, and both Unity and Gnome Shell value simplicity over power, which is not what scientific and technical users want. For my money, the recent moves Linux Mint has been making are the most promising ones happening in the Linux ecosystem right now: Don't fix what isn't broken, and make a distribution the just works out of the box. When the Gnome 3 goofballs eliminate yet another piece of useful functionality, do a fork. (And now they've started selling Linux Mint branded hardware, another smart move. One of the real problems with Linux these days is that you just can't buy hardware with Linux pre-installed that is equal in quality to Apple's hardware.) Or at least that's my two cents.

jiggy2011 14y ago
Yes, the Linux world should stop obsessing about mobile and tablets, since they've basically already lost that battle. Well that depends on if you include Android or not and I don't really understand the logic not to.
- wmf 14y ago
  GNOME definitely does not include Android; it's a completely different OS that happens to share mostly the same kernel.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Well he said Linux rather than Gnome, not sure which he actually meant. As far as I'm aware Gnome have never really tried to get in on the phone/tablet space. I'm not aware if there is even a phone that you can purchase with Gnome installed.

chrismonsanto 14y ago

I like Unity, it is fairly keyboard friendly. But really, I just don't want changes on the desktop at all. I live in Emacs, the rest should just work.

pan69 14y ago

What I don't understand is, Canonical has a big opportunity to serve the entire Workstation market. But what do they focus on instead, jumping on the mobile/tablet bandwagon. Do they honestly believe they are going to be a major player in that field going up against, Apple, Google and Microsoft? If instead they'd focused on the Workstation market, which currently isn't really catered to by anyone serious, they could have got them selves into a nice little niche.