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The article seems to gather a number of unrelated assumptions and keeps repeating them until they must be true. For instance, a statement like "...the radical

The article seems to gather a number of unrelated assumptions and keeps repeating them until they must be true. For instance, a statement like "...the radical rewrite that is the GNOME 3 desktop seems to have pleased almost no one." is backed up with no data at all. And that's exactly the problem. Without data, who is anyone to claim that GNOME is gaining or losing users? Or market share, for that matter. Personally I love GNOME 3, but what I personally think doesn't matter one bit. And while I respect Linux (sic) Torvalds as much as anyone, the fact that he is a kernel hacker means he is as far away from GNOME's desired target audience as anyone could be. His dislike of GNOME 3 could almost be seen as a positive sign. I think the articles touches on many interesting things, such as: - How and why did a number of distributions decide to go their own way? How does GNOME plan to respond? Maybe being the default for a smaller number of distros means less restrictions and less need for compromise, who knows. - GNOME seems to focus on being great on touch devices, but how will they end up on those devices if they don't sell hardware? - How can GNOME measure its success to know they're heading the right way? How do they define "success"? If it's the number of users, how can it gather usage data? Those are the things I'd like to know more about. Not empty claims of users leaving in droves, or the suggestion that the only way GNOME will survive would be to return to its old ways (because back in the day, GNOME 2 dwarfed Windows and OS X, right?). (I've read it a number of times now, and I am still completely in the dark as to how Apple ties in to all this. Surely Apple must be important, since it's mentioned in the title.)

viraptor 14y ago
> - How can GNOME measure its success to know they're heading the right way? For the "right way" they actually do user testing / design / trying to simplify specific workflows for an average person. You'll hear about it sometimes on the mailing lists, but if they publish anything it's usually only the result. While the lack of opennes there is annoying, at least they're doing something. > If it's the number of users, how can it gather usage data? I hope that the downloads per version and per distribution that uses gnome3 gives some data. (although it's dirty data, affected by many other effects) > - GNOME seems to focus on being great on touch devices, but how will they end up on those devices if they don't sell hardware? Yeah... that's the question I'd really like to find the answer to. Maybe the idea is that normal desktops will just become touch devices in some time (HP Touchsmart / MS Surface style). But that's a gamble and I haven't seen that claim made officially yet.
vacri 14y ago
Without data, who is anyone to claim that GNOME is gaining or losing users? -> How and why did a number of distributions decide to go their own way?
wting 14y ago
I worked on the GNOME project this past summer and went to GUADEC. Attendance at GUADEC has been steadily declining drastically over the past few years. The auditorium had ~100 attendees during the keynote speech. Many of the side talks had < 10 listeners. ## Distributions - RedHat: Primary GNOME contributor in money and developers. Most attendees at GUADEC were Fedora users. There were a handful of Ubuntu / SUSE devs. - Ubuntu: Unity shell on top of GNOME framework. - Linux Mint: Cinnamon was originally a small project, but is currently gaining momentum. ## Simplicity There is a goal by the designers to push simplicity. They're not making these changes based on empirical evidence AFAIK, but rather gut decision. 1. For example, McCann axed a lot of features from Nautilus: http://blogs.gnome.org/mccann/2012/08/01/cross-cut/ Removed features: - compact view - typeahead find - split pane view - bookmark folders - backspace key to go up a directory - "tree" view - "new file" template 2. Closing laptop lid now unconditionally suspends, settings to change behavior have been removed: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=687277 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=687277 3. From GNOME desktop development mailing list, fallback mode will be phased out now that there is a roughly working software renderer for GNOME shell. The ones making this decision criticized users for not having a <5 year computer, completely ignoring the fact that a lot of 3rd world country users are running on older hardware. I primarily use fallback mode (with xmonad). In GNOME 3.6, a lot of stuff is just broken tagged WONTFIX. ## Touch Devices There was a heavily attended talk about touch UI support in GNOME on tablet and phone devices. I brought up this issue with the primary speaker but wasn't satisfied: How are you going to get hardware manufacturers to adopt GNOME over Android? Hardware manufacturers make money by selling devices. They will use whichever software ecosystem that positively impacts their bottom line. There are no users out there clamoring for GNOME on their tablets. By designing GNOME for touch, they are instead alienating their existing user base. ## Direction Quite simply, there is no leadership at GNOME. Yes it's a FOSS project, but maybe there needs to be a benevolent dictator driving the bus. Instead there are the designers who are trying to simplify GNOME shell. Others are moving functionality into web apps. An extremely large group wants to create a GNOME distro. One of the biggest questions proposed at GUADEC was where does GNOME go now? No one seems to know, so instead we have a few key people deciding on their own in a non-coherent fashion and the project meanders along on cruise control.

viraptor 14y ago

> - How can GNOME measure its success to know they're heading the right way? For the "right way" they actually do user testing / design / trying to simplify specific workflows for an average person. You'll hear about it sometimes on the mailing lists, but if they publish anything it's usually only the result. While the lack of opennes there is annoying, at least they're doing something. > If it's the number of users, how can it gather usage data? I hope that the downloads per version and per distribution that uses gnome3 gives some data. (although it's dirty data, affected by many other effects) > - GNOME seems to focus on being great on touch devices, but how will they end up on those devices if they don't sell hardware? Yeah... that's the question I'd really like to find the answer to. Maybe the idea is that normal desktops will just become touch devices in some time (HP Touchsmart / MS Surface style). But that's a gamble and I haven't seen that claim made officially yet.

vacri 14y ago

Without data, who is anyone to claim that GNOME is gaining or losing users? -> How and why did a number of distributions decide to go their own way?

wting 14y ago

I worked on the GNOME project this past summer and went to GUADEC. Attendance at GUADEC has been steadily declining drastically over the past few years. The auditorium had ~100 attendees during the keynote speech. Many of the side talks had < 10 listeners. ## Distributions - RedHat: Primary GNOME contributor in money and developers. Most attendees at GUADEC were Fedora users. There were a handful of Ubuntu / SUSE devs. - Ubuntu: Unity shell on top of GNOME framework. - Linux Mint: Cinnamon was originally a small project, but is currently gaining momentum. ## Simplicity There is a goal by the designers to push simplicity. They're not making these changes based on empirical evidence AFAIK, but rather gut decision. 1. For example, McCann axed a lot of features from Nautilus: http://blogs.gnome.org/mccann/2012/08/01/cross-cut/ Removed features: - compact view - typeahead find - split pane view - bookmark folders - backspace key to go up a directory - "tree" view - "new file" template 2. Closing laptop lid now unconditionally suspends, settings to change behavior have been removed: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=687277 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=687277 3. From GNOME desktop development mailing list, fallback mode will be phased out now that there is a roughly working software renderer for GNOME shell. The ones making this decision criticized users for not having a <5 year computer, completely ignoring the fact that a lot of 3rd world country users are running on older hardware. I primarily use fallback mode (with xmonad). In GNOME 3.6, a lot of stuff is just broken tagged WONTFIX. ## Touch Devices There was a heavily attended talk about touch UI support in GNOME on tablet and phone devices. I brought up this issue with the primary speaker but wasn't satisfied: How are you going to get hardware manufacturers to adopt GNOME over Android? Hardware manufacturers make money by selling devices. They will use whichever software ecosystem that positively impacts their bottom line. There are no users out there clamoring for GNOME on their tablets. By designing GNOME for touch, they are instead alienating their existing user base. ## Direction Quite simply, there is no leadership at GNOME. Yes it's a FOSS project, but maybe there needs to be a benevolent dictator driving the bus. Instead there are the designers who are trying to simplify GNOME shell. Others are moving functionality into web apps. An extremely large group wants to create a GNOME distro. One of the biggest questions proposed at GUADEC was where does GNOME go now? No one seems to know, so instead we have a few key people deciding on their own in a non-coherent fashion and the project meanders along on cruise control.