4 ms·

Genuine question: Why is the GNOME project still dominant, when they consistently make arbitrary changes and refuse to listen to their users?

Elv13 13y ago
Why was Microsoft dominant from Windows ME to the release of Win7? Why: It is hard to break a dominant position when they enjoy 2 order of magnitude more corporate support than their closest rivals.
- nknighthb 13y ago
  I'm not sure what you're getting at. Are you saying every operating system Microsoft released after Win98SE and before Windows 7 was on the same level as ME? Have you forgotten about 2000 and XP?
  - Elv13 13y ago
    Security wise and feature wise, they were. Stability got better, but even KDE2 was better at that point in time. Same goes for IE6 vs. Netscape Navigator/Mozilla Suite. Once they got to the top and locked the corporate lock, it was over. It took years or awesomeness until Firefox got big
    - nknighthb 13y ago
      I'm sorry, I'm not at all sure how to respond to this comment. It aligns not at all with the world I experienced between 2000 and 2009. From my viewpoint, each non-ME desktop/workstation iteration of Windows during that period -- 2000, XP, and Vista and their service packs -- provided significant advancement in security and features, even if in Vista's case, the total package was arguably undesirable. The comparison to what has happened with GNOME seems particularly off-base, since Microsoft was not actively seeking to destroy existing workflows and pitch anyone -- power user or not -- overboard. On the contrary, their fanatical devotion to backward compatibility largely remained and paid great dividends, as it has for ~30 years. I say this not as someone who has any need to defend Microsoft, by the way. My livelihood has never substantially depended on anything Microsoft-related, and my own first choice of productivity OS was Linux by the late 90s, and OS X by 2006. Your apparent worldview simply cannot be reconciled with my own experiences. It's as if you'd said what a lovely shade of puce the clear blue sky was.
mherkender 13y ago
Well, I don't think that's completely true. I like the majority of the changes they've made in recent years. I think Gnome Shell is the best desktop around. It's not perfect, and the GNOME people do make the occasional UI blunder, but I'm not sure what else you're expecting. It's basically impossible to have a widely used project like this move forward because every change brings loud angry people who were totally using that. I think the reason why GNOME is still dominant is because they're willing to ignore their users and make hard choices, not in spite of it.
notatoad 13y ago
because contrary to the opinion of all the linux bloggers, most of the gnome team's design decisions are actually pretty good. they've been progressing towards a stripped down simple UI that fades into the background and lets you focus on your application and your work for a while now. if gnome were a new project to make linux pretty, everybody would be talking about how awesome it is. it's only a problem because they're taking the old gnome that people were used to and changing it. and people are afraid of change.
- samastur 13y ago
  I don't dispute Gnome's decisions since I don't use it. What bothers me though is this idea that people complain only or mainly because they are afraid of change. Sure, sometimes it's just this, but often times such removal actually break person's workflow or ability to (easily) do something. Just because it may be better for majority does not mean it can't actually suck for some. I am sorry to pick your post. It just happened to be the one where I finally felt the need to respond to this view.
  - notatoad 13y ago
    No, definitely. Some of the changes that gnome is making really do suck for some people. but those are only a few people, and you can't make a well-designed piece of software that caters to everybody's workflow. that just isn't possible. and none of the critics ever say "this broke my workflow, but i can see how it's a niche feature", the complaint is always "the gnome devs removed this obscure feature that only me and three other people use, because they're fucking idiots and are trying to make the software useless". if you're complaining about a change that is better for the majority, it means you're being selfish. and nobody ever seems to acknowledge that. all the armchair critics of UI changes always insist that they are complaining on behalf of everybody.

Elv13 13y ago

Why was Microsoft dominant from Windows ME to the release of Win7? Why: It is hard to break a dominant position when they enjoy 2 order of magnitude more corporate support than their closest rivals.

nknighthb 13y ago
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Are you saying every operating system Microsoft released after Win98SE and before Windows 7 was on the same level as ME? Have you forgotten about 2000 and XP?
- Elv13 13y ago
  Security wise and feature wise, they were. Stability got better, but even KDE2 was better at that point in time. Same goes for IE6 vs. Netscape Navigator/Mozilla Suite. Once they got to the top and locked the corporate lock, it was over. It took years or awesomeness until Firefox got big
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    I'm sorry, I'm not at all sure how to respond to this comment. It aligns not at all with the world I experienced between 2000 and 2009. From my viewpoint, each non-ME desktop/workstation iteration of Windows during that period -- 2000, XP, and Vista and their service packs -- provided significant advancement in security and features, even if in Vista's case, the total package was arguably undesirable. The comparison to what has happened with GNOME seems particularly off-base, since Microsoft was not actively seeking to destroy existing workflows and pitch anyone -- power user or not -- overboard. On the contrary, their fanatical devotion to backward compatibility largely remained and paid great dividends, as it has for ~30 years. I say this not as someone who has any need to defend Microsoft, by the way. My livelihood has never substantially depended on anything Microsoft-related, and my own first choice of productivity OS was Linux by the late 90s, and OS X by 2006. Your apparent worldview simply cannot be reconciled with my own experiences. It's as if you'd said what a lovely shade of puce the clear blue sky was.

mherkender 13y ago

Well, I don't think that's completely true. I like the majority of the changes they've made in recent years. I think Gnome Shell is the best desktop around. It's not perfect, and the GNOME people do make the occasional UI blunder, but I'm not sure what else you're expecting. It's basically impossible to have a widely used project like this move forward because every change brings loud angry people who were totally using that. I think the reason why GNOME is still dominant is because they're willing to ignore their users and make hard choices, not in spite of it.

notatoad 13y ago

because contrary to the opinion of all the linux bloggers, most of the gnome team's design decisions are actually pretty good. they've been progressing towards a stripped down simple UI that fades into the background and lets you focus on your application and your work for a while now. if gnome were a new project to make linux pretty, everybody would be talking about how awesome it is. it's only a problem because they're taking the old gnome that people were used to and changing it. and people are afraid of change.

samastur 13y ago
I don't dispute Gnome's decisions since I don't use it. What bothers me though is this idea that people complain only or mainly because they are afraid of change. Sure, sometimes it's just this, but often times such removal actually break person's workflow or ability to (easily) do something. Just because it may be better for majority does not mean it can't actually suck for some. I am sorry to pick your post. It just happened to be the one where I finally felt the need to respond to this view.
- notatoad 13y ago
  No, definitely. Some of the changes that gnome is making really do suck for some people. but those are only a few people, and you can't make a well-designed piece of software that caters to everybody's workflow. that just isn't possible. and none of the critics ever say "this broke my workflow, but i can see how it's a niche feature", the complaint is always "the gnome devs removed this obscure feature that only me and three other people use, because they're fucking idiots and are trying to make the software useless". if you're complaining about a change that is better for the majority, it means you're being selfish. and nobody ever seems to acknowledge that. all the armchair critics of UI changes always insist that they are complaining on behalf of everybody.