Well maybe we can compromise: How about we put a sane upper limit on how long works can remain under copyright? Right now things stay under copyright long after the author's death.

I think part of the confusion comes from that fact that despite NT having had some of these things first, people still ran into them first on Linux. I mean, up until 2000 (or was it XP?) the first user you made was setup to run all applications as administrator by default. Microsoft has a ton of really smart people creating some incredible stuff. Then marketing seems to get a hold of those ideas and drive them into the ground or hobble them.

In Linux, applications (such as browsers or web servers) can be restricted from writing to arbitrary directories with SELinux or AppArmor. Most modern distros have it baked in and enabled by default at this point, and many have had it available for years. OTOH, the best security is security that's actually used. If the only way for people to get into a building is by someone else holding the door for them, sooner or later someone will just sneak in. Similarly, if your admin can't get something to work without having to mess with NT's ACL folder permissions every time, sooner or later he'll just change them to "Everyone - Full Control."

Linux is a kernel. It is a bit awkward that people typically refer to it as an OS, but that doesn't change the facts. And yes, iOS should probably be considered if you were counting the marketshare of the BSD/Unix kernel.

I think you must be an optimist: They're no *less* evil than television networks, newspapers or Slashdot. (TV shows are sold to TV networks, i.e., the TV show is the product.) When organizations like this are private they (potentially) *can* retain the goals of their founders, but once they're public (and they're founders sell off their stock), they're *required* to try and make the biggest profit possible. They do this by selling certain demographics of eyeballs to certain advertisers. The user's attention is the product.

Ah. Finally managed to track that down. I guess most of the stuff they're removing is stuff I either rarely or never use. I'm sure if one installed the Nautilus fork Nemo it would play nice with the rest of the GNOME desktop.

I guess I expected more from /. . Somehow I remember the desktop/editor/distro flamewars being a bit more technical in nature. Maybe that's just me looking at the past with rose colored glasses. Either way, it makes me feel old.

Heh. So the GNOME haters are going to host an indefinite protest to try and drown out any GNOME-related discussion in verbal noise? Well that sounds super mature. The whole GNOME3 thing is a textbook case of the GPL serving one of its intended purposes: Letting the users fork the code if they don't like the direction the project is going. That happened. The fork is called Mate. There's no need for any more animosity.

A lot of the hate seems to be grudges still left over from 3.0. It's probably going to take a really long time for people to give it another chance.

... while also creating a very nice, slick, and minimalist workflow. Now almost every feature that was removed is either back in core (albeit adapted to the new desktop), available as an extension or as an option in gnome-tweak-tool. Now I'd understand if people were complaining about still missing feature XYZ or saying how the new workflow is less optimal than the old one for managing windows, but that's not what's happening. Instead there's a whole bunch of people who seem to take any GNOME article as a chance to complain loudly without citing any specifics and mention how they switched to something entirely different without even mentioning what it does better. That's why I characterized the complaints as "someone moved my food dish." No content, just barking.

Sorry for calling you a troll. There's just a lot of noise in this thread from GNOME3 haters and a total lack of specifics. It seems like most people have decided they hate GNOME3 and not much can change their mind. About removing functionality from the core for people to re-add as extensions: I have mixed feelings about that myself. That aside most of what you're looking for is definitely available as extensions if you do decide to try GNOME again:

Looks like Frippery Bottom Panel would do the trick.

Axe menu looks awesome and I actually use it myself. There's also Frippery menu which looks more minimalist.

Yeah. Agreed there, but it's getting better. It's just that instead of applets they're extensions now, and they're not installed by default.

Are you referring to the double-pane thing that they borrowed from mc that they recently removed?

And it would be worth having a big argument over, except that there's a relatively friendly app that can be used to install and change themes. I actually think that's a pretty reasonable choice on their part: Keep the themes out of their basic, streamlined config tool and let power users play as they see fit.

It really won't behave well unless it can use hardware 3D acceleration, so keep that in mind when choosing a hypervisor.

There really is a lot of "OMG! Someone moved my food dish" going on. The move from ed to vi must have really shook them up as well. _

I generally agree and I'm hopeful they'll get things figured out better as time goes on. In the meantime, gnome-tweak-tool can be used to turn extensions on and off and install new ones.