by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @05:03PM (#5234266)
this is the sixth text revision done on 04-11-2002.
dear reader the gnome armageddon has started,
first of all i want to clarify that this text was meant to be a source
of information otherwise i wouldn't have spent so much time into
writing it. belive me it took me a couple of days writing this text in
a foreign language. even if you don't care at all for gnome, you may
find some interesting information within this text that you like to
read. please try to understand my points even if it's hard sometimes,
otherwise you wake up one day and feel the need to switch to a
different operating system.
on the following lines i'm trying to give you a little insight of the gnome [gnome.org] community. the things that are
going on in the back, the information that could be worth talking and
thinking about.
many of us like the gnome desktop and some of us were following it
since the beginning. gnome is a promising project because it's mostly
written in C, easy to use, configurable and therefore fits perfectly
into the philosophy of u*nix. only to name some of its advantages.
unfortunately these advantages changed with the recently new released
version of gnome. the core development team somehow got the idea of
targeting gnome to a complete different direction of users. the so
called corporate desktop user. in other words they're targeting people
that aren't familiar or experienced with desktop environments. usually
business oriented people who are willing to pay money for getting
gnome on their computers.
having this new target in mind, the core development team mostly under
contract by companies like redhat [redhat.com],
ximian [ximian.com] and sun [sun.com] decided to simplify the desktop as much
as even possible by removing all its flexibility in favor of an easy
clean simple interface to not confuse their new possible customers. so
far the idea of a clean easy to use desktop is honourable.
some of the new ideas, features and implementations such as gconf [gnome.org], an evil windows
registry like system, new ordering of buttons and dialogs, the removal
of 90%-95% of all visible preferences from the control center and
applications, the new direction that gnome leads and the attitude of the
core development team made a lot of users really unhappy. these are only
a couple of examples and the list can easily be expanded but for now
this is enough. now let me try to get deeper into these aspects.
you may imagine that users got really frustrated [osnews.com]
because their beloved gnome desktop matured into something they didn't
want. during the time, the frustration of a not less amount of people
increased. more [gnome.org],
more [gnome.org]
and more [gnome.org]
emails arrived on the gnome mailinglists where users tried to explain
their concerns, frustrations and the leading target of GNOME.
but the core development team of gnome don't give a damn about what
their users are thinking or wanting and most of the time they come up
with their standard purl. the reply they give is mostly the same. users
should either go and 'file a bug' at bugzilla [gnome.org] or the user mails are
being turned so far that at the end they sound like being trolls or the
user feedback is simply not wanted. whatever happens the answers aren't
really satisfying for the user. even constructive
feedback [gnome.org] isn't appreciated.
if you gonna think about this for a minute then things gonna harden
that they are directing into the commercial area. the core development
team actually don't care for the complaining home user. it's more
important for them to reach the customers with the cash. it seems that
this has been told to them by the company leaders. everything about
gnome has been decided already, a way back or direct communication
isn't possible. don't get trapped by sentences like 'we listen to our
users'. they listen to you - yes, to make funny silly jokes about you
afterwards.
i thought that everything was build up on friendship, build on
programming for fun, build on understanding each other. but the
reality looks like it's all for the big money. the cash is what
matters everything else is a lie and a dream. time for people to wake
up.
not long ago they threw one of the most important long year core
developer martin baulig [gnome.org] out of team. a guy who worked
really hard on getting gnome into the right direction. a nice friendly
person who put all his time into gnome. but narrow minded gnome elites
such as havoc pennington [pair.com] were responsible that he left the
gnome project. the trouble and the pressure that was put on him was to
much.
with the new gnome desktop a lot of user interface changes happened
such as button reordering [gnome.org]. needless to say that this
confuse people who are used to the 'right' button ordering for ages.
even our fellow linux guru alan cox [gnome.org] wasn't thrilled about
this idea. but the gnome elites such as havoc pennington, seth
nickell, calum benson and dave bordoley knew it better. why following
the road of any other desktop that exists ? why not doing something
that don't confuse their users and still stay usable ? well it seems
to be too easy. gnome needs to be different than anything else so they
changed the button order which was one of the reasons that users
became unhappy. they said that there was a hard fight about this and
the decision was made to change the buttons. but i belive they simply
copied the behaviour of macos because most of the gnome developers use
a macintosh as either laptop or desktop. sad that they forgot to keep
in mind that users tend to mix applications and that this will lead
into weird button searching and clicking.
but as if this wasn't enough the same people decided that the new gnome
human
interface guides [gnome.org] were the ultima non plus ultra in human interface
guides. the announcement contained informations that the kde usability
people got initiated into it. unfortunately the kde people heard about
it the first
time [kde.org] when seth nickell went to the kde mailinglist which happened
after the announcement. you can imagine that they got highly pissed off
about this attitude. you can read more on this link [kde.org]. to
summarize it, the kde people clarified that gnome should care for their
own business.
the problem that came with the new interface guides was, that every
little gnome hacker started to become an user interface expert over
night. a lot of gnome programs that we like to use matured into a
disaster over night. hackers that never programmed correctly for their
life started to blindly follow the hype of simplification. for an
example look what happened to galeon's interface [sourceforge.net]
(pay attention for the last paragraph). even philip langdale a long year
galeon hacker got highly indignant by the target that gnome leads and
wrote this
email [sourceforge.net] to the galeon mailinglist.
here another reason why users became angry. the elite assumes, that
the user knows nothing about their system. you find a couple of
heavily insulting mails on their mailing lists containing sentences
like the quoted ones.
"the user don't know what a window manager is"
"the user don't know what themes are"
"the user don't know what a homedir is"
"the user can't compile a kernel"
"the user don't want to customize their desktop"
"the user shouldn't see preferences which purpose they don't know"
you may imagine that a lot of people are being offended by such lines
because it's exactly these gnome users who are meant by these phrases.
to read more such lines on the gnome mailinglists, simply click on this link [gnome.org] and grep in their
archives. be said that most of these sentences are coming from havoc
pennington.
such evil practices shouldn't be tolerated by the users and need to be
fighted. u*nix users aren't stupid people. who actually gave havoc
pennington the rights to decide what the user wants and what not ? various
users [gnome.org] told him that people who use a u*nix like system are well
aware of their capabilities dealing with such a complex system. there's
a reason why people are switching from alternative operating
systems. they want to learn, they want to use the full power of the
system, they want to change everything they like.
to top all this, look at the future plans of nautilus [eazel.com]. the current maintainers got
the idea of changing the whole nautilus concepts into an object oriented
user interface design. you may be highly interested in reading the exact
words of alex larsson's vision for nautilus' future direction by
clicking on this
link [gnome.org].
to summarize it, it's assumed that the user don't need to deal with
his homedir or his whole filesystem because it may confuse him or
because he don't understand it. the new concepts of nautilus should be
that the user deal with symbols in the nautilus view. e.g. you get a
cdrom symbol and by clicking on it you see the directory of your
cdrom, you get a photo symbol and by clicking on it you get a list of
all your pr0n pictures, you get a music symbol and by clicking on it
you get a list of all your mp3's. you don't know where all these files
are located because you don't deal with the bottom layer of your
homedir or filesystem anymore as mentioned earlier.
the question is why are people that know nothing about their users, that
know nothing about correct user interface design destroying gnome ? the
users don't deserve all this specially those that backed gnome for all
the years. even sun threw a bunch of so called user interface experts
together and have them work on gnome. don't forget that sun are the
creators of the common desktop
environment [opengroup.org]. we don't need another cde clone named gnome. even
havoc pennington author of the good user
interfaces [pair.com] text isn't able to get his own written software following
his rules.
not long ago there was an report about the 'two captains of nautilus'
where the reporter (uraeus a gnome contributor himself) reported
alexander larsson and david camp. you may imagine that such a report
can't be taken serious because it's done by their own people. we here
have a saying that sounds like this 'one crow doesn't hack the eye of
another crow out'. now you can click on this
link [gnomedesktop.org] and read more. it may be interesting to read the replies from
various users all over the globe of what they think about gnome and
nautilus in general (please pay attention to the listed ip's
there). another nice and informative reading can be found by clicking on
this link [gnomedesktop.org].
the fileselector problem was a long discussed issue in the gnome
community. finally they came to an solution for this and have decided to
go for
this [coreyo.net] ugly fileselector instead going for this one [wanadoo.nl] which was developed by a
free volunteer for a long time and in general looks and behaves better.
most users have no problems with the idea of keeping things simple and
clean. removing some not needed preferences was indeed a good idea but
it doesn't stop. people started to remove everything from their apps.
you're forced to use dubious programs like gconf-editor which
basically works like the windows registry editor, to tweak uncommented
preferences. i don't think that this is an advantage. even the
possibility to tweak preferences with an editor was taken away with
that ugly implementation of gconf. all your preferences are stored in
a directory tree with an unknown amount of *.xml files. even if you
delete programs their keys are still remaining orphaned in these trees
and finding them is like playing trivia. at the end it's worth a
discussion if a system driven by a single home user needs such a
registry like system. we didn't need such a system for over 30 years
but the gnome development team got the idea copying one of the most
retarded systems from windows to u*nix. not to mention that the copy
is more retarded than the original.
it's a shame to see how such a nice desktop got thrown into the trash
by such people. but there is a lot more behind the scenes that i don't
know about. everything around gnome is a big marketing strategy. poor
people are working the hell out of gnome for nothing and companies
such as those mentioned above are getting the big cash. for sure you
could say - go and fork gnome - but seriously how can you go and fork
gnome ? such a big project which needs a bunch of people to keep the
code alive and compatible. well you know it's all about open source
the code is signed under the gnu/gpl or gnu/lgpl, you can't own it.
even the companies are aware of this. but if you can't own the code -
go and hire their developers. you can direct them like puppets in any
direction that you - as company - like. exactly this is happening with gnome.
well you could easily come up and tell me to simply not use gnome and
let them do whatever they like. well, you are right with that but things
are more complicated nowadays. gnome is influencing a lot of third party
projects such as xfree86 which recently added a lot of gnome components
into their cvs repository. please know that with the next coming xfree86
version you get a lot of gnome components without even knowing it. code
like, gnome-xml [xmlsoft.org], pkgconfig [freedesktop.org], fontconfig [fontconfig.org], xcursor and xft2 were
mainly written by people who're heavily involved into gnome
development. also the gimp is maturing more and more into getting the
look and feel of a native gnome application. the cvs version of the gimp
has a lot of gnome pixmaps inside and they are heavily working on
integrate the gimp into gnome. if not today but the direction is sure
and i fear the day this gonna happen.
it's ok that these things exist and it's ok to see xfree86 and the
gimp are beeing hacked on. but please think about the people that
don't like or use gnome. what about them ? why force them to have
gnome components installed on their systems ? why can't gnome go the
same way that kde went e.g. doing their own stuff without infecting
other projects like aids. seeing more and more libraries and
applications that were in no way related to gnome jumping on the
pkgconfig boat which's really not needed. look what will happen to
solaris, the world famous operating system on u*nix used by big
companies and long years experts. they really plan to replace cde with
gnome. i know that cde wasn't the best invention of desktops but it
rarely crashed and it fits far better into the philosophy of xfree86
with their configuration system than gnome. you know the good old way
having your settings defined with.xdefaults and all nice default
configurations are going into/etc/x11/app-defaults/ and so on.
understandable that the good old way may be blocking the future of
applications for multiusersystems - but why must it have to be a
windows registry like system that replaces future configuration ?
well to come to an end i personally don't like many of this stuff. i
can't stand the button reordering, i don't like the gconf system and
even more i don't like the commercial outsourcing of gnome and the bad
influence that gnome has on other applications. the bad attitude of
some gnome developers is another story since we are all different
reacting humans. luckily there are people sharing some of my thoughts
otherwise i wouldn't be able to proof my text with so many links. even
amongst the gnome developers there are silent voices of people that
hate many of these decisions and silently use something else. right
now if you checkout the gnome cvs repository every day you find out
that the whole gnome development seemed to came to an halt. the
contributions to their cvs are poor. while projects such as kde are
reaching easily 10-20k commits per month - gnome is getting around
1-2k per month on it's best times. it really looks like the situation
of gnome is unclear so it would be better to have it not influence so
much other programs or at the end we deal with an disaster.
now i hope this text was informative for you. i hope that you start to
think about the situation and the global direction. the situation of
gnome is unclear, their target is groggy too since i can't belive that
the users that they are targeting ever heard of u*nix or linux. they
plan to get out of the 0.05% desktop niche but this will for sure not
happen if they continue their current direction and their bad ugly
All Gnome developers take note of what the AC has written.
I'm just one of the many Gnome users who has been totally pissed off by Gnome 2. First I discover that gnome-terminal no longer works. You can't complete an X selection with a right click because this always brings up a silly menu. Which is a real problem when you are selecting pages of text. I go to bugzilla, note that this has already been reported, but that nothing is going to be done about it, because 'consistency' demands that right clicks bring up menus. I guess the latest version of gnome-terminal is so consistent that [Tab] moves between tabbed terminals, and bad luck if you want to use filename completion, consistency demands making the terminal unusable, so unusable it shall be! So I'm having to use rxvt again until (if ever) gnome developers start listening to their users and fix their terminal.
Next thing they only allow one window list, and it doesn't have the option of 'close all' for stacked windows... argh! Then I notice I cannot any longer put menus onto the panel, only useless (because I can't label them) drawers. So no I have to wait till the tool-tip shows till I know what particular action any launcher button will have, and they randomly change positions to boot.
OK, at one level the idea Gnome has is good, cut out the cruft, keep it simple and elegant. Great! What is missing, however, is the option for users to mess it up again, and especially for users who are used to using Gnome in a certain way, to make Gnome work for them again. The insanity of the Gnome project is this: Ignore, no discourge, you existing users, and design your system for a set of users who don't now, and are unlikely ever to, use your system (ie the corporate desktop). There is an underlying assumption at work here, "if we make our system easy enough to use, easier than windows, then the corporate desktopers will come flocking to us." That is like saying "if our web site has content as good or better than msn.com, we will start to get more hits than them;" or "if we make a better VCR standard, people will stop using VHS..."
Simplicity, in the current Gnome way of thinking, means treat the user as an imbicile, and take away the users options. Eg, the user is never to be allowed to hear the words "window manager," much less be given a way (within the GUI system) to change them! This is a foolish approach. The newcomers to Gnome/Linux are not likely to be the corporate desktop users (though perhaps in eductional/academic and in the not-for-profit sectors some chance of adoption does exist), they are going to be skilled windows users, who want to learn about Linux, and who want more options to configure their desktops than windows gave them, not less!
And what happens when users, real actual Gnome users, complain about the direction Gnome is taking. They get told that this feature they have been using is not something a "regular" user would want, or worse they get told, "I don't care if you don't use Gnome." Gnome guys, wake up, those are the 'regular' users.
Despite my rant, I'm still resisting changing over to KDE, I guess I hope that some people will start listening and fix up the problems. But if all that is happening is that Gnome is working on features like transparent panels, while leaving the gnome-terminal in its present broken state, I'm a fool to hope, and to hold out.
- advanced user environment A
- advanced user environment B
- advanced user environment C
- advanced user environment D...
and guess what, all the choices eventually grow to be configurable so that they act like any of the other choices, or indeed like any hisotrical OS ever. So useful. What a good way to spend our time, writing multiple "design your own UI" construction kits.
Maybe it's time for something different. If people want to work on developing it, who are you to tell them how to spend their time?
You are free to work on developing your own "advanced user environment E" if you don't have enough options in that area yet. Or free to create add-ons or partial replacement apps for any existing environment. Isn't open source great?
If you want to understand GNOME direction though, I'd suggest some good books, such as "User Interface Design for Programmers," "The Inmates are Running the Asylum," "Designing from Both Sides of the Screen," etc.
Technical users are so quick to assume that all software should be written for them, and that despite having zero expertise in interaction design they know exactly how a GUI should be (it should be exactly like the GUI I got used to in 1992, darnit! must... not... learn... new... things...)
The historical situation of 1001 choices, as long as they are all confusing and hard to use, is a good way to keep free software limited to 0.5% of the users in the world. It's hypocrisy to brag about choice when all the choices are the same.
It's not like there's any danger that there won't be enough hyper-configurable advanced user features and environments available. Somehow, I have faith that we're safe there. So why not let just *one* project try something different without whining about it endlessly.
All that said, I don't even agree with the premise that geeks only like the hyper configurable environments; OS X is pretty popular with the geek crowd these days. As is GNOME 2, for that matter.
In any case, I guess we'll see in a few years how it all turns out. My prediction is that there will be lots of environments and add-ons available, for different target audiences, and everyone will be happy.
Excuse my ignorance, but I was under the impression
that in terms of Desktop Managers the choice at present is realistically
limited to Gnome or KDE. Moreover, my impression was that Gnome, by its
association with GNU, GTK etc, had pretentions of being the 'standard'
desktop in a GNU/Linux environment, not merely "something different."
If people want to work on developing it,
who are you to tell them how to spend their time?
Who am I? I'm nobody, I'm only a regular user who couldn't develop it themselves.
Yeah sure, I shouldn't tell someone how to spend their free time, but what
are you saying? That any adverse user feedback is unwelcome? Is the
policy of ignoring user feedback part of the official Gnome
developement guidelines, or is it just a bad habit that you have slipped
into lately?
You are free to work on developing your own
"advanced user environment E" if you don't have
enough options in that area yet. Or free to create
add-ons or partial replacement apps for any
existing environment. Isn't open source great?
Free sure, but maybe not technically skilled enough. Gimme a
break, I'm just one of your 'regular' gumbo users, you know the one
of the ones you are trying to protect from concepts such as 'Window Managers'
and all that stuff. We are your target audience, we don't create add-ons,
the only thing useful you'll get out of us is feedback! Besides which,
didn't you just tell me developing E, when ABC and D can already look
like E, was a waste of effort?
I'd suggest some good books...
If these books are truely telling you to design exclusively for
imaginary users, to tell real users what they need and what they don't
need and to ignore, insult or chase them away, I suggest you throw those
books away. Something you haven't learnt from those books is that you
are writing for a specific set of users, not some generic imaginary user.
Moreover the set of users of one type of app will differ from that using
a different app. The 'regular' user of a word processor will need to have different
needs to a 'regular' user of a terminal emulator. Sure, there is
also a need for consistency, which adds another level of difficulty.
But to resolve this difficulty by simply ignoring the needs of the user is not
the way to go.
"The Inmates are Running the Asylum,"
Ignore user feedback, give the users only what the developers imagine,
or have read, they want... Maybe you should read that book again.
Technical users are so quick to assume that all software should be written for
them,
Clearly not all software, but what about technical softwarer?
Surely terminal users have the right to the expectation that the terminal is
being written for them. Besides which, I'm not a 'technical' user, I'm a
'regular' user.
it should be exactly like the GUI I got used to in 1992, darnit! must...
not... learn... new... things...
Especially not new things like the term 'Window Manager':) Look the
mistake Gnome2 made was not in making users learn new things. It was taking
away features which users had grown accustomed to. Users expect 'more'
features when upgrading, not to have many feature they rely on removed. As
I said, cleaning out the cruft is nice, but not even giving the option to put
useful stuff back in... No wonder so many Gnome users are unhappy at the
moment.
It's not like there's any danger that there won't
be enough hyper-configurable advanced user features and environments
available.
I've not actually seen anyone asking for "hyper-configurable
advanced user features." What people seem to be asking
for is the newer version of Gnome to be able to do at least what
the older one could. For myself, being able to add menus to the panel,
and being able to complete text selection in a terminal with my right
mouse button is all I'm asking for. Look I'm sorry to sound completely
negative, as though there is nothing about Gnome2 that is good or better
than before. Tabbed terminal looks very cool, for example. But I can
live without tabbed terminals, I can't without X cut and paste. Sad fact
of human nature is that you are more likely to hear from people when they
are unhappy with you than when they are satisfied.
So why not let just *one* project try something different
without whining about it endlessly.
One project sure, just not Gnome:) And I haven't been
whining endlessly (though with the number of dissatisfied
users at the moment, it must seem endless). The previous
was my first post on this subject. I didn't post to Bugzilla
given that the same report had already be 'dealt with', I read,
but didn't post the the Gnome discussion groups, because I saw
how users were being dumped on by the developers. Maybe the endless
whining should tell you something?
You don't get it do you? Gnome isn't for people who can "learn how to do it [themselves]," its for lazy, nay stupid SOBs, like myself, who should never be upset by being exposed to difficult words like "Windows Manager."
In point of fact my rant could be summarised even more succintly:
"Dear Gnome Team,
Please start listening to your users.
Thank You."
PS. Btw is wasn't a "stupid endless" rant, it was a constructive rant!;P
Excuse my ignorance, but I was under the impression that in terms of Desktop Managers the choice at present is realistically limited to Gnome or KDE.
What does "realistically limited" mean? If you can type a URL you can locate any number of user environments that suit your needs - E, blackbox, etc.
If you really are all about the highly-configurable do-dad like you say you are, you won't touch any of the luser distros so you needn't concern yourself with the choices they make for defaults.
Haven't blackbox, but E is a Window Manager, not a Desktop Manager.
If you really are all about the highly-configurable do-dad like you say you are... [Where do I say that?!]... you needn't concern yourself with the choices they make for defaults.
If we were merely talking about defaults there would be no problem at all. Gnome have decided to make Gnome 2 much more simple and elegant. Great! I agree with the approach, cut out the cruft, keep it simple, don't confuse the user -- absolutely. If the 'default' installation is ultra-simple, all the better. What I'm saying is that in taking away from existing users features they like, without in anyway allowing them the option of putting them back, the Gnome Team have made a bad mistake. Arguably Gnome2 is what Gnome1 should have been, clean, simple, straightfoward. But when you are designing an entirely new system, and when you are upgrading a system that already has an installed user base, different design principles come into play.
People get pissed off at having stuff taken away from them, much more than the miss stuff they've never had.
(disclaimer: I am a "normal" user of GNOME, and not affliated with any GNOME people or developement)
Have you ever given yourself a chance to understand the new system? It sounds as if you came across this new system which has slightly different UI, does things slightly differently and you get totally pissed off.
You think GNOME2 was dumbed down? No, everything that I had configured in GNOME1.4 could be done in GNOME2. When GNOME2 was first released, some features were inevitably missing. But that was NOT because the developers wanted to dumb down the system. They had other priorities, eg. improving the UI, fixing the more fundumental stuff before implementing the features. Now as I update my system (debian sid), the features that I missed are gradually making a come back, most even got better than what I expected. Of course there are some fancy features that were dropped, but they are mostly things that are largely useless to the majority of the user base. If you happen not to be in the minority, then sorry, the developers aren't making the system ONLY for you. However, you still have the option to choose to implement what you want, to choose another desktop, or to not upgrade. And yes, those features might be "fun" or "cool", but as far as productivity is concerned, I have never found myself losing any productivity (in fact, the converse holds) because some feature is dropped in return for other better functionality.
Now for the system hiding away the technical terms... Why not? I mean, if you wanted to look deeper into the system you can always do so, by tweaking your system one way or the other, by RTFM or STFW. But why do you want to force other users who want things to "just work" to go through the same time consuming process as you did? Yes I've been through it too, I know what's a window manager and what not, and those other stuff. But really, I'm not really prepared to learn it through again just to upgrade.
And for your complaints about the terminal not being able to use X style select and paste... I don't get it. Why would you need to right click? You only need to select the text, then focus on another app, then click the middle mouse button. I don't see how this is hard to use or different from the standard X select and paste method.
The right click is handy when selecting large volumes of text (multiple screenfuls). This is actually very useful, but *very* unintuitive. I used xterm and rxvt for about five years before I learned how to do this. Frankly, I'm with the GNOME team in leaving it out. It's just such awkward behavior and so inconsistent that it doesn't belong. However, I also happen to like it, and for that reason I use xterm instead of gnome-terminal. I don't see why this guy keeps bitching about gnome-terminal instead of just using something else. Just because it's the "standard" doesn't mean you have to use it, as long as you know there's an alternative! The people who don't know that alternatives exist will probably appreciate the consistency of gnome-terminal.
Ignore user feedback, give the users only what the developers imagine, or have read, they want... Maybe you should read that book again.
Did you read it? Did you read Cooper's About Face as well? Cooper advocates good defaults instead of grassroots configurability. The old Gnome 1.4 was cluttered with config options. Is it not an improvment to remove 50% of these for the benefit of 99% of the user base? In the Sawfish vs. Metacity discussion, Metacity got rid of a bunch of useless features and implemented simple, working defaults. The only thing I missed was the dragging across desktops- feature, until I found the "Move to Workspace"- command when right-clicking on the window title bar.
As for gnome-terminal, middle-click has always been X's paste. It works for me with a 2.x gnome-terminal.
As for the window list thing, do file a bug report. They really do get looked at. Also, with 2.x I am able to have two task lists at the same time.
Personally I disagree with you about simplicity. There is gconf-editor to tweek little things, but the result for me has been that the configuration stuff I look at 90% of the time is easy to find.
Again, I really havn't seen anything broken with gnome-terminal.
There have been some complaints about gconf acting like the windows-registry system. I might as well address them here. Now I dislike the windows registry as much as you do, but please do not label gconf as "evil" before you check out what it really does and what it really can do. The registry-like system was not neccessarily evil by itself, but MS implemented it such that it was hell to use. Remember why you started hating it?
1. A slight misconfiguration usually leads to unusable systems and needs a reinstallation 2. Too many things (including system level configuration) are integrated with it 3. Stored in a big binary chunk that no other application can read without using the windows API 4. Little to no documentation for most keys 5. Made by M$;-p
Now gconf has none of these flaws:
1. Any misconfiguration that (if even possible) renders the GUI unusable, and you can still use the CLI or a text editor to undo / fix your changes. 2. no system critical processes depend on it 3. stored in XML format 4. most key names are self-explanatory, and there are places where comments about the keys can be written 5. Completely open source;-p
In addition, gconf has the feature that appplications using it are informed of updates to the configuration immediately, so it won't require a restart of the application for things to take effect, while for the windows registry, the application has to poll the registry for changes if it wants to know whether things have been changed.
The "traditional" convention for unix apps was that every app had its own configuration file format, located in anywhere that the developers pleased, and they wrote a config file parser only for their own app. This is a huge waste of time and resources, where developers could have spent their time better in improving their apps instead of worrying about config file formats and writing parsers. Now gconf solves these issues and in addition gives the application a bunch of other features. What more could you ask for?
As for gnome-terminal, middle-click has always been X's paste. It works for me with a 2.x gnome-terminal.
I'm not talking about the pasting with the middle click, but completing the selection with the right click. What you are supposed to be able to do is i) start selection with left button, ii) completel selection with right click, iii) paste with middle click. Try it in x-term, and then try doing that in a 2.x gnome-term.
Sure for small selections you can simply drag with the left button. But when the selection is long you have to hold down the left key and mouse in such a way as to scroll through the selection for literally minutes. It should only be, left click at the top, scroll down, right click at the end, 10 secs.
Aah. You are right. Cool. With some playing with gnome-terminal, I found an equivalent behavior: Start your selection, selecting at least the first character you want selected, then go to where you want the selection to end, hold shift and left-click. Now it's all selected.
I'm in danger of sounding like a pedant if I insist that you should be able to complete selection with the right button, so I'll just acknowledge that this is a workable workaround. Nice one.
The 1.x gnome-terminal had an, if not entirely elegant, at least a servicable way of having your cake and eating it too. It would try to 'guess' whether you were right clicking for a menu or to complete a selection. So if you started a selection a right click would mean end selection, until [enter] was pressed again (when you could get the menu again). Now I can understand why Havoc might regard this as a bit iffy. For myself I would have preferred to see it stay the way it was, until some bright spark conceived of a better way of doing it, rather than seeing it completely removed.
Completing a selection with the right button rather than shift-left has a couple of problems.
First, using shift-left mirrors the equivalent operation in other contexts (like using shift-left to select a range in a list).
Second, you can get to the awkward state where you unwittingly have a bit selected above the visible screen area, and right-click to get the menu. Suddenly half your terminal contents are selected instead. This may not sound like a big problem for the terminal (and for most it isn't), but as the meachanism should be the same for equivalent operations as far as doable, this problem can have greater repercussions in other contexts where popping up a right-click menu is more common.
Simplicity, in the current Gnome way of thinking, means treat the user as an imbicile, and take away the users options.
Too wrong. I've been a Linux and gnome user for a long time, and that was my reaction at first, too. But I kept an open mind, and after a year of using Gnome 2 releases I've got to admit I was wrong.
I find that the changes in the name of simplicity fall into two categories: things that haven't actually been removed, just moved so hapless mortals don't get confused (the fewer twiddles these people have to play with the better, in my experience), and a very few things actually removed that I am happier without, once I got used to it. As to the UI rules, these follow the Mac, and I've always been a big fan of the Mac. In fact, I wish they'd copy it a bit more and put the icons on the right side of the desktop where they belong. It's a pain to do it manually.
The idea of simplifying things still scares me, but in practice it's only made gnome better. I still don't know if I'll be using Galeon or Epiphany, though....
First I discover that gnome-terminal no longer works.
Well, the old G-T w/zvt was even more broken, so at least it's gone. VTE is much better, even if you don't care about i18n. I don't have your problems with it. Tab completion WFM. Are you confusing it with CTRL-TAB?
Then I notice I cannot any longer put menus onto the panel, only useless (because I can't label them) drawers.
1.4 used drawers, too, and I use the same ones under 2.2 as I did under 1.2. I can put launchers outside of drawers but I don't want to.
Next thing they only allow one window list, and it doesn't have the option of 'close all' for stacked windows
I can have more than one window list on my gnome 2.2. "Close All" sounds like something the gnome people might add. They don't bite your head off if you're polite and don't act like gnome owes you custom-written software for free. If worst comes to worst, libwnck has a simple api, so you could write your own power-window-list if you wanted.
you know the good old way having your settings defined with.xdefaults and all nice default configurations are going into/etc/x11/app-defaults/ and so on.
...which quickly settled the question: the poster is either a troll or on copious amounts of illegal and dangerous pharmeceuticals. The the X Windows Disaster [idge.net] has a few redeeming qualities, but nobody in their right minds would pine for a return of the.xdefaults/app-defaults/xdrp clusterfuck.
On the off chance that the poster was serious: nobody is stopping you from running MIT X11R6 and twm. Sounds like you'd be a lot happier that way.
Seen on a button at an SF Convention:
Veteran of the Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force. 1990-1951.
GNOME armageddon (Score:4, Insightful)
dear reader the gnome armageddon has started,
first of all i want to clarify that this text was meant to be a source of information otherwise i wouldn't have spent so much time into writing it. belive me it took me a couple of days writing this text in a foreign language. even if you don't care at all for gnome, you may find some interesting information within this text that you like to read. please try to understand my points even if it's hard sometimes, otherwise you wake up one day and feel the need to switch to a different operating system.
on the following lines i'm trying to give you a little insight of the gnome [gnome.org] community. the things that are going on in the back, the information that could be worth talking and thinking about.
many of us like the gnome desktop and some of us were following it since the beginning. gnome is a promising project because it's mostly written in C, easy to use, configurable and therefore fits perfectly into the philosophy of u*nix. only to name some of its advantages.
unfortunately these advantages changed with the recently new released version of gnome. the core development team somehow got the idea of targeting gnome to a complete different direction of users. the so called corporate desktop user. in other words they're targeting people that aren't familiar or experienced with desktop environments. usually business oriented people who are willing to pay money for getting gnome on their computers.
having this new target in mind, the core development team mostly under contract by companies like redhat [redhat.com], ximian [ximian.com] and sun [sun.com] decided to simplify the desktop as much as even possible by removing all its flexibility in favor of an easy clean simple interface to not confuse their new possible customers. so far the idea of a clean easy to use desktop is honourable.
some of the new ideas, features and implementations such as gconf [gnome.org], an evil windows registry like system, new ordering of buttons and dialogs, the removal of 90%-95% of all visible preferences from the control center and applications, the new direction that gnome leads and the attitude of the core development team made a lot of users really unhappy. these are only a couple of examples and the list can easily be expanded but for now this is enough. now let me try to get deeper into these aspects.
you may imagine that users got really frustrated [osnews.com] because their beloved gnome desktop matured into something they didn't want. during the time, the frustration of a not less amount of people increased. more [gnome.org], more [gnome.org] and more [gnome.org] emails arrived on the gnome mailinglists where users tried to explain their concerns, frustrations and the leading target of GNOME.
but the core development team of gnome don't give a damn about what their users are thinking or wanting and most of the time they come up with their standard purl. the reply they give is mostly the same. users should either go and 'file a bug' at bugzilla [gnome.org] or the user mails are being turned so far that at the end they sound like being trolls or the user feedback is simply not wanted. whatever happens the answers aren't really satisfying for the user. even constructive feedback [gnome.org] isn't appreciated.
if you gonna think about this for a minute then things gonna harden that they are directing into the commercial area. the core development team actually don't care for the complaining home user. it's more important for them to reach the customers with the cash. it seems that this has been told to them by the company leaders. everything about gnome has been decided already, a way back or direct communication isn't possible. don't get trapped by sentences like 'we listen to our users'. they listen to you - yes, to make funny silly jokes about you afterwards.
i thought that everything was build up on friendship, build on programming for fun, build on understanding each other. but the reality looks like it's all for the big money. the cash is what matters everything else is a lie and a dream. time for people to wake up.
not long ago they threw one of the most important long year core developer martin baulig [gnome.org] out of team. a guy who worked really hard on getting gnome into the right direction. a nice friendly person who put all his time into gnome. but narrow minded gnome elites such as havoc pennington [pair.com] were responsible that he left the gnome project. the trouble and the pressure that was put on him was to much.
with the new gnome desktop a lot of user interface changes happened such as button reordering [gnome.org]. needless to say that this confuse people who are used to the 'right' button ordering for ages. even our fellow linux guru alan cox [gnome.org] wasn't thrilled about this idea. but the gnome elites such as havoc pennington, seth nickell, calum benson and dave bordoley knew it better. why following the road of any other desktop that exists ? why not doing something that don't confuse their users and still stay usable ? well it seems to be too easy. gnome needs to be different than anything else so they changed the button order which was one of the reasons that users became unhappy. they said that there was a hard fight about this and the decision was made to change the buttons. but i belive they simply copied the behaviour of macos because most of the gnome developers use a macintosh as either laptop or desktop. sad that they forgot to keep in mind that users tend to mix applications and that this will lead into weird button searching and clicking.
but as if this wasn't enough the same people decided that the new gnome human interface guides [gnome.org] were the ultima non plus ultra in human interface guides. the announcement contained informations that the kde usability people got initiated into it. unfortunately the kde people heard about it the first time [kde.org] when seth nickell went to the kde mailinglist which happened after the announcement. you can imagine that they got highly pissed off about this attitude. you can read more on this link [kde.org]. to summarize it, the kde people clarified that gnome should care for their own business.
the problem that came with the new interface guides was, that every little gnome hacker started to become an user interface expert over night. a lot of gnome programs that we like to use matured into a disaster over night. hackers that never programmed correctly for their life started to blindly follow the hype of simplification. for an example look what happened to galeon's interface [sourceforge.net] (pay attention for the last paragraph). even philip langdale a long year galeon hacker got highly indignant by the target that gnome leads and wrote this email [sourceforge.net] to the galeon mailinglist.
here another reason why users became angry. the elite assumes, that the user knows nothing about their system. you find a couple of heavily insulting mails on their mailing lists containing sentences like the quoted ones.
- "the user don't know what a window manager is"
- "the user don't know what themes are"
- "the user don't know what a homedir is"
- "the user can't compile a kernel"
- "the user don't want to customize their desktop"
- "the user shouldn't see preferences which purpose they don't know"
you may imagine that a lot of people are being offended by such lines because it's exactly these gnome users who are meant by these phrases. to read more such lines on the gnome mailinglists, simply click on this link [gnome.org] and grep in their archives. be said that most of these sentences are coming from havoc pennington.such evil practices shouldn't be tolerated by the users and need to be fighted. u*nix users aren't stupid people. who actually gave havoc pennington the rights to decide what the user wants and what not ? various users [gnome.org] told him that people who use a u*nix like system are well aware of their capabilities dealing with such a complex system. there's a reason why people are switching from alternative operating systems. they want to learn, they want to use the full power of the system, they want to change everything they like.
to top all this, look at the future plans of nautilus [eazel.com]. the current maintainers got the idea of changing the whole nautilus concepts into an object oriented user interface design. you may be highly interested in reading the exact words of alex larsson's vision for nautilus' future direction by clicking on this link [gnome.org].
to summarize it, it's assumed that the user don't need to deal with his homedir or his whole filesystem because it may confuse him or because he don't understand it. the new concepts of nautilus should be that the user deal with symbols in the nautilus view. e.g. you get a cdrom symbol and by clicking on it you see the directory of your cdrom, you get a photo symbol and by clicking on it you get a list of all your pr0n pictures, you get a music symbol and by clicking on it you get a list of all your mp3's. you don't know where all these files are located because you don't deal with the bottom layer of your homedir or filesystem anymore as mentioned earlier.
the question is why are people that know nothing about their users, that know nothing about correct user interface design destroying gnome ? the users don't deserve all this specially those that backed gnome for all the years. even sun threw a bunch of so called user interface experts together and have them work on gnome. don't forget that sun are the creators of the common desktop environment [opengroup.org]. we don't need another cde clone named gnome. even havoc pennington author of the good user interfaces [pair.com] text isn't able to get his own written software following his rules.
not long ago there was an report about the 'two captains of nautilus' where the reporter (uraeus a gnome contributor himself) reported alexander larsson and david camp. you may imagine that such a report can't be taken serious because it's done by their own people. we here have a saying that sounds like this 'one crow doesn't hack the eye of another crow out'. now you can click on this link [gnomedesktop.org] and read more. it may be interesting to read the replies from various users all over the globe of what they think about gnome and nautilus in general (please pay attention to the listed ip's there). another nice and informative reading can be found by clicking on this link [gnomedesktop.org].
the fileselector problem was a long discussed issue in the gnome community. finally they came to an solution for this and have decided to go for this [coreyo.net] ugly fileselector instead going for this one [wanadoo.nl] which was developed by a free volunteer for a long time and in general looks and behaves better.
most users have no problems with the idea of keeping things simple and clean. removing some not needed preferences was indeed a good idea but it doesn't stop. people started to remove everything from their apps. you're forced to use dubious programs like gconf-editor which basically works like the windows registry editor, to tweak uncommented preferences. i don't think that this is an advantage. even the possibility to tweak preferences with an editor was taken away with that ugly implementation of gconf. all your preferences are stored in a directory tree with an unknown amount of *.xml files. even if you delete programs their keys are still remaining orphaned in these trees and finding them is like playing trivia. at the end it's worth a discussion if a system driven by a single home user needs such a registry like system. we didn't need such a system for over 30 years but the gnome development team got the idea copying one of the most retarded systems from windows to u*nix. not to mention that the copy is more retarded than the original.
it's a shame to see how such a nice desktop got thrown into the trash by such people. but there is a lot more behind the scenes that i don't know about. everything around gnome is a big marketing strategy. poor people are working the hell out of gnome for nothing and companies such as those mentioned above are getting the big cash. for sure you could say - go and fork gnome - but seriously how can you go and fork gnome ? such a big project which needs a bunch of people to keep the code alive and compatible. well you know it's all about open source the code is signed under the gnu/gpl or gnu/lgpl, you can't own it. even the companies are aware of this. but if you can't own the code - go and hire their developers. you can direct them like puppets in any direction that you - as company - like. exactly this is happening with gnome.
well you could easily come up and tell me to simply not use gnome and let them do whatever they like. well, you are right with that but things are more complicated nowadays. gnome is influencing a lot of third party projects such as xfree86 which recently added a lot of gnome components into their cvs repository. please know that with the next coming xfree86 version you get a lot of gnome components without even knowing it. code like, gnome-xml [xmlsoft.org], pkgconfig [freedesktop.org], fontconfig [fontconfig.org], xcursor and xft2 were mainly written by people who're heavily involved into gnome development. also the gimp is maturing more and more into getting the look and feel of a native gnome application. the cvs version of the gimp has a lot of gnome pixmaps inside and they are heavily working on integrate the gimp into gnome. if not today but the direction is sure and i fear the day this gonna happen.
it's ok that these things exist and it's ok to see xfree86 and the gimp are beeing hacked on. but please think about the people that don't like or use gnome. what about them ? why force them to have gnome components installed on their systems ? why can't gnome go the same way that kde went e.g. doing their own stuff without infecting other projects like aids. seeing more and more libraries and applications that were in no way related to gnome jumping on the pkgconfig boat which's really not needed. look what will happen to solaris, the world famous operating system on u*nix used by big companies and long years experts. they really plan to replace cde with gnome. i know that cde wasn't the best invention of desktops but it rarely crashed and it fits far better into the philosophy of xfree86 with their configuration system than gnome. you know the good old way having your settings defined with .xdefaults and all nice default
configurations are going into /etc/x11/app-defaults/ and so on.
understandable that the good old way may be blocking the future of
applications for multiusersystems - but why must it have to be a
windows registry like system that replaces future configuration ?
well to come to an end i personally don't like many of this stuff. i can't stand the button reordering, i don't like the gconf system and even more i don't like the commercial outsourcing of gnome and the bad influence that gnome has on other applications. the bad attitude of some gnome developers is another story since we are all different reacting humans. luckily there are people sharing some of my thoughts otherwise i wouldn't be able to proof my text with so many links. even amongst the gnome developers there are silent voices of people that hate many of these decisions and silently use something else. right now if you checkout the gnome cvs repository every day you find out that the whole gnome development seemed to came to an halt. the contributions to their cvs are poor. while projects such as kde are reaching easily 10-20k commits per month - gnome is getting around 1-2k per month on it's best times. it really looks like the situation of gnome is unclear so it would be better to have it not influence so much other programs or at the end we deal with an disaster.
now i hope this text was informative for you. i hope that you start to think about the situation and the global direction. the situation of gnome is unclear, their target is groggy too since i can't belive that the users that they are targeting ever heard of u*nix or linux. they plan to get out of the 0.05% desktop niche but this will for sure not happen if they continue their current direction and their bad ugly
Too right! (Score:3, Insightful)
All Gnome developers take note of what the AC has written.
I'm just one of the many Gnome users who has been totally pissed off by Gnome 2. First I discover that gnome-terminal no longer works. You can't complete an X selection with a right click because this always brings up a silly menu. Which is a real problem when you are selecting pages of text. I go to bugzilla, note that this has already been reported, but that nothing is going to be done about it, because 'consistency' demands that right clicks bring up menus. I guess the latest version of gnome-terminal is so consistent that [Tab] moves between tabbed terminals, and bad luck if you want to use filename completion, consistency demands making the terminal unusable, so unusable it shall be! So I'm having to use rxvt again until (if ever) gnome developers start listening to their users and fix their terminal.
Next thing they only allow one window list, and it doesn't have the option of 'close all' for stacked windows ... argh! Then I notice I cannot any longer put menus onto the panel, only useless (because I can't label them) drawers. So no I have to wait till the tool-tip shows till I know what particular action any launcher button will have, and they randomly change positions to boot.
OK, at one level the idea Gnome has is good, cut out the cruft, keep it simple and elegant. Great! What is missing, however, is the option for users to mess it up again, and especially for users who are used to using Gnome in a certain way, to make Gnome work for them again. The insanity of the Gnome project is this: Ignore, no discourge, you existing users, and design your system for a set of users who don't now, and are unlikely ever to, use your system (ie the corporate desktop). There is an underlying assumption at work here, "if we make our system easy enough to use, easier than windows, then the corporate desktopers will come flocking to us." That is like saying "if our web site has content as good or better than msn.com, we will start to get more hits than them;" or "if we make a better VCR standard, people will stop using VHS ..."
Simplicity, in the current Gnome way of thinking, means treat the user as an imbicile, and take away the users options. Eg, the user is never to be allowed to hear the words "window manager," much less be given a way (within the GUI system) to change them! This is a foolish approach. The newcomers to Gnome/Linux are not likely to be the corporate desktop users (though perhaps in eductional/academic and in the not-for-profit sectors some chance of adoption does exist), they are going to be skilled windows users, who want to learn about Linux, and who want more options to configure their desktops than windows gave them, not less!
And what happens when users, real actual Gnome users, complain about the direction Gnome is taking. They get told that this feature they have been using is not something a "regular" user would want, or worse they get told, "I don't care if you don't use Gnome." Gnome guys, wake up, those are the 'regular' users.
Despite my rant, I'm still resisting changing over to KDE, I guess I hope that some people will start listening and fix up the problems. But if all that is happening is that Gnome is working on features like transparent panels, while leaving the gnome-terminal in its present broken state, I'm a fool to hope, and to hold out.
Tons of choice (Score:3, Insightful)
- advanced user environment A
- advanced user environment B
- advanced user environment C
- advanced user environment D
and guess what, all the choices eventually grow
to be configurable so that they act like any of
the other choices, or indeed like any hisotrical
OS ever. So useful. What a good way to
spend our time, writing multiple "design your own UI" construction kits.
Maybe it's time for something different.
If people want to work on developing it,
who are you to tell them how to spend their time?
You are free to work on developing your own
"advanced user environment E" if you don't have
enough options in that area yet. Or free to create add-ons or partial replacement apps for any
existing environment. Isn't open source great?
If you want to understand GNOME direction though,
I'd suggest some good books, such as
"User Interface Design for Programmers,"
"The Inmates are Running the Asylum,"
"Designing from Both Sides of the Screen,"
etc.
Technical users are so quick to assume that all software should be written for them, and that despite having zero expertise in interaction design they know exactly how a GUI should be (it should be exactly like the GUI I got used to in 1992, darnit! must... not... learn... new... things...)
The historical situation of 1001 choices, as long as they are all confusing and hard to use, is a good way to keep free software
limited to 0.5% of the users in the world.
It's hypocrisy to brag about choice when
all the choices are the same.
It's not like there's any danger that there won't
be enough hyper-configurable advanced user features and environments available. Somehow,
I have faith that we're safe there. So why
not let just *one* project try something different
without whining about it endlessly.
All that said, I don't even agree with the premise
that geeks only like the hyper configurable environments; OS X is pretty
popular with the geek crowd these days.
As is GNOME 2, for that matter.
In any case, I guess we'll see in a few years
how it all turns out. My prediction is that
there will be lots of environments and add-ons available,
for different target audiences, and everyone
will be happy.
Re:Tons of choice (Score:3, Interesting)
Excuse my ignorance, but I was under the impression that in terms of Desktop Managers the choice at present is realistically limited to Gnome or KDE. Moreover, my impression was that Gnome, by its association with GNU, GTK etc, had pretentions of being the 'standard' desktop in a GNU/Linux environment, not merely "something different."
If people want to work on developing it, who are you to tell them how to spend their time?Who am I? I'm nobody, I'm only a regular user who couldn't develop it themselves. Yeah sure, I shouldn't tell someone how to spend their free time, but what are you saying? That any adverse user feedback is unwelcome? Is the policy of ignoring user feedback part of the official Gnome developement guidelines, or is it just a bad habit that you have slipped into lately?
You are free to work on developing your own "advanced user environment E" if you don't have enough options in that area yet. Or free to create add-ons or partial replacement apps for any existing environment. Isn't open source great?Free sure, but maybe not technically skilled enough. Gimme a break, I'm just one of your 'regular' gumbo users, you know the one of the ones you are trying to protect from concepts such as 'Window Managers' and all that stuff. We are your target audience, we don't create add-ons, the only thing useful you'll get out of us is feedback! Besides which, didn't you just tell me developing E, when ABC and D can already look like E, was a waste of effort?
I'd suggest some good booksIf these books are truely telling you to design exclusively for imaginary users, to tell real users what they need and what they don't need and to ignore, insult or chase them away, I suggest you throw those books away. Something you haven't learnt from those books is that you are writing for a specific set of users, not some generic imaginary user. Moreover the set of users of one type of app will differ from that using a different app. The 'regular' user of a word processor will need to have different needs to a 'regular' user of a terminal emulator. Sure, there is also a need for consistency, which adds another level of difficulty. But to resolve this difficulty by simply ignoring the needs of the user is not the way to go.
"The Inmates are Running the Asylum,"Ignore user feedback, give the users only what the developers imagine, or have read, they want ... Maybe you should read that book again.
Technical users are so quick to assume that all software should be written for them,Clearly not all software, but what about technical softwarer? Surely terminal users have the right to the expectation that the terminal is being written for them. Besides which, I'm not a 'technical' user, I'm a 'regular' user.
it should be exactly like the GUI I got used to in 1992, darnit! must... not... learn... new... things...Especially not new things like the term 'Window Manager' :) Look the
mistake Gnome2 made was not in making users learn new things. It was taking
away features which users had grown accustomed to. Users expect 'more'
features when upgrading, not to have many feature they rely on removed. As
I said, cleaning out the cruft is nice, but not even giving the option to put
useful stuff back in ... No wonder so many Gnome users are unhappy at the
moment.
It's not like there's any danger that there won't be enough hyper-configurable advanced user features and environments available.I've not actually seen anyone asking for "hyper-configurable advanced user features." What people seem to be asking for is the newer version of Gnome to be able to do at least what the older one could. For myself, being able to add menus to the panel, and being able to complete text selection in a terminal with my right mouse button is all I'm asking for. Look I'm sorry to sound completely negative, as though there is nothing about Gnome2 that is good or better than before. Tabbed terminal looks very cool, for example. But I can live without tabbed terminals, I can't without X cut and paste. Sad fact of human nature is that you are more likely to hear from people when they are unhappy with you than when they are satisfied.
So why not let just *one* project try something different without whining about it endlessly.One project sure, just not Gnome :) And I haven't been
whining endlessly (though with the number of dissatisfied
users at the moment, it must seem endless). The previous
was my first post on this subject. I didn't post to Bugzilla
given that the same report had already be 'dealt with', I read,
but didn't post the the Gnome discussion groups, because I saw
how users were being dumped on by the developers. Maybe the endless
whining should tell you something?
Re:Tons of choice (Score:2)
Hey AC!
You don't get it do you? Gnome isn't for people who can "learn how to do it [themselves]," its for lazy, nay stupid SOBs, like myself, who should never be upset by being exposed to difficult words like "Windows Manager."
In point of fact my rant could be summarised even more succintly:
"Dear Gnome Team,
Please start listening to your users.
Thank You."
PS. Btw is wasn't a "stupid endless" rant, it was a constructive rant! ;P
Re:Tons of choice (Score:2)
What does "realistically limited" mean? If you can type a URL you can locate any number of user environments that suit your needs - E, blackbox, etc.
If you really are all about the highly-configurable do-dad like you say you are, you won't touch any of the luser distros so you needn't concern yourself with the choices they make for defaults.
Re:Tons of choice (Score:2)
Good question.
E, blackbox, etcHaven't blackbox, but E is a Window Manager, not a Desktop Manager.
If you really are all about the highly-configurable do-dad like you say you areIf we were merely talking about defaults there would be no problem at all. Gnome have decided to make Gnome 2 much more simple and elegant. Great! I agree with the approach, cut out the cruft, keep it simple, don't confuse the user -- absolutely. If the 'default' installation is ultra-simple, all the better. What I'm saying is that in taking away from existing users features they like, without in anyway allowing them the option of putting them back, the Gnome Team have made a bad mistake. Arguably Gnome2 is what Gnome1 should have been, clean, simple, straightfoward. But when you are designing an entirely new system, and when you are upgrading a system that already has an installed user base, different design principles come into play.
People get pissed off at having stuff taken away from them, much more than the miss stuff they've never had.
Re:Tons of choice (Score:1)
Have you ever given yourself a chance to understand the new system? It sounds as if you came across this new system which has slightly different UI, does things slightly differently and you get totally pissed off.
You think GNOME2 was dumbed down? No, everything that I had configured in GNOME1.4 could be done in GNOME2. When GNOME2 was first released, some features were inevitably missing. But that was NOT because the developers wanted to dumb down the system. They had other priorities, eg. improving the UI, fixing the more fundumental stuff before implementing the features. Now as I update my system (debian sid), the features that I missed are gradually making a come back, most even got better than what I expected. Of course there are some fancy features that were dropped, but they are mostly things that are largely useless to the majority of the user base. If you happen not to be in the minority, then sorry, the developers aren't making the system ONLY for you. However, you still have the option to choose to implement what you want, to choose another desktop, or to not upgrade. And yes, those features might be "fun" or "cool", but as far as productivity is concerned, I have never found myself losing any productivity (in fact, the converse holds) because some feature is dropped in return for other better functionality.
Now for the system hiding away the technical terms... Why not? I mean, if you wanted to look deeper into the system you can always do so, by tweaking your system one way or the other, by RTFM or STFW. But why do you want to force other users who want things to "just work" to go through the same time consuming process as you did? Yes I've been through it too, I know what's a window manager and what not, and those other stuff. But really, I'm not really prepared to learn it through again just to upgrade.
And for your complaints about the terminal not being able to use X style select and paste... I don't get it. Why would you need to right click? You only need to select the text, then focus on another app, then click the middle mouse button. I don't see how this is hard to use or different from the standard X select and paste method.
Re:Tons of choice (Score:1)
Re:Tons of choice (Score:2)
Did you read it? Did you read Cooper's About Face as well? Cooper advocates good defaults instead of grassroots configurability. The old Gnome 1.4 was cluttered with config options. Is it not an improvment to remove 50% of these for the benefit of 99% of the user base? In the Sawfish vs. Metacity discussion, Metacity got rid of a bunch of useless features and implemented simple, working defaults. The only thing I missed was the dragging across desktops- feature, until I found the "Move to Workspace"- command when right-clicking on the window title bar.
Re:Tons of choice (Score:1)
Mod this one up, he has a good point, and even if you may not agree with his point, it's well-written and deserves to be read IMO.
Re:Too right! (Score:2)
As for the window list thing, do file a bug report. They really do get looked at. Also, with 2.x I am able to have two task lists at the same time.
Personally I disagree with you about simplicity. There is gconf-editor to tweek little things, but the result for me has been that the configuration stuff I look at 90% of the time is easy to find.
Again, I really havn't seen anything broken with gnome-terminal.
--Ben
Re:Too right! (Score:2, Informative)
1. A slight misconfiguration usually leads to unusable systems and needs a reinstallation
2. Too many things (including system level configuration) are integrated with it
3. Stored in a big binary chunk that no other application can read without using the windows API
4. Little to no documentation for most keys
5. Made by M$
Now gconf has none of these flaws:
1. Any misconfiguration that (if even possible) renders the GUI unusable, and you can still use the CLI or a text editor to undo / fix your changes.
2. no system critical processes depend on it
3. stored in XML format
4. most key names are self-explanatory, and there are places where comments about the keys can be written
5. Completely open source
In addition, gconf has the feature that appplications using it are informed of updates to the configuration immediately, so it won't require a restart of the application for things to take effect, while for the windows registry, the application has to poll the registry for changes if it wants to know whether things have been changed.
The "traditional" convention for unix apps was that every app had its own configuration file format, located in anywhere that the developers pleased, and they wrote a config file parser only for their own app. This is a huge waste of time and resources, where developers could have spent their time better in improving their apps instead of worrying about config file formats and writing parsers. Now gconf solves these issues and in addition gives the application a bunch of other features. What more could you ask for?
Re:Too right! (Score:2)
I'm not talking about the pasting with the middle click, but completing the selection with the right click. What you are supposed to be able to do is i) start selection with left button, ii) completel selection with right click, iii) paste with middle click. Try it in x-term, and then try doing that in a 2.x gnome-term.
Sure for small selections you can simply drag with the left button. But when the selection is long you have to hold down the left key and mouse in such a way as to scroll through the selection for literally minutes. It should only be, left click at the top, scroll down, right click at the end, 10 secs.
Re:Too right! (Score:2)
Start your selection, selecting at least the first character you want selected, then go to where you want the selection to end, hold shift and left-click. Now it's all selected.
--Ben
Re:Too right! (Score:2)
I'm in danger of sounding like a pedant if I insist that you should be able to complete selection with the right button, so I'll just acknowledge that this is a workable workaround. Nice one.
The 1.x gnome-terminal had an, if not entirely elegant, at least a servicable way of having your cake and eating it too. It would try to 'guess' whether you were right clicking for a menu or to complete a selection. So if you started a selection a right click would mean end selection, until [enter] was pressed again (when you could get the menu again). Now I can understand why Havoc might regard this as a bit iffy. For myself I would have preferred to see it stay the way it was, until some bright spark conceived of a better way of doing it, rather than seeing it completely removed.
Re:Too right! (Score:1)
Re:Too right! (Score:1)
First, using shift-left mirrors the equivalent operation in other contexts (like using shift-left to select a range in a list).
Second, you can get to the awkward state where you unwittingly have a bit selected above the visible screen area, and right-click to get the menu. Suddenly half your terminal contents are selected instead. This may not sound like a big problem for the terminal (and for most it isn't), but as the meachanism should be the same for equivalent operations as far as doable, this problem can have greater repercussions in other contexts where popping up a right-click menu is more common.
Re:Too right! (Score:1)
Simplicity, in the current Gnome way of thinking, means treat the user as an imbicile, and take away the users options.
Too wrong. I've been a Linux and gnome user for a long time, and that was my reaction at first, too. But I kept an open mind, and after a year of using Gnome 2 releases I've got to admit I was wrong.
I find that the changes in the name of simplicity fall into two categories: things that haven't actually been removed, just moved so hapless mortals don't get confused (the fewer twiddles these people have to play with the better, in my experience), and a very few things actually removed that I am happier without, once I got used to it. As to the UI rules, these follow the Mac, and I've always been a big fan of the Mac. In fact, I wish they'd copy it a bit more and put the icons on the right side of the desktop where they belong. It's a pain to do it manually.
The idea of simplifying things still scares me, but in practice it's only made gnome better. I still don't know if I'll be using Galeon or Epiphany, though....
First I discover that gnome-terminal no longer works.
Well, the old G-T w/zvt was even more broken, so at least it's gone. VTE is much better, even if you don't care about i18n. I don't have your problems with it. Tab completion WFM. Are you confusing it with CTRL-TAB?
Then I notice I cannot any longer put menus onto the panel, only useless (because I can't label them) drawers.
1.4 used drawers, too, and I use the same ones under 2.2 as I did under 1.2. I can put launchers outside of drawers but I don't want to.
Next thing they only allow one window list, and it doesn't have the option of 'close all' for stacked windows
I can have more than one window list on my gnome 2.2. "Close All" sounds like something the gnome people might add. They don't bite your head off if you're polite and don't act like gnome owes you custom-written software for free. If worst comes to worst, libwnck has a simple api, so you could write your own power-window-list if you wanted.
I wasn't certain if this was a troll or not... (Score:2)
On the off chance that the poster was serious: nobody is stopping you from running MIT X11R6 and twm. Sounds like you'd be a lot happier that way.