GNOME 3.x Will Bring Back Some GNOME 2 Features

[3coma3]

This is the first time I have heard someone use Red Hat's FOSS contributions against them, and it makes for an interesting if somewhat tedious argument. It might have some value if Red Hat were directly making money from Gnome, or SystemD, and the myriad of other projects they are involved with, but they are not (at least not directly, they are of course profiting handily from a healthy Linux ecosystem) so your argument for control seems somewhat baffling. What I see is Red Hat trying to make an effort to push Linux forward, and that sometimes involves the cooperation of different parts. Red Hat's position behind all of these parts can be easily explained by realizing just how much of Linux Red Hat has contributed in the first place. I am not going to scald them for it, especially since the control element is mooted in a free software ecosystem anyway (as in gentoo forked udev, for instance).

Whenever I hear a RH supporter answer to stances like I've exposed (this is, if one can get through succesive dismissal, attack and condescendy) it will be like this: baffled, almost astonished, like the picture is so weird it has to come from another galaxy. No wonder you find it tedious to discuss it. I assure you the tedious is nothing compared with having to deal with this "pushing forward of Linux". In any case, I correlate your argument with this other: "Microsoft/Apple have contributed a lot to pushing forward computing and the industry, how can you critisize them? This is using their contributions against them." It's misleading. Why the need to mislead, to focus on some "unexplained hatred" completely undeserved, and (also) from unqualified people, like just users?

I'll try again to refocus the issue here: not on the quality/quantity of systems contributed by a company, but on the other aspects that taken into account, drastically affect the very nature of the first two aspects, indeed picturing them into something now not so positive as one would like: like interests and motivations, ideologies, "ways" of doing stuff and relating to others, overall effects on diversity/health of the ecosystem. It doesn't matter that RH contributed a lot to Linux if in doing so they trump everyone else in different ways, fail to acknowledge *ANY*, I'm not telling *ALL* criticism, but *ANY*???? Dude! There's an awful lot of it, by an awful lot of people from every camp man! This is not hard-headed anymore, you eventually have to conclude there's something else involved in this deafness.

Now, maybe I'm a little old now, but "oh my, just what can be that something else?". Is it love and altruistic feelings about pushing forward Linux? yeah? The more I see year after year, the more I live with Linux I eventually understand this is not like the beginnings anymore, now there are huge amounts of powers and money invested both in try to take off this ecosystem at any price, or otherwise control it, at any cost (ie, "push it forward" and "make it win").

Guess "who" among the all time players are involved with this? I'll make you a list, so you can choose yourself:

Slackware
Debian
Gentoo
Red Hat
Suse
Canonical

But nah, don't let tinfoil hats and negativism affect your perception, everything is better with fewer players in control. Btw, regarding the udev fork, here are some oppinions that it sparked around:

https://plus.google.com/111049168280...ts/R387kQb1zxc
Actually what is sad is seeing this guy in particular expressing himself in that way.

Finally, "control" is not moot because of forking because A) it's enough effort that even the kernel team doubted about the task of this fork even when some devs where very very vocal about it. B) You can, as it's painfully evident, try and game this system by other means, provided you have the economical/political influence.

Things are out of balance, what really baffles *me* is not only you fail to see this, you actually think these are all good things. I think that corporate Linux and commercial desktop Linux is really fine, just let everyone else live in peace, if not (ideally) relate in good manners to others, and to the actual benefit of everyone including those with different views.

[finalzone]

It's nice to ask for participation in your project, and at the same time rejecting 90% of that participation. Clearly a good way to promote your project and get people involved and not alienating anyone. Again, you try to take my right to say all this my calling me selfish, so congrats for the passive-agressive attempt at censorship. Sadly it will stay an attempt, as much as you don't like to hear disagreement and complaint.

Source please? If you based it from Phoronix, that statistics is invalid. The alienation are coming from sone people who spent their time whining like a headless chicken.
Among rights, there are duty and responsibility to consider. Censorship is necessary when a bunch of individual abused their rights.

[soupbowl]

I tried gnome3 for a month, liked some of it at first and hated it by the end. Anyways... the only shocking thing about
this thread is all the 'software developers' and 'coders' that are not just using a tiling WM (i3,dwm) or making something like
openbox/xfce bend to their needs. Takes less effort and less crying to deal with those for what I see is wanted.

[Hamish Wilson]

Whenever I hear a RH supporter answer to stances like I've exposed (this is, if one can get through succesive dismissal, attack and condescendy) it will be like this: baffled, almost astonished, like the picture is so weird it has to come from another galaxy. No wonder you find it tedious to discuss it. I assure you the tedious is nothing compared with having to deal with this "pushing forward of Linux". In any case, I correlate your argument with this other: "Microsoft/Apple have contributed a lot to pushing forward computing and the industry, how can you critisize them? This is using their contributions against them." It's misleading. Why the need to mislead, to focus on some "unexplained hatred" completely undeserved, and (also) from unqualified people, like just users?

The difference is that I am not saying you can not criticize them because they have contributed so much - that was never my argument. I was explaining that the reason why they have so much influence in the Linux community is because they have contributed so much, and that is a distinct difference. Stop acting as if I people are taking your right to argue away - we are not, we are merely responding to your points.

I'll try again to refocus the issue here: not on the quality/quantity of systems contributed by a company, but on the other aspects that taken into account, drastically affect the very nature of the first two aspects, indeed picturing them into something now not so positive as one would like: like interests and motivations, ideologies, "ways" of doing stuff and relating to others, overall effects on diversity/health of the ecosystem. It doesn't matter that RH contributed a lot to Linux if in doing so they trump everyone else in different ways, fail to acknowledge *ANY*, I'm not telling *ALL* criticism, but *ANY*???? Dude! There's an awful lot of it, by an awful lot of people from every camp man! This is not hard-headed anymore, you eventually have to conclude there's something else involved in this deafness.

Again, my argument was never to say that because they have contributed so much they are immune to criticism. Read my post again. I was giving you my interpretation of why they have so much power over projects as things stand now, and why I think you have developed this theory that they are some power hungry cabal bent on Linux domination, if you will excuse my use of hyperbole there. You on the other hand failed to acknowledge or respond to my supposition.

Now, maybe I'm a little old now, but "oh my, just what can be that something else?". Is it love and altruistic feelings about pushing forward Linux? yeah? The more I see year after year, the more I live with Linux I eventually understand this is not like the beginnings anymore, now there are huge amounts of powers and money invested both in try to take off this ecosystem at any price, or otherwise control it, at any cost (ie, "push it forward" and "make it win").

Yes, it is a bigger ballpark now, which is why our institutions and values are important. Red Hat has never violated this by releasing closed source parts or preventing the work of others. By upholding these values they have kept themselves accountable. If our ecosystem can not handle the influx of importance it has now attained, then it did not deserve the faith we put in it in the first place. For my part though, I think it has.

But nah, don't let tinfoil hats and negativism affect your perception, everything is better with fewer players in control. Btw, regarding the udev fork, here are some oppinions that it sparked around: https://plus.google.com/111049168280...ts/R387kQb1zxc Actually what is sad is seeing this guy in particular expressing himself in that way.

Yeah, that guy has a bit of an ego. You got to be kidding yourself if you think any of that is anything new however. That has been a part of Linux and free software from day one. I mean, just consider Torvalds for two seconds...

Finally, "control" is not moot because of forking because A) it's enough effort that even the kernel team doubted about the task of this fork even when some devs where very very vocal about it. B) You can, as it's painfully evident, try and game this system by other means, provided you have the economical/political influence.

On a large scale, yes it can be difficult. But the point is if you want to do it is there. Just because it is hard does not make it moot. If you really feel it is worth it you can do it. Just like the idea of democracy is not to make contribution easy, but to allow it to be done (the problem now is that in most western democracies much arguably can not be done). Maybe you misunderstood what this whole thing was supposed to be about?

Things are out of balance, what really baffles *me* is not only you fail to see this, you actually think these are all good things. I think that corporate Linux and commercial desktop Linux is really fine, just let everyone else live in peace, if not (ideally) relate in good manners to others, and to the actual benefit of everyone including those with different views.

If you are talking about the need for a collective view of Linux and free software, that is thankfully what the GPL has enshrined and that what our institutions are their to defend. As I said, if our ecosystem can not handle the influx of importance it has now attained, then it did not deserve the faith we put in it in the first place. But I think it has, and you have really not given enough evidence to dissuade me from this view.

[Hamish Wilson]

Here is a nice relevant post by John Bridgman about the role of corporate development in the community:

Not sure I agree. As long as the code is public and there are developers outside the HW vendor who know the code well enough to work on it, the community *has* the power. The question is if and when it makes sense for them to use it.

Graphics drivers get more complex every year as expectations go up for features and performance, and that in turn makes it harder for part-time developers to find enough time to make real progress on the drivers, but the ability to "grab the wheel at any time" is there in principle.

Most of the developers working for HW vendors or distros work as "part of the community" anyways, so you do get a largely vendor-independent group making most of the key architectural decisions. The transition to kernel modesetting was a good example, with developers from a half-dozen different companies working together on various bits of the solution, and in many cases the developers *were* independent when they started work on KMS but continued working on it after going to work at Red Hat, AMD, Intel etc...

I think you get a more accurate picture of how open source works if you imagine all the work being done by volunteers, then consider that some of the "volunteering" is done by individuals and some is done by (ie funded by) large companies. I can only be sure about AMD but it's probably safe to say that all the large companies expect/allow their developers to work as part of the community and to strike a balance between community priorities and company priorities.

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...634#post298634

This one is specifically about graphics drivers but it applies to all aspects of the free software ecosystem as well.

[Bet2ty]

It may be a sign that we need to take the social aspect of our community a bit more seriously if we're sending that kind of message.

[squirrl]

See we are forced to use Gnome 3 because GTK3 changes all GTK features.

Look at the color picker inspired by Gnome 3 developers no doubt becuase it works better on a tablet.

Using Unity? Well you're using Gnome 3 hack-up.

Most GTK apps have been ported to GTK 3 with it's Gnome 3 crafty devices.

What about that scroll-bar? Just love the hover hande that takes just enough miliseconds to annoy you.

I am a developer. I can't manage more than 2 windows open on a Unity or Gnome 3 desktop.

Hell, try using Avidemux in Gnome 3. Sucks. Try using Gimp. It'd be absolute crap. Most artist have more than one image open. Gimp is a perfect test case for workflow.

bye

[Awesomeness]

See we are forced to use Gnome 3 because GTK3 changes all GTK features.

GTK3 applications also work under different DEs.
If you don't like GTK applications, use Qt, EFL, etc.

[movieman]

Try using Gimp. It'd be absolute crap. Most artist have more than one image open. Gimp is a perfect test case for workflow.

To be fair, Gimp's 'splatter windows all over the screen and force the tool windows to the top over the image you're actually editing' design is crap everywhere.

[ninez]

See we are forced to use Gnome 3 because GTK3 changes all GTK features.

...<snip>...

Most GTK apps have been ported to GTK 3 with it's Gnome 3 crafty devices.

you're not forced to use anything, that is simply untrue....and while there does continue to be more applications ported to gtk3, there are a ton that are still using gtk2 (and probably will be the case for a really long time. in fact, i would say that i use way more gtk2 apps than gtk3 ones.)

What about that scroll-bar? Just love the hover hande that takes just enough miliseconds to annoy you.

that's only really a problem when using Ubuntu's patchset/hacks on gtk+ and from what i understand, you can disable that feature. Anyway, point is that isn't a gtk or gnome problem, that is Canonical thinking hiding the scrollbar is a worthwhile feature..

I am a developer. I can't manage more than 2 windows open on a Unity or Gnome 3 desktop.

Are you sure you aren't exaggerating here? I'm not a fan of Unity or Gnome-Shell ~ but i find it really hard to believe you are incapable of managing windows in either DE. For one, Unity has a dock - so without even using more than one workspace, *anyone* should be able to manage dozens of apps no problem, with no effort. Unity, also does the defacto-standard 'scale and expo' features ~ much like MacOSX, Compiz (obviously), Cinnamon, Kwin, GS, etc, etc... So really, you can't be serious that you can't manage more than 2 windows ~ otherwise you are simply saying that you are unable to manage more than 2 applications, period. I realize GS is slightly more awkward (in it's implementation of scale/expo in activities/overview), but even without using it - anyone would still be able to manage more than 2 windows...

Hell, try using Avidemux in Gnome 3. Sucks.

it just isn't a good app to begin with.

Try using Gimp. It'd be absolute crap. Most artist have more than one image open. Gimp is a perfect test case for workflow.

Gimp supports either single-window mode (where you have tabs for your multiple open images) or you can manage all of your windows separately - so i am not sure how giving the end-user options make it 'crap' (?!)... My only (big) beef with gimp is lack of supporting higher bit-depths and a few other features that should land in 3.0 or 3.1...

...back to subject of article;

I think Gnome is way too late in bringing back some of Gnome2's features. Cinnamon has already done this and imho is better than Gnome-Shell to begin with. I think this is a situation of 'too little too late' for their user-base (or once-user-base that scattered between Xfce, Cinnamon, Unity, fallback/compiz, etc). Obviously, this really should have been done in the first place, with the gnome 3.0 release.

ihmo, Cinnamon has turned out to be much better and arguably the direction that Gnome should've taken. I find it to be a little more flexible, replicates enough of gnome2 and compiz-like features, i don't have to deal with GS' god-awful activities/overview, nor did i have to install a bunch of extensions to get the desktop that i wanted ~ which is great.

anyway, i think 'core' gnome technology is decent. I (personally) just don't like the upstream (gnome-)shell shipped with gnome. it's an eye-sore, a bit clumsy to use and generally just a little annoying and almost rigid in design to how the dev's think people should use their desktop. (which is fine, since i can use something else).