Purism Hopes To Default To GNOME On The Librem 5 Phone, But Still Supporting KDE

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Purism Hopes To Default To GNOME On The Librem 5 Phone, But Still Supporting KDE

Purism has been supporting both the GNOME and KDE projects with their mobile ambitions and looking to have both desktop environments feature their wares on the in-development Librem 5 smartphone. But as far as the default user experience/interface goes on the Librem 5, they are leaning towards GNOME...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Purism-GNOME-Default-Goal

[nwah]

They previously announced they hoped KDE to be the premier environment. This fractured and indecisive non-strategy here doesn't inspire much confidence.

[Jumbotron]

Cue Gnome hate in 3...2...1...

[Mr. Octus]

The best part:

GTK+ and the GNOME “shell” development, that Purism is planning to be directly invested in, in close collaboration with upstream

gnome-shell could use some love, looking forward to the improvements

[shmerl]

Not Gnome hate, but GTK is pretty bad at mobile UIs. That's about it. Qt is light years ahead. So whether they are going to use KDE or Gnome is less of a question, but whether they'll use Qt or GTK is what's important.

They really should have learned from others' mistakes.

[johanb]

It will not be an easy feat to get mobile Gnome Shell running on a phone with a good UX in under a year, but good luck Purism!

My guess is that I will have to use Plasma Mobile at the release of the Librem 5 until the mobile UX for Gnome Shell get better.

[torturedutopian]

Well, that was expected. A choice had to be made anyway. I regret this choice too, but many people would have regretted the opposite one. What counts the most is that both will be supported !

[Ananace]

I hope that GNOME will actually be ready by the time they need it to be, otherwise that's going to be really painful for Purism.

It is good to hear that they're not just throwing everything in behind KDE, since the Plasma Mobile project is actually on a steady path, GNOME seems more in need of their support.

[kpedersen]

Cue Gnome hate in 3...2...1...

No hate from me. As a phone / tablet interface is perhaps the only place where Gnome 3 might work. I think DWM or Gnome 2 would be far too fiddly for a user to control via touch on a small phone display.

[OneBitUser]

I hope that GNOME will actually be ready by the time they need it to be, otherwise that's going to be really painful for Purism.

It is good to hear that they're not just throwing everything in behind KDE, since the Plasma Mobile project is actually on a steady path, GNOME seems more in need of their support.

I think this is a mistake, since it seems to be purely ideologically motivated: they went with the less mature option.
Qt is a proven performer in terms of Mobile GUIs, and if their priority is UX as they claim, then they should have made the pragmatic choice.

I also do not see why Gnome needs any more backing with SUSE, Canonical and Red Hat all supporting it... I know that mobile and convergence is not a priority for these companies, but there are still ample resources thrown into Gnome development.
Also, with Purism being a small company and Gnome having no other parties seriously interested in convergence this decision seems like shooting one's self in the foot... they will have to put a lot of resources into upstream Gnome/GTK development to get that good UX they're aiming for.

But that's just my two cents.