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Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Off-Topic discussions about science, technology, and non Debian specific topics.
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No_windows
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#16 Post by No_windows »

dust hill resident wrote:....I was still using some Gnome programs, like the PDF reader. I had to switch to Okular once I updated to jessie and found that they'd finally ruined that too with the CSD rubbish.
What's wrong with Evince? Once I found it, I didn't miss Okular anymore. I started with Kubuntu, so KDE was my first DE.

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dust hill resident
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#17 Post by dust hill resident »

No_windows wrote:
dust hill resident wrote:....I was still using some Gnome programs, like the PDF reader. I had to switch to Okular once I updated to jessie and found that they'd finally ruined that too with the CSD rubbish.
What's wrong with Evince? Once I found it, I didn't miss Okular anymore. I started with Kubuntu, so KDE was my first DE.
The client side decorations. All the Gnome apps have been redesigned to use them, and I think they're absolutely awful. Since I updated to debian jessie, I replaced the few Gnome apps I was still using with alternatives.

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#18 Post by NFT5 »

GarryRicketson wrote: http://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torv ... nome-fork/

Apparently I am not the only one that is not impressed with the changes that
Gnome has made,..years ago it was pretty good, in fact when I first started using
a Linux system , it was what I used, but not any more.
That article is pretty old, dating from 2011, but what Torvalds calls for, a Gnome fork, exists in MATE. Simple, clean, fast and relatively light. Also fairly configurable, possibly not to the extent of KDE or XFCE, but enough to do most of the things that you want. I think that his comment about the way he uses his computer - keyboard for typing and mouse for other things, is also reflective of what most people do, certainly the masses who've come through the Windows system, at least to Win7.

I started with Gnome, too but the move to Gnome 3 lost me, just as Unity drove me away from Ubuntu.

Surely the lesson is out there to be learnt - that a pretty, but difficult to use, non-intuitive interface really isn't what most users want.

What is your desktop anyway? The way I see it, it's just a platform on which the applications/programs that you use to do the real work, reside. It needs to provide a fast and efficient way of accessing those programs and, ideally, keeping them reasonably consistent in look and feel, so that common actions are similar across the range. For some it's a place to hang a pretty picture, although personally I find this terribly distracting and makes finding stuff on the desktop difficult at times since icons get lost in the picture. That's just me, though. A desktop also needs to provide access to panels which are the most popular way of instant access to basic information and commonly used tasks. That's pretty much it from a basic user's perspective. Of course, it does more that isn't quite so apparent, but as Garry notes, much of this can be achieved with a simple window manager.

Of course, then there's the other type of user - the one that is less likely to use the computer for work and demands Steam and everything else that goes with SNS syndrome. Gnome is possibly quite appealing to them.

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NFT5
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#19 Post by NFT5 »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote: I think the design paradigm is absolutely spot on.
From this page:

Defining an application

An application is a distinct and independent piece of software that incorporates useful functionality, and which can be installed on a user’s system.

This definition can be broken down into a set of characteristics, which describe an application in more detail. Applications:

Can be individually installed and removed from the system.

Do not rely on other applications in order to run.

Contain functionality of their own.

Provide at least one primary window.

Do not affect or interfere with the behavior of other applications.

Have a unique name and icon.

At the heart of this definition is a model that allows the modular installation and use of 3rd party software, in a way that avoids dependency issues and ensures simplicity of use.

In GNOME 3, only software that conforms to these characteristics should install an application launcher.
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

MALsPa
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#20 Post by MALsPa »

Excellent. To sum up: GNOME is awful. Or GNOME is great. Depends on which users you ask. Smh. Maybe coming next, the "Why I do not use KDE anymore" thread.

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#21 Post by Danielsan »

I consider Gnome 3 pretty annoying as well as irritating, I tried to use it for a bunch of months but eventually I switched for Xfce4. Probably from the beginning to now its UX has been improved a lot but I don't care, I believe that Gnome 3 is a tremendous act of arrogance and bullying like systemd. Both states are free and independents but every all know well that are project sponsored by RedHat, because of that they believe they can do whatever they want, mainly because the core teams behind these projects are paid to do what they do...

Said that I will not recommend Gnome 3 to anyone but it has two main points over the other competitors:
  • Full support to Wayland;
  • Full support to HiDpi monitors.
The legacy of Gnome 2 for me was inherited by XFCE, for my personal feelings to the former I have never tried Mate and probably I'll never do. I tried Cinnamon but it was seemed to me a fancy copy of Xfce4, but several grades below the quality and the consistency of the former. I liked ElementaryOS and Pantheon, great potential indeed, but the project is too slow and using as base Ubuntu is (IMHO) a bad choice (exactly as Linux Mint) so I don't care about its future and I usually don't promote any *buntu something; I dismissed any *buntu several years ago so I don't know nothing about its current state and I don't care it as well.

WM and Tiling WM are always welcome, those stuff are great and I love theme, I am always tempted to switch to one of theme definitively. I loved one called Echinus it was one among the few that permitted to you to minimize a window on a panel (basically an hybrid DE) and it was easy to modify like I3wm because didn't require to know haswell, lisp, lua or any other script language.

To close, many people love Gnome 3 and I am happy for them because I am happy with my choice!
Last edited by Danielsan on 2017-03-20 04:27, edited 1 time in total.

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RU55EL
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#22 Post by RU55EL »

I don't use Gnome any more because the kid that delivers the news paper wouldn't stop knocking it over!

Innovate
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#23 Post by Innovate »

GarryRicketson wrote:Anyway, no, actually I do use some gnome apps, including 'gparted',
and 'gedit' is a good editor,...but yes, the Full DE, I no longer use.
Interesting replies from every body.
It is nice that we do have choices on these, and can choose to use , or not use
what ever DE and apps,..
I'm glad to you exact gnome de hatre separately from gnome apps which they're different case.
Most every distro pre-installed file-rollers, gedit, gnome-disk-utility, polickykit-1-gnome, gvfs, evince, etc.
which some apps and dependencies they're must have gnome apps on many linux de and wm.
Especially Xfce without gvfs and policykit-1-gnome I can't get authorized to any partitions. :lol:

I also end up with Xfce or openbox as well they're flexible and freedomly customize to many needs.
KDE, Cinnamon, LXDE/Qt, Budgie and other DEs. I've tried them countless time still they
unable to sway me away from my Xfce love-sick.

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#24 Post by Ardouos »

IMO Gnome is fine for end users, especially when it works like it is meant to. I would personally never install it on a computer that I would use.

It is great to have a full feature-rich fledged desktop with applications pre-installed for those users who just want to start using their machine. Some people love features and bloat with more tools than they need with pretty neon lights, others thrive on simplicity and elegance away from all of the distractions.

The MATE team have done an excellent job keeping that "Gnome 2 feel" alive, for those who miss it. 8)

A side note also worth mentioning is Trinity desktop which is forked from KDE 3.
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phenest
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#25 Post by phenest »

NFT5 wrote:From this page:
These Human Interface Guidelines are intended to help with the creation of applications.
That page is intended as guidelines for a developer who wants to write a Gnome application. It's not about Gnome itself.
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#26 Post by NFT5 »

Hmmm. Clearly I need to re-read Animal Farm. I don't remember the Gnome.

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debiman
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#27 Post by debiman »

Ardouos wrote:IMO Gnome is fine for end users, especially when it works like it is meant to.
in my experience EVERYBODY wants to tweak, even if it's just the font and theme colors.
judging from the various forums' posts and blog articles i see, EVERY gnome user installs the gnome-tweak-tool!
or, they get very confused and angry about why the most polished DE requires them to enter complicated commands just to change something trivial, when really it should be an option in the preferences.
imho, something is very wrong about this approach.

i also linked an article in a previous post:
https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11 ... in-threes/
it's 5 years old, and gnome itself has changed a lot since then.
but the article addresses many points that are not about the software itself but about the people behind it, their attitudes and developer hierarchy etc. those do not change as easily as gnome (pun intended).
please read it, it's very enlightening in a sort of horrible and disgusting way.

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#28 Post by Ardouos »

debiman wrote: please read it, it's very enlightening in a sort of horrible and disgusting way.
Thank you for the article.

It does seem that Gnome does try to take features away and preventing others from tweaking the system to their user preferences...

I also knew about some breakages with different GTK3 toolkits, but I did not think it was as bad and malicious how this article makes it out to be. Looks like I have dodged a bullet by staying away from it completely, even though it did tend to peak my interest every now and then...

It just shows how much changes when you look under the magnifying glass rather than through the window. Now, it is become a very dirty window...


Anyhow, it's definitely an eye opener.
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dust hill resident
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#29 Post by dust hill resident »

It's been a good number of years since that was written, but it's still very relevant today. It was only just a year ago that they finally stopped breaking GTK3 themes. And the theming documentation is still rubbish, even if it's better than it was.
Days and days of wasted time and frustration. And almost no documentation. A lot of trial and error. Developing a GTK 3 theme is not fun at all, it’s just very frustrating.
is still a fairly accurate description of making a GTK3 theme.

And from the quotes in the article, you can clearly see the sheer and utter arrogance of the gnome developers, and their complete disregard for users. I won't ever trust Gnome or any Gnome software again, and I hope in the future GTK will be a distant memory and 99% of linux application developers will be using Qt.

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#30 Post by Danielsan »

https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11 ... in-threes/

Very interesting article which explains very well something we had been watching by ourselves. It's comic because they made one of the worst UX ever, the Elementary team with less people and without a sponsor did better. They acted as a corporation but they aren't so they were able to failed many goals. Even if they had the advantage to use a open source model they missed the goal to create a very strong UX (it's a pain that you can slightly fixing only with the extensions) exactly how happened to M$ twice with Vista and W8; and because they use the open source model (It means moving slowly) they missed the goals to unify UX experience across all the devices: exactly like Canonical but nor like Microsoft. So eventually they focused only on the HiDPI stuff where arrived before the others DE.
This is the sad epilogue of Gnome 3... :roll:

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#31 Post by dasein »

Obligatory link to DistroWatch's "preview" of GNOME 4 (from 2012): http://bit.ly/2nOZsOC

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#32 Post by pylkko »

I have noticed that people have very strong feelings about these user interfaces. I think it is odd as there are (in my opinion) practically no real differences between them. If you take away the indexing/desktop database (and some animations) from KDE or GNOME 3 they essentially become XFCE and MATE. I get it if you are working with a small amount of RAM, then LXDE/XFCE might make more sense. But other than that? At the end of the day, how radically different can a Desktop ever be? It will always need to do the same things: launch applications and display information like clock and notifications. And because there are not so many different ways to do that, DE's are all almost identical...

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#33 Post by Danielsan »

pylkko wrote:I have noticed that people have very strong feelings about these user interfaces. I think it is odd as there are (in my opinion) practically no real differences between them [...] DE's are all almost identical...
It seems you never tried Gnome Shell, by default you can access on your applications only from the Activities button as well as for the virtual desktop, there's no menu so you have to scroll icons as a tablet or to type the name, the dash bar is visible only when you press Activities button, the panel shows only the active window, the minimize and maximize buttons are disabled, the notification area is in the middle and you can't move it, by default from the status menu are missing important function like suspend or hibernate (I don't remember very well).

You are minimizing without apparently reasons that Gnome 3, Gnome 2, Mate or Xfce4 are eventually almost identical but you are lying, even using gnome-tweak-tools and the other extensions Gnome 3 has many gaps respect the others and if you switch to Fallback/Classic mode you are unable to replicate the same Gnome 2 UX. How it is impossible to replicate the common or the standard DE paradigm with Gnome 3, I preferred moving on Xfce4, but because of it now we have Mate, Cinnamon, Pantheon and Budgie, please...

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#34 Post by pylkko »

Danielsan wrote:It seems you never tried Gnome Shell,
I use it every day. And XFCE and LXDE almost every day.
by default you can access on your applications only from the Activities button as well as for the virtual desktop, there's no menu so you have to scroll icons as a tablet or to type the name, the dash bar is visible only when you press Activities button, the panel shows only the active window, the minimize and maximize buttons are disabled, the notification area is in the middle and you can't move it, by default from the status menu are missing important function like suspend or hibernate (I don't remember very well).
So? Why would I care where the notification area is? Why would I want to have a menu of applications? On the right side of the shell where you select your network/vpn/bluetooth etc. there is a power button that when you click it asks if you want to suspend, reboot or poweroff. And you can change the suspend to be hibernate. But again I don't care about that... all desktop environments have that.
You are minimizing without apparently reasons that Gnome 3, Gnome 2, Mate or Xfce4 are eventually almost identical but you are lying, even using gnome-tweak-tools and the other extensions Gnome 3 has many gaps respect the others and if you switch to Fallback/Classic mode you are unable to replicate the same Gnome 2 UX. How it is impossible to replicate the common or the standard DE paradigm with Gnome 3, I preferred moving on Xfce4, but because of it now we have Mate, Cinnamon, Pantheon and Budgie, please...
Please don't say I'm lying. Look if you want to spend time customizing and tweaking, then maybe use another DE. If you are like me and just want to use programs to do real stuff, then I don't see how what you are saying has any kind of relevance. I use three different DE environments, they all work for me. Even Windows Vista UI (that you apparently also "hate") worked for me. Actually, it quite reminds me of KDE. You say that you don't use GNOME 3 because it is bad, but it sounds more like you decided that it has to be bad, and therefore you say that you don't use it. But it is not bad.

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#35 Post by Danielsan »

I am sorry, I wouldn't be impolite.

However I feel you are doing confusion is some part, the fact you feel comfortable with Gnome 3 doesn't mean it works well or it has a better UX, or eventually all the DE are pretty identical is not true, by default Gnome 3 is closer to Android than Gnome 2.

We can say a better UI/UX is when you do the same thing syou did before with less effort and indisputably it is not the case of Gnome 3, it inherited the beginning concept to have an UI usable across different devices like tablets. And if you consider that spending time, not to tweak, but to revert the UI in order to have a better UX is a virtue I am sorry because it isn’t. It’s only the demonstration that your UI/UX is not so good as to change your habit without breaking it.

Probably Gnome 3 UI/UX fit well on a large tablet even if after most of the applications aren’t suitable in that scenario (exactly like happens with Unity), but honestly Gnome 3 UI/UX do not work well in a desktop and you don’t use either the default setting because is not practical, and why? Because you have to do many clicks more than before for many common tasks, and this is a fact not an opinion.

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