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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-04-18 19:49
by GarryRicketson
That should be a interesting topic, I look forward to this.

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-04-19 12:25
by No_windows
pylkko wrote: 2) applications are launced from a search box by typing a part of that name and not selecting it from a menu, since I will never remember under what subclassing it is in the menu and I rarely remember the names of applications exactly or at all.
Re-arrange your categories/subclasses and possibly rename them? I understand your frustration with that, as I experience that with KDE and the Whisper-Menu is Xfce. I'm not using KDE and typically use the the Xfce menu re-arranged to my liking instead of the Whisper version that many people seem to like. To me, a search box would be irritating..... I don't want to type for such a basic/simple operation, I want to use the mouse.

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-04-19 20:40
by pylkko
No_windows wrote:
Re-arrange your categories/subclasses and possibly rename them? I understand your frustration with that, as I experience that with KDE and the Whisper-Menu is Xfce. I'm not using KDE and typically use the the Xfce menu re-arranged to my liking instead of the Whisper version that many people seem to like. To me, a search box would be irritating..... I don't want to type for such a basic/simple operation, I want to use the mouse.
How would that help? Let me make this concrete. Pretend that I want to edit a video and have not done it in a year. So the program is called openshot, but I don't remember that I just remember that it is "shot something","shotwell" or whatever. In GNOME I type "sho", it suggests openshot and I start it. In what you suggest, I have to have a panel blocking a part of my screen all the time so that I can have a menu that I click, after which I have to ponder in which category it could be, then guess, click again, open a list of stuff, scan the list with my eyes, possible miss it and have to scan again...

Another place where this kind of stuff is nice is when you read and write a lot. So you downlod thousands of articles in a year and you save them god knows where. Later when you are writing, you can search in the shell with keywords that find articles that you have read that are relevant to the issue you are writing about now. Or you can save mini snippets of text files (like good parts/citations of texts that you read) and find them later straight from the shell with search terms. So let's say you are interested in collecting knowledge about some topic in Russian politics. Everytime you read an interesting part you copy paste it in a file. So later you can start writing an article about the topic by searching all the snippets that you have for that key term. Of course you could save the snippets by topic in folders, but that is kind of dumb, since obviously they can be related to many topics, or at times you don't know what the topic is. Also, I know that there are programs like recoil that can do this independent of Gnome Shell. Actually such search and indexing (tracker in gnome) should be more intelligent and search for synonyms and expressions also. That is the only place where MacOS wins over Debian, I'd say.

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-04-20 05:27
by No_windows
pylkko wrote: How would that help? Let me make this concrete. Pretend that I want to edit a video and have not done it in a year. So the program is called openshot, but I don't remember that I just remember that it is "shot something","shotwell" or whatever. In GNOME I type "sho", it suggests openshot and I start it. In what you suggest, I have to have a panel blocking a part of my screen all the time so that I can have a menu that I click, after which I have to ponder in which category it could be, then guess, click again, open a list of stuff, scan the list with my eyes, possible miss it and have to scan again...
Because you place the program/shortcut in some logical category, like "Video Editors".....and I don't know what you're talking about having a panel blocking part of your screen. If you don't want a panel, then don't use one, or have it autohide.......but where would you put the search box that you want?

If you're missing things, and having to rescan, you probably have too many entries in each sub-menu because you haven't configured it to suit you. MX16 is like that for me, but it's just a VM and not my main OS, and I haven't done much at all to it. In my Debian Jessie install, I have the Xfce menu cut down. Duplicates are removed, extras that I won't use are not installed, and no sub-catagory is longer than 11 entries, not the eleventy billion that I have in MX-16.

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-04-20 06:15
by deborah-and-ian
My 2 cents:

-I like the HIG stuff they're pulling, specifically for programmes where I just need a few features
(example: I rather use gthumb than something like digikam)
-For programes where a lot of productivity is needed, I couldn't bear the client side decorated light design
(example: I really hope Gimp or Inkscape won't go this route)
-I like Gnome Shell, but I don't like the underlying technologies like Zeitgeist or Tracker which make my laptop crash or hog a lot of memory (and with 8 GB RAM I shouldn't worry about memory, right?)
-For a lot of programmes that converted to client-side decorations, you can use the Mate Desktop fork
(example: I use Atril instead of Evince, and the version in Jessie is decent. It lets me read PDFs and print them. For annotations I use Xournal)
-Those who miss the old times, really should stick to Mate, as it's constantly developed and even has progressed to using GTK3. This means that Wayland support is coming soon.

Another note on Wayland:
Some of you here have noted that Gnome 3 has full Wayland support. Well, it does, but let's be honest: how much time do normal users spend within Gnome applications? In my case, whenever I use Gnome 3, most of my time is spent in applications that still use older technologies -- Gimp, Inkscape, LibreOffice, the video games that still run on Xorg -- the gain from running a Wayland desktop is therefore doubtful. Sure, Wayland has good security features, but in Stretch we will also have Xorg running without root privileges. The other advantages for normal users such as better vsync are a moot point if most of the time I'm running stuff in XWayland. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of Wayland and Xorg is just an ancient hog that tortures developers when it comes to implementing new features, but it's not even really ready in distros with much newer software stacks. Apart from that, Gnome 3 and partially KDE are the only ways to use it properly now. Well, there's Enlightenment, but I wouldn't consider this a great window manager for anyone. This means, there aren't a lot of things present that the regular Debian user wants: no advanced window managers yet (well, none that are stable at least), no classic desktops such as Xfce or Mate. I think Wayland will be more of a reality in Debian 10.

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-04-20 13:49
by pylkko
While I see what you are saying about limited native Wayland support, I believe that LibreOffice has been running natively on Wayland for a long time already.

EDIT: I just checked, it starts on native Wayland backend.

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-05-17 16:04
by luiznetto
Segfault wrote:I have been running plain OpenBox for years and I do not feel I miss anything. My applications are easy to start, what else I need? What is the advantage of a bloated DE is a big mystery for me. What can KDE or Gnome do for me I already do not have? :?:
I agree with you. I started using KDE many years ago, it was my favorite. Then when I moved to Ubuntu 8.04, since Gnome was the default, I used Gnome, which was fine. But then, after successive upgrades, when both Gnome and KDE started growing bigger and bigger and more cumbersome and slow and troublesome, I gave up on both of them. Now I use the much lighter and faster LXDE, and I'm pretty satisfied with it.

Gnome and KDE take a long time to download and install, occupy a lot of space in the disk, are bloated and slow down the system. A DE shouldn't get in the way of the applications that really matter. I still like some Gnome and KDE applications, though; I use Gnome Network Manager for the wi-fi and Gnome Terminal, and K3b for writing disks.

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-05-17 18:15
by phenest
luiznetto wrote:A DE shouldn't get in the way of the applications that really matter.
How does Gnome get in the way?

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-05-18 19:34
by ruffwoof
How does Gnome get in the way?
I tend to agree and see gnome3 more as in the way of productivity.

Bottom screen edge mouse down/through to show is hard work. Not as easy as a auto-hide panel pop up.

Even the top left reveal corner is sensitive and doesn't always work - such as if certain windows dialogs are already open. Something like brightside (corners) and skippy-xd work as well if not better at presenting a tiled overview of open windows.

grun has preemptive text. pcmanfm's menu://applications or even just /usr/share/applications can show all installed programs via a single click.

So with brightside set to launch skippy-xd upon mouse into top left corner, a bottom screen auto-hide panel, gmrun and pcmanfm you can emulate a similar desktop style to gnome3's default. However for general use/real work many don't set up their desktop that way. Nice for show, not so good for workload. The 'standard' desktop layout has prevailed for good reason - it works well. Popular program icons on the desktop along with work files, a bottom or top panel that shows current open/minimised programs together with date/time, network status, system activity, whatever ...etc. and that can be extremely light - for instance I'm running Debian Jessie with xorg, jwm, rox, pcmanfm type desktop base and its extremely fast to boot/run and more productive in practice than if using gnome's desktop.

Gnome's more like a show car, not the one you'd pick for everyday use, but nice to show once in a while. Except perhaps if you tweak it around, install extensions and spend some time to make it look more like a 'standard' desktop.

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-05-19 17:23
by n_hologram
ruffwoof wrote: Gnome's more like a show car, not the one you'd pick for everyday use, but nice to show once in a while.
This is the best explanation of Gnome I've read so far.

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-05-19 19:23
by phenest
ruffwoof wrote:you can emulate a similar desktop style to gnome3's default
And Gnome Shell can emulate a standard desktop layout.
ruffwoof wrote:The 'standard' desktop layout has prevailed for good reason - it works well.
So does a console.
ruffwoof wrote:Popular program icons on the desktop along with work files
Gnome Shell can do that.
ruffwoof wrote:a bottom or top panel that shows current open/minimised programs together with date/time, network status, system activity, whatever ...etc
Gnome Shell can do that.
ruffwoof wrote:and that can be extremely light - for instance I'm running Debian Jessie with xorg, jwm, rox, pcmanfm type desktop base and its extremely fast to boot/run
I only boot/login once a day, and that takes 30 seconds. This comment has more to do with limited resources. If your computer has greater resources, then Gnome can be just as fast to boot and run.

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-05-19 23:41
by ruffwoof
Indeed gnome can be changed, if you pull in extensions from .... wherever. Not nice however having to pull in from third parties and the risks that induces to make it function like other choices that don't entail having to go 'outside the box'.
If your computer has greater resources, then Gnome can be just as fast to boot and run
Granted if you throw more resources at a relatively bloated choice it will boot/run quicker. Mine black screens for 30+ seconds after having booted before the gnome desktop appears. That aside it still takes longer to do stuff simply due to design (out-of-the-box/standard around a mouse distance of a screen width if you measure from screen centre to the top left to activate the Activities and then half a screen height down to get to a favourite. Let alone the hard pressure required to mouse down through the bottom of screen to get the notification area to pop up). After a while of using gnome I end up with wrist ache, I guess the gnome designers/users have stronger wrists :lol:

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-05-20 17:43
by phenest
ruffwoof wrote:Indeed gnome can be changed, if you pull in extensions from .... wherever.
https://extensions.gnome.org/
ruffwoof wrote:Not nice however having to pull in from third parties
Written by 3rd parties, but pulled in from Gnome's extension website.
ruffwoof wrote:to make it function like other choices that don't entail having to go 'outside the box'.
It's part of Gnome's design, so it's not "outside the box"..
ruffwoof wrote:
If your computer has greater resources, then Gnome can be just as fast to boot and run
Granted if you throw more resources at a relatively bloated choice it will boot/run quicker.
I didn't get a faster computer to run Gnome. I use Gnome because it runs fast on the computer I already had. Why streamline my system when it runs Gnome just fine without any signs of bloat.
ruffwoof wrote:Mine black screens for 30+ seconds after having booted before the gnome desktop appears.
I've seen no evidence of that. You may have a bug. But there are bugs n all software.
ruffwoof wrote:That aside it still takes longer to do stuff simply due to design (out-of-the-box/standard around a mouse distance of a screen width if you measure from screen centre to the top left to activate the Activities and then half a screen height down to get to a favourite. Let alone the hard pressure required to mouse down through the bottom of screen to get the notification area to pop up). After a while of using gnome I end up with wrist ache, I guess the gnome designers/users have stronger wrists :lol:
Perhaps someone should introduce you to the keyboard. There are plenty of keyboard shortcuts so you don't have to use the mouse/touchpad as much, or even at all.

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-05-20 19:48
by ruffwoof
phenest wrote:Perhaps someone should introduce you to the keyboard. There are plenty of keyboard shortcuts so you don't have to use the mouse/touchpad as much, or even at all.
Good tip, thanks. Drop the gnome desktop, use a terminal window instead ... quicker, easier and a vast improvement. Nice retro feel about it as well.

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-05-21 08:02
by phenest
I was referring to using the keyboard to navigate Gnome instead of using the meuse. :roll:

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-05-21 11:03
by debiman
i do find it a bit weird that for every bit of non-standard functionality one has to install an extension, and that these aren't installed the usual way but by clicking a link on a website...
what happened to good old config files? much easier imho.

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-05-21 18:34
by phenest
You make it sound like a big deal. You only install them once, much like any other piece of software.

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-05-21 19:34
by n_hologram
debiman wrote:i do find it a bit weird that for every bit of non-standard functionality one has to install an extension, and that these aren't installed the usual way but by clicking a link on a website...
what happened to good old config files? much easier imho.
Can you install them via command line (apt-get)?

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-05-21 19:36
by phenest
n_hologram wrote:Can you install them via command line (apt-get)?
Yes.

Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

Posted: 2017-05-21 19:38
by n_hologram
Yeah, then I don't see how that's any different than standard desktop environments.