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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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Ardouos
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#61 Post by Ardouos »

dust hill resident wrote: Why so condescending?
I am sorry if it came off as condescending, I put the smiley there to make it sound as nicely as possible. (Banter?)

In my defense, I did read it differently to how you wanted to pass the message. :wink:


Edit: Grammar + Spelling.
Last edited by Ardouos on 2017-03-28 07:04, edited 3 times in total.
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debiman
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#62 Post by debiman »

dust hill resident wrote:Why?
why not?

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#63 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

dust hill resident wrote:Why?
I find them more aesthetically pleasing than the traditionally bare titlebar, the efficient use of space appeals to me greatly.

Also, GTK3 applications play very nicely with dwm — they are not tiled by default and the titlebar can actually be used to drag the window around without chording a modifier key :)
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Danielsan
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#64 Post by Danielsan »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
dust hill resident wrote:https://packages.debian.org/stretch/gtk3-nocsd

Problem solved :)

That's cool I have been pretty frustrated about some Gnome application behaviour, so now I can get rid of them!!!

Thanks!

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

#65 Post by dust hill resident »

Ardouos wrote:
I am sorry if it came off as condescending, I put the smiley there to make it sound as nicely as possible. (Banter?)
In my defense, I did read it differently to how you wanted to pass them message. :wink:
Ah right, sorry. I have a tendency to misread tone on forums.
And looking back at it now, I can see how my other post could have given you that impression.
debiman wrote:why not?
Fair enough

Anyway, gtk3-nocsd is great.

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MARKMENTAL
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#66 Post by MARKMENTAL »

kedaha wrote:I couldn't agree more.
I always used Gnome2 from when "etch" came out. When Gnome3 first reared its head, I used it in classic mode but soon changed to the mate-desktop, which is the nearest thing to Gnome2, on my home, work and laptop computers.
The other day I installed "jessie" on a laptop as an alternative for Windows Vista for an elderly acquaintance and chose Gnome so that the user would be able to update easily by means of the update-notifier. I was immediately horrified by desktop environment and chose the classic mode where, annoyingly, there appeared to be no quick way to place icons on the desktop. I haven't seen Gnome in "stretch" yet but have an inkling I won't like it either.
agreed, I use MATE on my main debian stable pc, it's a good fork of gnome 2, reminds me of that old familiar desktop, though I don't have much problem with gnome 3. KDE however is a nightmare for me, I hate it! :roll:

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#67 Post by bester69 »

MARKMENTAL wrote:
kedaha wrote:I couldn't agree more.
I always used Gnome2 from when "etch" came out. When Gnome3 first reared its head, I used it in classic mode but soon changed to the mate-desktop, which is the nearest thing to Gnome2, on my home, work and laptop computers.
The other day I installed "jessie" on a laptop as an alternative for Windows Vista for an elderly acquaintance and chose Gnome so that the user would be able to update easily by means of the update-notifier. I was immediately horrified by desktop environment and chose the classic mode where, annoyingly, there appeared to be no quick way to place icons on the desktop. I haven't seen Gnome in "stretch" yet but have an inkling I won't like it either.
agreed, I use MATE on my main debian stable pc, it's a good fork of gnome 2, reminds me of that old familiar desktop, though I don't have much problem with gnome 3. KDE however is a nightmare for me, I hate it! :roll:
sadlly most of DE are a fully crap in my opinion, and the worse they're not nearly getting better with time.

Now best or decent linux DE are KDE and Unity, followed by XFCE; MATE is getting worse for moments..., the rest of them are more or less the same poor thing.

KDE might be difficult to get used to it, once you get it, its one of the best, if not the bestone
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#68 Post by annadane »

I mean, I'll always be an XFCE person. (Probably. Until i3 consumes my soul) It feels so natural and right. When I was Linuxing and Debianinning (shut up) for the first time, I couldn't quite get the installer to work properly (due to faulty copying of the iso) and I got GNOME as a default. I found it very frustrating as a first time user. It doesn't really scream "easy to use". Nor does KDE, which while I'm sure has multiple wonderful qualities for power users, it's pretty disorienting.

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#69 Post by /tmp »

bester69 wrote:...MATE is getting worse for moments...
When did that happen? (I just installed it after using KDE for many years).
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debiman
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#70 Post by debiman »

/tmp wrote:
bester69 wrote:...MATE is getting worse for moments...
When did that happen? (I just installed it after using KDE for many years).
maybe they meant that MATE has started to use gtk3 now.
which tbh came as a surprise to me, but i've seen this mentioned quite a few times (and as a good thing, strangely) now.

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#71 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

debiman wrote:maybe they meant that MATE has started to use gtk3 now.
which tbh came as a surprise to me, but i've seen this mentioned quite a few times (and as a good thing, strangely) now.
I would hazard a guess that the MATE team are using https://packages.debian.org/stretch/gtk3-nocsd to unify the look of the disparate toolkits.
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sjukfan
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#72 Post by sjukfan »

I prefer programs that show a label beside the icon so it's easier to find the functions. Gnome-mpv have (or at least used to have) a turn off client side decorations that let the user have labels back, but way too few of the Gnome programs have that. I like Gthumb but had to pin it to 3.2.9.1 before they went icons only.

Also I don't think the icon only was is that good for someone who's not that good with computers. I'm installing Linux to a computer for my mom and will probably go with Xfce because she really needs to be able to read the labels without hovering the mouse over them.
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debiman
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#73 Post by debiman »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:I would hazard a guess that the MATE team are using https://packages.debian.org/stretch/gtk3-nocsd to unify the look of the disparate toolkits.
on topic rant:
yeah, i guess for some that's enough to sell the "lighweight DE" metaphor.
i never quite understand how something like mate, let alone cinnamon, can be defined as lightweight?
cinnamon: hey, it uses only 80% compared to gnome!
mate: hey, it uses only 70% compared to gnome!
...and here i sit at my openbox desktop that has been using only 10% compared to gnome, and that for years already... snicker... these idiots...

off topic rant:
i was listening to jupiter broadcasting today, for almost an hour... argh... :roll: 2 guys talking about web development languages like some other idiots talk about desktop environments... thinking they're so hip... at least now i know that clojure is the way to go, because it's just so easy to work with, and the community is small but dedicated... :deepsarcasm:

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pylkko
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#74 Post by pylkko »

this thread has gone so off topic that I'll just continue.

I have used openbox,dwm and i3 and I think that for me the best possible desktop setup would be one where:

1) nothing is on the screen all the time, things are on screen only when I invoke them or they are in a concky script. I don't want a panel that displays a clock all the time, when I need it not even close to all the time. I don't want to minimize any window ever, I want to either use more work spaces or some tiling scheme when I need more real estate, not to minimize into a panel. Also panels that autohide just don't look nice and work well (you accidentally make it appear all the time or something else)

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.

3) you need as little mouseing around as possible, no little click on this to make larger or close or anything. I think i3 is nice but not perfect. I don't even mind having to compile in order to make changes as I don't usually change the look of the desktop ever.

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#75 Post by phenest »

pylkko wrote:this thread has gone so off topic that I'll just continue.
I think I'm going to start a new topic:
"Why I don't stay on topic anymore"
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#76 Post by GarryRicketson »

That should be a interesting topic, I look forward to this.

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#77 Post 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.

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pylkko
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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#78 Post 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.

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#79 Post 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.

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Re: Why I do not use Gnome anymore

#80 Post 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.
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