Gnome Fork

man, i predicted a gnome fork a couple of months ago, but i figured it would be because of Novell wanting to use Mono in it and RedHat refusing to do it and thus, both companies deciding to go their own ways

i still think that fork will happen as well, but apparantly one long time member of the Gnome foundation has already created a fork of the project because he dislikes many of the recent choices that have been made within the Gnome community (and rightfully so IMNSHO)

more information can be found here

my favourite quotes:

The people that I met and whom I was able to read and talk with, pointed out how much they dislike changes such as Buttonordering, GConf (Windows Registry), Spatial Nautilus, things like general inconsistencies, no real progress, speed issues, huge dependencies, instant apply without reverting to default, scrollkeeper and many more.

there you have it... no real progress, speed issues and huge dependencies. i've been saying this for a while now but i'm so glad to FINALLY hear this from a Gnome developer for once

Even if I do see that plenty of things that got changed in GNOME does indeed make sense but some other decisions have upset quite a lot of people including me and there was no possibility to bring these problems up on the GNOME Mailinglists or the IRC channel without getting yourself trapped into ugly discussions and slandering.

apparently many of the changes that are made in gnome can't even be discussed properly amongst the developers? how can you expect to achieve the best possible result if you can't even discuss the possibilities?

The intention is to create a community of people, who are willing and interested to help fixing these issues and make the vision of a usable Desktop in the means of good old Unix fashion become true. No fancy technology, no overhelming bloat and no dumbifying of peoples talent and skills using a computer.

i just threw this one in because it's along the same lines as my "gnome developers don't want you to think" rant

From all the complaints users made, there seem that the majority of people hate the Spatial Nautilus and would like to have their good old Nautilus back in a navigational fashion and not by middle clicking or using some icon to launch it.
...
Even the idea of having custom places such as Music, Pictures, Documents and that people shouldn't have to know the filesystem or browse deeper than three paths is far too dumb to even comment.

this one just brings a smile to my face

Worth of conversation is also getting a KHTML port so we can finally have a native Web browser rather than using Mozilla or Firefox. Sure these browser do compile against GTK+ and whoever wants to use it should still continue using it but truly ever thought how XUL will fit into GNOME ? It has an own interface an own styling guide an own whatever. It's sad to see people compiling Mozilla or Firefox and then Galeon or Epiphany on top of it to get an illusion that they use something that truly fits into the Desktop.

not sure if i agree with him on the porting of KHTML, but he does make a good point about the browser situation on gnome. I myself used Epiphany during that shamefull period where my brain ceased to function for almost a year (ie: the time i actually used and liked Gnome 2.x). I can't understand why both Epiphany and Galeon need an existing Mozilla/Firefox installation before it works... can't the Gecko rendering engine be abstracted from it in such a way that Galeon and Epiphany would only require that in case Mozilla/Firefox isn't installed? This has BAD CODE DESIGN written all over it.

Removing unnecessary things such as esound. It is there for years and I doubt anyone is really using it.

Alan Cox once said: "I don't know why and I'm not yet motivated to fix it since my views on esd are mostly unprintable."

Surely, a man as smart as Alan Cox knows what he's talking about. Yet the Gnome Developers have never seen ESD as the bad piece of software that it really is.

[Tyr_7BE]

Apparently the guy has a good deal of support, but not from me. I disagree with virtually every point he raises. Not all of them, mind you, but most.

For example, I love spatial nautilus. This guy proposes to go back to navigational. I have to use navigational on my xp box at work and it irritates me to no end.

He proposes changing the button order. Well ok, but I like it fine the way it is. I find it very intuitive. I could probably get used to another button order, but why bother?

He proposes not only that java, mono, python, perl, et all ("fancy technology....oooooooh) be avoided, but that future technologies not be considered for inclusion in gnome. That means no Storage for advanced searching capabilities, no gnome-volume-manager for plug-in-and-it-works functionality, and no slick apps that use python or mono (both of which are gaining serious credibility). His philosophy is "if it ain't C it's no good!". He offers no arguments for this other than to call other technology "fancy." If he's dismissive of alternative options right off the bat then he's just lost the bulk of his credibility with me.

He proposes ripping out things like default music and document locations and exposing the filesystem more. It's generally agreed that Mac OSX has the best user interface around, and they sure as hell didn't get that title by exposing the file system. They got that title by making things as pretty as possible for the user to use. Not everyone is a hardcore unix type. Not everyone is a hardcore windows type. Most Gnome users just want to listen to music while writing a document. If you can make that as braindead as possible, you've succeeded.

Seriously, I never really saw what all the whining and crying was about from half of the gnome community. Oh wah wah wah...you took our options away! Gnome is every bit as flexible as I need it to be. Seriously, my needs include surfing the web, writing email, music, office stuff, file management, and programming. Those needs are probably far greater than 80% of the Gnome user base out there and current Gnome does me just fine. Who gives a fuck whether Rhythmbox defaults to a standard music folder, or a menu item is called "web browser" instead of "epiphany." Chumps like this guy are micromanaging, and probably need to get out of the house a hell of a lot more. It's not Gnome I've gotten sick of...it's the people who bitch whine and complain about the lack of options and customizability. I can set things up just how I like them through preferences and gconf...really I don't see what the issue is.

Guys like Galaxy (the guy who's released this set of patches) are probably better off using something like FVWM or KDE or Gnome 1.x or some other environment that allows them to customize and tweak and edit files so that in the long run they can be 0.7523 and a half % more productive. Seriously the guy sounds like he'd be a real fan of a pure straight up window manager...it makes no decisions for you whatsoever, and contains none of this "fancy pants technology" that people keep talking about. If you ask me he comes off sounding like a hyperconservative nut job who's terrified of progress. I sincerely hope his project fizzles.

Ok that was a lot to write so I'm not really gonna pick apart Ralinx's initial post like I intended I'd just like to point out one thing that came to mind as I was reading it: I tried KDE 3.2 from SuSE a few weeks back, and not very much has changed since I used to use KDE 3.0 back in the day. New default theme, a little faster, some new apps, but that's about it...nothing groundbreaking. No real progress. Now the entire reason I was using KDE at the time was because Gnome 2.0 was completely unusable. Compare Gnome 2.6 with Gnome 2.0, and then compare KDE 3.2 with KDE 3.0 and you tell me who hasn't made any real progress in the last 2 years

[quote author=Tyr_7BE link=board=6;threadid=9547;start=0#msg87313 date=1091063630]
For example, I love spatial nautilus. This guy proposes to go back to navigational. I have to use navigational on my xp box at work and it irritates me to no end.
[/quote]
yea well spatial nautilus is weird... you either love it or hate it. The problem is not really the fact that they've chosen for spatial nautilus. The problem is that they have taken away the ability to easily change the default behaviour just because they try to force this behaviour on everyone. If you wanna change it, you can do it through gconf. Now how in the world can you consider that to be user friendly? And isn't user friendlyness what Gnome is about? or at least so they say :

He proposes not only that java, mono, python, perl, et all ("fancy technology....oooooooh) be avoided, but that future technologies not be considered for inclusion in gnome.

i hate to burst your bubble, but future technologies like java/mono/python (i refuse to consider perl as a future technology) will never get included if they keep their current attitude towards them. It's like half the gnome developers wanna switch, the other half doesn't want to, and they just debate about it for about 3 weeks, and then nothing happens. Seriously, a few months ago almost every blog posting you read from a gnome developer either contained arguments in favor of switching to mono or java, or against it. This took about 3 weeks. After that, they suddenly stopped, and NO decisions were made. That is not a good sign for the future of the project.

Seriously, I never really saw what all the whining and crying was about from half of the gnome community. Oh wah wah wah...you took our options away! Gnome is every bit as flexible as I need it to be.

how can i make gnome remember the window location of an application? it's probably possible somehow but unless the application itself provided the option of storing the window location, i have never found a way to let gnome store the window location easily. In KDE this takes me 2 mouse clicks to achieve. Stuff like this should NOT be done by the application, it should be done by the Desktop Environment because it is a general feature that EVERY application could use. The fact that some gnome applications have to offer this functionality themselves, is another sign of bad framework design.

I can set things up just how I like them through preferences and gconf...really I don't see what the issue is.

maybe you don't see the problem in using GConf but i sure as hell don't see a newbie going through GConf to change settings to stuff that he might actually prefer over the defaults. Earlier you mentioned how OS X is the most user friendly environment available. I haven't used OS X yet, but i seriously doubt that they make their users use a gconf-like tool to change settings that they can't change through the GUI. Whereas in KDE, KControl allows me to change virtually anything. Say what you want about KControl being disorganized, it sure as hell beats having to use gconf any day.

I tried KDE 3.2 from SuSE a few weeks back, and not very much has changed since I used to use KDE 3.0 back in the day. New default theme, a little faster, some new apps, but that's about it...nothing groundbreaking. No real progress. Now the entire reason I was using KDE at the time was because Gnome 2.0 was completely unusable. Compare Gnome 2.6 with Gnome 2.0, and then compare KDE 3.2 with KDE 3.0 and you tell me who hasn't made any real progress in the last 2 years

very odd... the amount of new features with every major KDE release is pretty big. Have you actually compared the applications from those versions? Most KDE applications usually get at least a few new features with every new major KDE release. I don't have any statistics on this, but when i use a new KDE release i always notice a lot of new stuff in the applications. I'm using 3.3 beta2 right now and i'm already hooked to some features that aren't available in KDE 3.2.

lemme give you an example. for a long while now, the evolution users and developers have been talking about how evolution will integrate spamassassin into the mail client so it can be used in an easy way. Excellent! i'm sure everybody wants this. But where is it? I haven't seen this functionality yet in evolution yet people have been talking about it for months now. The KMail developers however have included a wizard to integrate not only spamassassin, but a bunch of other anti-spam tools into the mail client. Not only that, they said "oh what the hell, let's add another wizard to integrate anti-virus tools as well!"... and so they did. They didn't make a big fuss about it. They just did it. And everyone will be able to use it in about 3 weeks when KDE 3.3 final comes out. When is evolution 2.0 coming out? oh yea it's been postponed for months now :

now, i first started using Gnome when it was at version 2.2. I kinda liked it. It was simple. Somewhat elegant. After a while i upgraded from RH9 to FC1 because it would include the amazing Gnome 2.4. Man i couldn't wait to install it to see what the fuss was about. So i installed FC1. And i was somewhat dissapointed because i didn't really notice a lot of new stuff. In fact, i can't really remember anything specific that was changed between 2.2 and 2.4. But then the gnome community tells me "oh well 2.4 was mainly a release which made everything conform to the HIG... wait for 2.6 and you'll see tons of new features!". w00t... new features coming up. So i waited and waited and waited. And then finally, FC2 was released with Gnome 2.6. I was so happy. Then i installed it. And again my reaction was "so where are all these new features?". The only thing i noticed was that nautilus had become spatial and there was no option to switch it back. Oh but wait! There was a new file selector! WOOHOOO. I could finally use a file selector like KDE has had since the 2.2 days! But for some reason, the file selector did not behave consistently throughout each application like the KDE file selector does. Again, a sign of bad framework design IMNSHO. Ok so what else was new? oh i could burn ISO's from Nautilus now. Very cool... except i only burn ISO's when a new FC release is out. So yea there was a feature that i could use once every 4 months or so. So then i checked out the new Rhythmbox hoping that it would finally allow me to edit the tags of the songs. Unfortunately, this was still not possible. How hard can it be to add that functionality? Oh that feature had apparantly been postponed to a later Rhythmbox release. However, Juk has had that feature for a while now and it works. So why can't the rhythmbox guys add it? But you know what the gnome community said? "Oh the 2.6 release isn't really a feature-packed release... you gotta wait for gnome 2.8... that'll be packed with new features!". ummm yea... i think i heard that story before guys and i'm not buying it anymore.

anyways, my point is: with new KDE releases, i can actually see progress. i can actually spot new features every time. With new gnome releases, i have to go looking for new features and each time, i get dissapointed because stuff is constantly being postponed for later releases. The more i think about it, the more i'm convinced that Gnome is just a huge waste of resources. Gnome does have one good thing going for it though: it keeps that bad developers away from KDE. That's about the only positive point that i can think of these days when i think of Gnome.

[Schotty]

[quote author=Tyr_7BE link=board=6;threadid=9547;start=0#msg87313 date=1091063630]
he comes off sounding like a hyperconservative nut job who's terrified of progress. [/quote]

Now hold on just a damn minute here !! I take offense at you lumping me, a hyper conservative nut job, with this pud ! Shame on you !


Now on to the serious side, I pretty much agree. I have long ago learnt that there is a tool for the job. And when you got into your languages' interlude, I was right there with you. I see something like python being a benefit to GNOME/KDE/AnyOtherAcronymDE, not the bane. As for the rest, I dont feel like trying to pull a miracle and restate what you have any better.

[Schotty]

[quote author=Ralinx link=board=6;threadid=9547;start=0#msg87322 date=1091088732]
anyways, my point is: with new KDE releases, i can actually see progress. i can actually spot new features every time. With new gnome releases, i have to go looking for new features and each time, i get dissapointed because stuff is constantly being postponed for later releases.
[/quote]

Since you are so elegant in your finding the flaws with GNOME, shouldn't you then be praising them for first fixing broken features rather than introducing more?

I fail to see how a bad/minimal/broken feature is worth it. Sure I would love ID3 tag editing in Rhythmbox, but first I want to be able to easily print, have ONE way of dealing with the filesystem, not 1 for each of the GNOME core apps.

If memory serves me right, wasn't the biggest gripe that KDE users had when testing/playing around with GNOME, the lack of :

consistency
integration
ease of use

I fail to see how those concerns have NOT been addressed. GNOME has with each release since 1.4 become more consistent, better integrated, and vastly easier to just USE. And I dont just use my experience, I have my non PC literate, non techie, non linux using friends, family, business clients to attest to that. I would expect that once GNOME 3.0 is released that the DE itself is completely cleaned of the evil 3 plagues I have mentioned. Those are vastly more useful to a user than what the individual apps deliver -- because without those, the applications are surrounded by a cluttered, clumsy interface.

[quote author=Schotty link=board=6;threadid=9547;start=0#msg87351 date=1091127048]
Since you are so elegant in your finding the flaws with GNOME, shouldn't you then be praising them for first fixing broken features rather than introducing more?
[/quote]
fixing bugs is praiseworthy. allow me to praise the KDE developers because they fix bugs AND introduce new features at a faster rate than Gnome developers.

I fail to see how a bad/minimal/broken feature is worth it. Sure I would love ID3 tag editing in Rhythmbox, but first I want to be able to easily print, have ONE way of dealing with the filesystem, not 1 for each of the GNOME core apps.

what do you mean with one way of dealing with the filesystem instead of 1 for each gnome core app? do you mean the file selector? if you do, you have just proved my point about how badly that part of the gnome framework was designed. Each and every KDE application uses the same way to deal with the fileystem

If memory serves me right, wasn't the biggest gripe that KDE users had when testing/playing around with GNOME, the lack of :

consistency

this is a valid point. and it's being addressed by the KDE people but these things take time. Just remember how long it took between Gnome 1.4 and Gnome 2.0 to come out.

integration

there is no way in hell that you can't call KDE well integrated . Sorry but a lot of KDE applications use parts of other KDE applications because of it's extremely powerful KParts technology. Example: i can use all of the Cervisia functionality from within Konqueror if i want, without having to start Cervisia. Or another example: Kontact which integrates 4 applications into ONE application. There is a shitload of other examples to show that KDE is in fact a greatly integrated desktop.

ease of use

i suppose this depends from person to person. i love listening to so called UI specialists about user-friendly GUI's. Hell they might even be as funny as Chris Rock. However, UI specialists treat users like ignorant people who should not be allowed to think for themselves. Everything should be so incredibly clear so that you wouldn't even have to think anymore. I'd like to remind you to the fact that almost every UI specialist agrees that Microsoft Windows has a horrible interface. And it does. But last time i checked, Windows had what... 96% of the desktop market? Nobody has problems using Windows. That says enough about the added value of UI specialists.

I fail to see how those concerns have NOT been addressed. GNOME has with each release since 1.4 become more consistent, better integrated, and vastly easier to just USE.

the exact same thing could be said for KDE. It actually has gotten more consistent (allthough they're far from done in that area but it is improving), the integration is already there and they keep coming up with new stuff to integrate all the time. And it's also gotten easier to use with every release.

And I dont just use my experience, I have my non PC literate, non techie, non linux using friends, family, business clients to attest to that.

My parents don't know shit about computers. They used gnome, and they could use it. Now they're using KDE and they actually love it. They have no usability problems whatsoever and they are glad that KDE actually runs at a decent speed on their system whereas they often complained that Gnome 2.6 was too slow.

I would expect that once GNOME 3.0 is released that the DE itself is completely cleaned of the evil 3 plagues I have mentioned.

you're probably right about that. but i think by the time they get there, KDE will have increased it's current advantage in functionality a lot more than it already is.

Those are vastly more useful to a user than what the individual apps deliver -- because without those, the applications are surrounded by a cluttered, clumsy interface.

i disagree... just look at Windows

[Schotty]

I am sure it was language barrier or just missed it, but when I referred to

consistency
integration
ease of use

I meant GNOME, not KDE. This isnt really about KDE but stock GNOME. All I have heard (and still to a large degree) is that in those three areas GNOME lacks bigtime.

ah ok