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back to article GNOME emits 'head up the arse' desktop update

The GNOME Project has updated its desktop barely six months after the controversial introduction of version 3.0. GNOME 3.2 has a new online accounts manager for accessing web-based services and data storage and integrating this with the browser and other software. The new code also has a viewing application dubbed Sushi, which …

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    1. DrXym
      Reply Icon

      Contradictory statements

      "Gnome 3 and Unity both completely disregarded what users actually wanted and set about dictating what users should have. Swayed by trendy hip touch screen mobile devices, they've done their upmost to drag the desktop in that direction."

      As the saying goes, if Henry Ford had asked his customers what they wanted they'd have asked for a faster horse.

      I'm sure xfce does appeal to people who want an old school desktop but developments on Windows, OS X, Android, iOS would suggest many people do want an attractive, minimalist, taskcentric, compositing UI. Given that GNOME 3 is only into its second iteration this day I think it's still doing a pretty good job of delivering that. It's certainly not flawless but I find it very usable although I had to tweak it a bit.

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      1. Ben 42
        Reply Icon

        Henry Ford

        Except I would argue that in your analogy, Henry Ford was working on iOS or Android - something new that performs a similar task to what came before. Whereas what Gnome is doing is building a car by putting a horse on a treadmill. It's awkward, forced, and doesn't make sense because it's mixing paradigms. Cramming a touch interface onto a desktop makes no more sense than a horse-powered car.

        Although to be fair, that may apply more to Unity than Gnome, and I haven't spent enough time with either to say for sure. Mostly I just liked the analogy. ;-)

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  2. This is my handle
    Headmaster

    "All your online accounts are belong to OS"

    Well, it sounds like English, but the words don't quite fit together to make like, you know, a sentence thingy.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      fyi

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Hmmm

      Read much IT (and specifically hacker) related tech news much?

      I'm guessing not.

      Either that or you missed the <joke> icon off your comment.

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    3. Robert Carnegie Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Look up "all your base are belong to us" - written like that.

      I think what is actually meant in this context is "It can use your online accounts."

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    4. NumptyScrub
      Reply Icon

      it's an internet meme

      "All your online accounts are belong to OS

      Well, it sounds like English, but the words don't quite fit together to make like, you know, a sentence thingy."

      No doubt I've been beaten by several posters, but it's based on the mistranslation of Zero Wing that did the rounds a while back:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us

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  3. Tristan Young

    Garden Gnome

    I've been fairly <strike>unimpressed</strike> disappointed by the Gnome project. I began with Gnome, and found it fairly nice, but over the years, it really started pissing me off as the updates rolled out.

    A few years back, I switched to KDE, and haven't looked back. Now KDE hasn't had the best track record either, but it definitely hasn't pissed me off nearly as much as Gnome.

    The most recent Gnome is not going to grace my desktop, and here's why...

    While Ubuntu and Kubuntu went from networking in v6 through v8 to notworking in subsequent versions (each release seemed to get worse than before, with more problems that I needed to figure out how to fix), Microsoft was busy working on their trashiest OS yet - Windows Vista, and subsequently on their greatest OS yet - Windows 7.

    I finally had to give up on Linux because I was spending more time fixing stuff just so I could surf the net. The music software available was also far too limiting (and non-functional), and the disaster which is Pulseaudio meant I couldn't even produce music without hearing pops, clicks, and noise.

    Now I'm with Windows 7, and it works great. It doesn't crash on me. Networking just works. I don't get pops and clicks while composing music. I don't have to try and fix anything, because everything just works.

    I still keep Linux around on a junked laptop so I can keep up with the technology, but I have barely used it in the last 6 months. Linux distros and developers need to wake up and smell the coffee. Their user experience was starting to get really good, then plummeted. Rather than take their competitor's shortcomings and build and capitalize on their weakness, companies like Canonical, and coders turned the distro's into epic failures, and allowed Windows 7 to shine. Just because it (Linux) is free, doesn't mean it's good. It was really good, and then it started sucking in a big way.

    Productivity means getting work done. Linux held me back. But I'm back on track now.

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    1. FreeTard
      Reply Icon

      Choice mate

      No one is forcing you to stay with a single UI. I have several installed on various laptops and switch them around every now and then. KDE, LXDE, XFCE and sometimes, but rarely Gnome again.

      With windows, your stuck with no choice.

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    2. BitDr
      Reply Icon

      Music players is not a good enough reason...

      "I finally had to give up on Linux because I was spending more time fixing stuff just so I could surf the net. The music software available was also far too limiting (and non-functional), and the disaster which is Pulseaudio meant I couldn't even produce music without hearing pops, clicks, and noise."

      Haven't heard any clicks or pops in a LOOOOOONG time, I surf the net daily and never worry about malware. Music software is not why I use a computer and I certainly will not buy Windows just for music.

      My biggest complaint with Linux isn't with the O/S but with the idiots deciding that they can dictate what we use, hiding and changing functionality is not the Linux way, its the way of more proprietary systems... so when I see these patterns of behaviour I cringe.

      Fork Gnome.

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      1. DrXym
        Reply Icon

        Nonsense

        "My biggest complaint with Linux isn't with the O/S but with the idiots deciding that they can dictate what we use, hiding and changing functionality is not the Linux way, its the way of more proprietary systems... so when I see these patterns of behaviour I cringe."

        Proprietary systems can afford to fund extensive usability studies and discover (shock horror) that normal users don't like a billion switches and settings and would just prefer their bloody thing desktop to work properly with minimum configuration.

        The problem for Linux usability is too often an afterthought or ignored entirely. GNOME is different and has put usability front and centre which would explain why it is the most popular desktop for Linux.

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    3. squilookle
      Reply Icon
      Trollface

      @FreeTard The choice thing is a double edged sword. While it is sometimes nice to have the choice, and the ability to switch UI's if you don't like changes to the one you're using, do you *really* need to be able to do that? Most users don't.

      My experience is similar to that of Tristan Young: I use Windows 7 and view it as a tool. It lets me do the tasks I need to on my computer, with no tinkering. I don't need to customise it or change the way it works, I just want to get stuff done. Some people do want to customise and that's fine, but I believe they are a minority.

      I used Linux on the desktop for about 6 years, and I enjoyed it but constantly found myself trying different desktop environments and distributions, either because another one introduced a feature I liked the sound of, or because the one I was using changed for no apparent reason and annoyed me.

      I am disappointed with the way desktop Linux is going, in general. I think change for the sake of it (GNOME, Ubuntu) over the last few years has damaged some experiences that were rapidly improving, and were catching up to those of Windows and OSX.

      I still run a couple of web servers with Linux, and I'm happy with those.

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      1. eulampios
        Reply Icon

        tough love

        If windows is cool, why their best text editor notepad or anything else sucks so much? Is there a reasonable shell and a terminal program (not that stupid ugly-looking thing they still have)? Have Win7 become modular finally? What about those shoutings "don't click on the link, don't insert a DVD/usb, don't open this email message - they might be dangerous"?!!! Or you just love running a piece or two of extra bloatware, called an AV scan that constantly grind your hdd, occupy your RAM/CPU and might do some other stuff, you do not have an idea of?

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      2. eulampios
        Reply Icon

        GNU/Linux (*BSD) + music=awesome

        <<The music software available was also far too limiting (and non-functional), and the disaster which is Pulseaudio meant I couldn't even produce music without hearing pops, clicks, and noise.>>

        It might have been just a driver issue. Now pulseaudio is very stable and good. My experience is that with Linux/FreeBSD I had much more choices than Windows people had. Consider cdrdao, shntools, sox etc. Yes they are available for Windblows OS as well, however, it is not usually accessible to those who are so afraid of the command line (yes the right way to communicate with the machine. )

        Anyways, let me brag about my music collection I was able to build thanks to GNU and Linux. Turned ape into flac all over. Populated all cuesheets (with sed, awk, bash and cuetols). Enjoying now Bach (the papa and sons), Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and other great stuff playing in clementine. Good 'ol xmms, audacious, even mplayer are also very good. Maybe it is just me with classical music, some kind of rock rocks and pop pops up on Windows only?

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        1. Matthew 25
          Reply Icon
          FAIL

          "It might have been just a driver issue. "

          I think this is exactly the point he was making. He doesn't have to mess about with drivers - it just works.

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          1. eulampios
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            That is a pretty rare issue nowadays. Last time I had it with... FreeBSD-7 3-4 years ago.

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      3. Chemist
        Reply Icon

        "I am disappointed with the way desktop Linux is going"

        I use OpenSuse 11.4 on 6 machines with KDE and it all just works

        Don't know what the rest of you all are doing.

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        1. Chika
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          Coat

          Celery

          Before anyone says it, yes, Linux is not openSUSE either. ^_^

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    6. eulampios
      Reply Icon

      sorry for it

      What an unfortunate and rare experience! I am sorry for you, sir, as well as are a few former Windows users being quite happy with GNU/Linux (Ubuntu, so far Unity-free) after I helped them install it.

      Yes, I remember I too sometimes get disappointed with certain upgrades. Freshly-baked cutting-edge Fedora and Ubuntu are not supposed to be absolutely problems-free. LTS Ubuntu or Debian (stable) are stable as rock though. With free and open software everyone has much more choices than with the locking-in alternatives.

      Tried Win7 recently, it's not as good as my Gnome2 though, nor KDE, nor XFCE, nor Enlightenment, nor Fluxbox (especially, on this very thin hardware, obsolete according to M$). No bash nor any other reasonable shell, no control, no freedom, very little common sense.

      Gnome2 is/was almost perfect. Why changing it? Linus is right, I hope gnome developers will learn a lesson here. And all of us still have plenty of choices, this is (partly) why many of us left the Windows camp in the first place.

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  4. goats in pajamas
    Facepalm

    Needless.

    That's the problem with the Gnome Devs - needless, pointless change, for the worse, followed by weeks of sneering at anyone who questions their work.

    Anyway.

    I care not.

    Fusion Linux 14.1

    Fedora 14 respin - just lovely.

    Gnome 2.3.

    Everything works straight out of the box.

    For me, Ubuntu is finished, as is any other distro that uses Gnome 3.

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    1. Chika
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Rhubarb

      Ubuntu finished because of GNOME 3? I doubt it. I might not be Umbongo's biggest fan but there's more to a Linux distro than one dodgy UI.

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  5. theDragon
    Thumb Down

    Polish a turd and it still is a turd

    Title says it all

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  6. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Happy

    Another OpenBox-er here.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A pox on most of your houses

    I used to love messing with computers. I've been a computer geekette all my adult life (I'm in my 50's) until this year. This was the year that I first experienced Android (on a 7in tablet. In a word - dreadful), and the year that Gnome decided to change direction radically when they were soo near perfection with Gnome 2 - and this following the huge mistakes that KDE made when they decided to go for a major change of direction.

    I've quite simply lost interest, I'm fed up of computing devices that fight me and make things unecessarily awkward. Just about every computing device I have to come into contact with these days aside from my Xubuntu 10.4 desktop on this PC are awkward, 'twitchy' (prone to do weird things because of numerous secret ways to prod the UI supposedly to be helpful but which actually make using them an excercise in frustration), and frankly, awful. That includes Windows on the PCs at work, as well as Android 2.3 on my tablet (- an absolutely absymal horror of a UI - only surpassed in horror by the web browsers on Android and the Android app store).

    Gaaah. Goodbye messing with PC's for fun. . A pox on Windows, Android, Apple, Unity, Gnome 3 and KDE. I'm taking up dressmaking instead

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    1. Peter Besenbruch
      Reply Icon

      I Know what you Mean

      "I used to love messing with computers. I've been a computer geekette all my adult life (I'm in my 50's) until this year. ... the year that Gnome decided to change direction radically when they were soo near perfection with Gnome 2 - and this following the huge mistakes that KDE made when they decided to go for a major change of direction."

      As I turned 50, I changed the /etc/apt/sources.list to stop pointing at "testing," and to point instead to the name of the testing branch (Etch). That way I got to experience some of the legendary Debian stability.

      When KDE launched version 4, I was somewhat protected by Debian's release cycles. It gave me plenty of time to evaluate KDE 4 as it developed, and decide that while I liked the direction KDE was heading, I wanted something lighter weight.

      I also run LTS versions of Mint and Ubuntu Not up to Debian's stability standards, but if you want a quick install, they work fine.

      I just put Debian on a netbook. I used LXDE and controlled the wireless with Network-Manager. With just Lxterminal open, I use 75 meg. That's what Linux is about. I get to choose how to run my machines, and then stop worrying.

      The Gnome leadership has always been somewhat arrogant, but I suspect version 3 will be OK in another year or so.

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      1. eulampios
        Reply Icon

        great post

        Great post and a good thought!

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    I forgot to mention

    The sexist paraphrased( "A computer desktop is not a place for a woman") drivel!

    ..Yes, the article does say 2011, my screen hasn't become a doctor-whoesque portal to the past after all.

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    1. Chika
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Cumquat

      Heh! My first boss was a woman and it was me that taught her to use a mouse!

      I used an Acorn A3000 and Lemmings to do it...

      Ah, happy days!

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    With a Linux community Like this

    1. Quick to respond with anger or with a self assigned superiority complex, or down rate placid points of view that don't agree with their own.

    2. Childish enough to criticise Microsoft Windows even though its not even mentioned in the article with the tiring $ symbol, rather than respect peoples right to choose.

    3. Reciting experiences of Windows performance and stability issues from what seems like a century ago.

    4. What seems like absolute user revolt against the idea of a successful Linux distribution, to feed into that superiority complex.

    Is it any wonder there are problems with GNOME and Unity. Its time the Linux user base pulled their head out of their own arse and contribute constructively, positively, and about time they showed some respect to others and their choices, and grew up a little with the Microsoft hate speech.

    And yes I have experience and use Linux and Windows 7 on different machines with different goals, I am fortunate enough to have a balanced opinion and a bit of respect for users of each and the reasons they choose to do so.

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    1. Chika
      Reply Icon
      Devil

      Broccoli

      "1. Quick to respond with anger or with a self assigned superiority complex, or down rate placid points of view that don't agree with their own."

      Fanbois will be fanbois

      "2. Childish enough to criticise Microsoft Windows even though its not even mentioned in the article with the tiring $ symbol, rather than respect peoples right to choose."

      Oh come on! Consider that the whole "Micro$oft Window$" thing has been around for decades now (I recall first seeing this on Usenet in the 1990s) and is done, amongst other reasons, to annoy Microsoft fanbois and fangrrls. The secret is not to rise to it!

      "3. Reciting experiences of Windows performance and stability issues from what seems like a century ago."

      You'd be safer not going there. While Windows is undoubtedly more stable these days than back when W3.1 was doing the rounds, it still has its flaws. Don't criticise until you see the actual flaw (or what I normally say - leave the error message on the screen until I get there!)

      "4. What seems like absolute user revolt against the idea of a successful Linux distribution, to feed into that superiority complex."

      Actually this has more to do with a preconception that some folk have which is why I often state that Linux is NOT <distro>.

      "Is it any wonder there are problems with GNOME and Unity. Its time the Linux user base pulled their head out of their own arse and contribute constructively, positively, and about time they showed some respect to others and their choices, and grew up a little with the Microsoft hate speech."

      They do. Don't judge all users by what you see here - consider that Linux is the sum of its user base. Where do you think the code comes from?

      "And yes I have experience and use Linux and Windows 7 on different machines with different goals, I am fortunate enough to have a balanced opinion and a bit of respect for users of each and the reasons they choose to do so."

      I'm glad to hear it. Now all you need is a sense of humour to go with it.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Alien

        Broccoli's nice, especially with carrots and roast beef.

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  10. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Mushroom

    There's something inherent in Linux, I think...

    That makes them get somewhere near and then make it all go tits up.

    Aaargh. I was going to post some long, erudite, and witty post pointing out some of the more egregious idiocies that have been perpetrated on top of Linux over the years, but to be honest, you probably know them already. Many of them have been mentioned here earlier.

    I'll merely state that I'm happy with Mint 10 - after giving up in disgust with Ubuntu after five or six years when they inserted Unity.

    I still program in C, too.

    Aaargh.

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    1. Captain Thyratron
      Reply Icon

      Minty fresh?

      I'm glad Mint exists. I don't use it myself, but it is morally incumbent upon me to offer it as a suggestion every time I hear some guy musing on inflicting the horror of Ubuntu on his mother. It is pretty much the reliable, resource-friendly, normal-people-accessible Linux that Ubuntu is supposed to be.

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Who cares?

    All I need from my desktop is a reasonably efficient way to present xterms, and a browser ... I am sure Gnome has made some really important advances in ... err, something. Maybe there are drag and drop facilities or some such .. who knows/cares ... I dont use them.

    So long as I can display a few xterms and pop a browser and Eclipse up on the screen, I'm happy.

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  12. Captain Thyratron

    Madness is in!

    The trouble with all these full-fat environments used to be that they treated you like a dumbass, came with zillions of superfluous programs that shoddily imitated the functions of basic, better-debugged system utilities, and did irresponsable things to memory usage. Now, additionally, they assume you're insane, and that you have a terrible fear of anything that doesn't look like a tablet interface with flame decals and spinning rims.

    I work at a help desk in a facility that was blighted with Fedora 15 recently, and we've been having all manner of bizarre problems with (among other things) GNOME 3. Freezing on logout. Users getting logged out unexpectedly. Applications ignoring previously working settings due to unresolved GNOME 3 bugs. X crashing mysteriously. Oh, and users not being able to find where the hell anything is. Every GNOME-bewildered user who has taken my advice ("try logging in under XFCE instead, or maybe Fluxbox, or anything else in that menu that isn't GNOME or KDE") has thanked me as though I'd rescued them from the claws of Satan.

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    1. Chika
      Reply Icon

      Melons

      I might note here that I moved a recent project off Fedora and onto openSUSE for this sort of reason. The way I saw it was that Fedora is a cutting edge distro in that not everything it did was necessarily ready for a production machine but it had the latest of everything.

      While openSUSE has a similar environment if you want it, the main distro tends to be more tried and trusted as far as what is in it goes, so the project wasn't as open to possible bugs that could affect it. Horses for course, I guess.

      Ubuntu is (supposedly) similar in approach (other than being aimed more at the GNOME environment and being Debian based amongst other things) which, I suppose, is why so many ex-Windows users tend to favour it.

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  13. This is my handle
    Coat

    @AC 14:35 (several): Thanks!

    I thought there may have been a joke I was missing; thanks for clearing things up!

    (He said, sheepishly....).

    Mine's the one w/ the DVD of old SNL bits and Miss Wotyjla (Gilda Radner, RIP) saying "Never Mind".

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  14. Richard Lloyd
    Stop

    Don't use Fedora at work...

    Captain Thyratron, I suspect whoever decided to install Fedora 15 on your work desktop is a pretty clueless admin. Not only is Fedora considered relatively bleeding edge, F15 in particular sucked spherical objects very hard indeed, which a few hours of testing would have shown. It's got a Frankenstein mix of systemd and Sys V init, GNOME 3 that works dismally on many ATI cards (It was only until Ubuntu 11.10 beta that I finally found a GNOME 3 distro that actually works with my ATI card) and even me, as a regular Fedora upgrader, decided to skip F15 due to its quite astonishing suckiness (they may have fixed issues with updates, but since F14 is still getting updates, I stayed with something that worked from day one).

    What your IT people should have done was look at CentOS 6 - a free clone of RHEL 6 with 7 years of updates (F15 stops updates after about 14 months of life), GNOME 2 and 100% Sys V init. A much more suitable choice for a corporate Linux desktop than F15, IMHO.

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  15. Zmodem

    gnome and kde can be as complete as they want, but linux will always be crap and not used much as a home desktop OS, until the whole desktop is hardware rendered through auto kernel code like windows, and every app not needed its own code to be hardware accelerated

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    1. Chika
      Reply Icon
      Holmes

      o rly?

      And there's me thinking "Linux won't be much of a home OS until manufacturers stop bundling their systems with Windows" or somesuch. I doubt very much that any ordinary home user would even have the first clue about how the system delivers its code.

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  16. Julian Bradfield

    Nobody else using fvwm2, then?

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  17. Zmodem

    anyone want to see openGL fullscreen screensavers slowing down with quad SLi

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  18. D. M
    Linux

    Another mint user

    Try Mint. It works and doesn't take crap.

    I think it is much to do with how Mint was financed. Mint is community based. Its users (like me) contribute to the project cost. If the developers do any crap to piss the users, they are in crap then.

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    1. Zmodem
      Reply Icon

      no desktop on linux is hardware rendered, whether you install nvida or amd/ati drivers, each and every application has to call the drivers themselves, which pro programmers cant be assed todo if they want to port a powerful commercial application for vectors or 3d etc, or games pitsode pf od spftware

      without desktop being hardware rendered, you cannot use all display sizes of your monitor either

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  19. FuzzyTheBear
    FAIL

    aie carramba !

    Just tried 3.2 on Sabayon 64 amd . it s**** just as bad as 3.0.

    Where is GNOME 1.4 ! .. That was WAY better than this .

    Time for a fork or a serious rollback in time.

    Lost interrest years ago and i wont return .. xfce or kde are the better options.

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  20. json

    Having migrated my dependable laptop of 4 years to Fedora 15 fairly recently there's a couple of things that irritates me a) Hibernate with many apps open usually (for me) results in a crash on waking, requiring fsck.. old XP doesnt have a problem with this at all b) when opening directories and files using the navigator, doing a right click has the copy but not the paste (but it's in one of the menus). c) the Gnome 3.0 is nice but fails reliably when an extended monitor is attached.

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