Linus on Gnome 3.2

[Alex Gabriel]

The move to Gnome 3 (with accompanying Unity portion) was more than enough to cause me to abandon it altogether.

KDE 4 does provide some nice tools (such as Amarok for music), but overall I find it runs a bit more slowly than previous iterations.

I've begun using XFCE, which provides, to my mind, a nice balance of features a la KDE while maintaining the simplicity of Gnome.

Neither Gnome 3 nor KDE have yet to produce a compelling reason for me to return to using them on a daily basis.

I get enough of both KDE and Gnome at work, while my computers at home all run XFCE.  I've managed to accomplish all the necessary tasks I have every using XFCE, as it has neither the speed issues of KDE nor the unpleasant interface of Gnome.
------Original Message------
From: D. Hugh Redelmeier
Sender: owner-tlug at ss.org
To: tlug at ss.org
ReplyTo: tlug at ss.org
Subject: Re: [TLUG]: Linus on Gnome 3.2
Sent: Dec 3, 2011 23:16

| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense at csclub.uwaterloo.ca>

| If Unity can be a project for a new dsktop style, why couldn't the
| people that wanted someting totally new do someting like that instead
| of hijacked and breaking gnome?
| 
| Gnome has lost many users and almost certainl a number of developers
| over this.  Was this new desktop idea really worth that?  If it was a
| good idea if would have survived and grown as a new project.
| 
| You don't go an break the expectations of our users if you care about
| them as users.

As a Gnome 2 & 3 user, my opinion IN THIS CASE is strongly in
agreement with Lennart.

But I don't like that.

Our systems are too complicated and intricate.  Simplicity and
elegance are important goals in computer systems.  The horrible truth
is that it is very hard to throw things away so almost all living
computer systems grow worse over time by this metric.

We really need to figure out how to simplify and eliminate features
without killing the userbase.

The Gnome Shell (by whatever name) has a long history of removing
features and options.  I've been bitten more than once.  I've taken it
philosophically in the past.  I've not decided whether I will accept
the losses with the move to Gnome 3's shell.

And even if I end up accepting it, I probably won't think that this is
a wise or kind change for most of the exiting userbase.

Given all this simplification, why is the resulting system so fat?
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