[GTALUG] Heads up: Ubuntu 21.10 kills your desktop icons

[Giles Orr]

On Wed, 20 Oct 2021 at 11:03, Lennart Sorensen via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Oct 20, 2021 at 10:47:30AM -0400, Michael Hill via talk wrote:
> > I prefer the elegant design and centralized vision of the GNOME
> > desktop, but the whininess of the GNOME hatred here never gets old.
>
> When a desktop going from version 2 to 3 throws away everything users
> are used to, and the developers simply don't care, then it deserves any
> hate it receives.
>
> If they wanted to have a totally new vision (which is perfectly fine to
> do), they should have started a new project, not hijacked an existing one.

I think that Lennart has just reduced the whole problem to one
sentence.  A new vision is good - the history of Linux is littered
with "new visions," most of them long deceased ... however, the ones
that succeed move us forward.  But GNOME - as he points out - didn't
so much create a new vision as simultaneously hijacking and destroying
an old one.  Hugh sees this as a rewrite, but when almost nothing of
the former "vision" or paradigm remains, it's really a new project.
And yeah, if you spin it off as a new project you may be abandoning
the old one - but at least if you abandon it there's an opportunity
for someone to pick it up ...

Which brings up an interesting point.  As much as people scream about
GNOME3, I don't think anyone forked GNOME2, which they're more than
welcome to do.  Someone offended by KDE4 forked KDE3 and carried it on
as the Trinity Desktop Environment ( http://www.trinitydesktop.org/ ),
which is still going.  So I guess the GNOME3 haters just aren't that
motivated ...

If anyone is wondering where I stand on this (I'm sure most don't care
but one or two might) - I never liked GNOME2, and I really dislike the
behaviour of GNOME3.  But I don't have any skin in the game because I
still use Openbox on most machines (with 'fbpanel' and 'dmenu' or
'rofi' as a launcher).  If I feel the need for a full desktop, LXQt
isn't bad and lighter weight than the alternatives.

-- 
Giles
https://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr at gmail.com