What Peter said.

Post #198,422 by ubernostrum 3/14/05 2:39:06 AM Reply	What Peter said. GNOME provides an amazingly usable desktop environment out-of-the box, with no configuration required, which is really what they've been aiming for. If that's not what you want, there are some ways to restore the configurability (mess with GConf keys, use gTweakUI, etc.) but like Peter said, you're really not in their target audience anymore. --\r\nYou cooin' with my bird? \r\n[link\|http://www.shtuff.us/\|shtuff]
Post #198,425 by ben_tilly 3/14/05 3:10:21 AM Reply	That's fine but... I wish that free software developers would stop incorporating Gnome into stuff that doesn't need it. The fact is that Gnome routinely breaks on incremental upgrades. Of the problems that I've had with Debian, the vast majority are directly attributable to Gnome offering no good upgrade path. (That's OK for a lot of proprietary vendors like Red Hat because there are stable releases of Gnome that they can use, and their users don't expect there to be a good upgrade path.) What makes this really irritating because I'm not trying to run Gnome, I'm just picking applications that I like and some have it as a dependency. Which I discover later when stuff breaks. And, of course, since I'm not a Gnome target user, any attempt for me to complain is useless. The Gnome developers won't care. For a random rant related to this particular issue, see [link\|http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2005/02/msg01136.html\|http://lists.debian..../02/msg01136.html]. Regards, Ben I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
Post #198,428 by pwhysall 3/14/05 3:16:49 AM Reply	I sympathise with that. However, GNOME is one of two de facto alternative standard desktop environments, along with KDE. For an application to garner significant support and credibility, the ability to integrate with one or both of these desktops is important. I do feel that application developers should, where practical, offer a version of their application that can be installed without support for GNOME/KDE. Abiword does this, for example; you can install it with or without GNOME support. As use of Linux and UNIX moves into the mainstream, though, I think the trend will be towards applications that either support GNOME/KDE or they don't; the option won't be there, and the applications that do not support one of the two major DEs will become marginalised as developers migrate towards applications with more mindshare and users. I'm not sure I agree with the assertion that GNOME routinely breaks on incremental upgrades—but that's a different discussion. I thought you'd just be happy with any old DE as long as xterm still worked, anyway, Ben :-) Peter [link\|http://www.ubuntulinux.org\|Ubuntu Linux] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Home] Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
Post #198,487 by ben_tilly 3/14/05 11:20:28 AM Reply	I'm pickier than you think Eye candy doesn't motivate me. Convenience does. Cheers, Ben I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
Post #198,434 by ubernostrum 3/14/05 6:09:49 AM Reply	GNOME integration I'm slowly coming around to GNOME again, after about three years on Enlightenment (with occasional forays into various *box WMs)... in all that time I've never had a problem with upgrades or with GNOME apps refusing to run outside GNOME. Maybe this is a distro-specific thing since I've been on various flavors of Red Hat/Fedora for most of that time. \r\n\r\n And it's not that the developers don't care about "power users"; they're almost exclusively in that class. But they've got a goal and a target audience in mind, and meeting many of your wants and needs would conflict with that. --\r\nYou cooin' with my bird? \r\n[link\|http://www.shtuff.us/\|shtuff]
Post #198,447 by folkert 3/14/05 8:19:00 AM Reply	To me, GNOME sucks less than most other stuff. But, there are many things I like about GNOME. I dist-upgrade every morning, incrementally have zero problems with GNOME during this. Many things I have come to like about the NIX desktop have disappeared from GNOME. This really is a huge gripe with me. Yes, I know I can do WTFever I want. But, let us be a realist, I have work todo as well. I also think GNOME sucks less than any other DE. Of course I could always use XFce or box or maker etc... but well, I just want the layout and integration GNOME provides for me. I just wish I could tweak the hell out of it like I could in v1.4. Devil's Pie is supposedly a means to an end, but it is a bit clumsy. This isn't really that I dislike KDE, just I prefer GNOME's feel and fit. -- [link\|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net\|greg], [link\|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry\|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ i_wethey* [link\|http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134485&cid=11233230\|"Microsoft Security" is an even better oxymoron than "Military Intelligence"] No matter how much Microsoft supporters whine about how Linux and other operating systems have just as many bugs as their operating systems do, the bottom line is that the serious, gut-wrenching problems happen on Windows, not on Linux, not on Mac OS. -- [link\|http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1622086,00.asp\|source]
Post #198,471 by cwbrenn 3/14/05 10:45:11 AM Reply	Coming from OS/2... ... I'm somewhat spoiled. I want to be able to configure anything to look exactly how I want it to, using a graphical user interface to do so... ... at present, no Linux front-end even comes to close to doing this. That said of them all, KDE is the one I have become most comfortable with over time, and I'm mightily impressed with the sheer volume of applications -- reasonably useful applications, no less -- that the KDE developers keep churning out. Sometimes there is needless duplication, but I'd rather have feast than famine. And with each release the user interface becomes more and more useable, even though oddities (like this damned kmenuedit bug -- I'm not convinced it's purely a kde thing, I think Mepis did something on top of it that's screwing me over) persist. And I'm very fond of the Konqueror browser -- loads faster than Firefox on my machine, and a lot easier to manage bookmarks. Though I confess I am puzzled as to why it insists on bolding EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF NON-ITALICIZED TEXT on ubersoft.net... "We are all born originals -- why is it so many of us die copies?" - Edward Young
Post #198,483 by ben_tilly 3/14/05 11:15:13 AM Reply	Maybe doing it every day is the trick Applications that I've had Gnome-related painful breakage on in the past include fvwm2 and galeon. It may be that if you're trying to use Gnome in the way that they intend (eg using it for your desktop environment), then you'll have fewer problems. I dunno. Cheers, Ben I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
Post #198,479 by admin 3/14/05 11:10:55 AM Reply	That's really the part that ticks me off: you're really not in their target audience anymore. The reason I liked GNOME so much originally was exactly that it let me set everything exactly the way I wanted, easily. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."

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