Linus's review of Gnome

arooaroo · 2005-12-13 14:53:03

http://lists.osdl.org/pipermail/desktop … 00390.html:

Linus wrote:

I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.
This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of
Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will
use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long
since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do.
Please, just tell people to use KDE.

Yeah - you tell 'em Linus!

Mr Green · 2005-12-13 15:33:29

Whats Gnome? :shock:

arooaroo · 2005-12-13 15:40:34

I dunno. Who's this Linus bloke too?

Mr Green · 2005-12-13 15:48:40

emm I know who Linus is ...hes a real cool dude like created something great ;-)

xterminus · 2005-12-13 15:49:59

I think it's kind of ironic that Linus is promoting the DE that has been known for bloat and featurecreep, when he's been the posterboy of selecting technology for it's efficiency in the past.

arooaroo wrote:

http://lists.osdl.org/pipermail/desktop … 00390.html:
Linus wrote:
I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.
This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of
Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will
use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long
since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do.
Please, just tell people to use KDE.
Yeah - you tell 'em Linus!

atze · 2005-12-13 15:59:53

I actually don't even believe he said it. Linux populairty is depending on KDE and Gnome, it wouldn't be very smart of Linus to take a position in the DE war.

arooaroo · 2005-12-13 16:00:01

xterminus wrote:

I think it's kind of ironic that Linus is promoting the DE that has been known for bloat and featurecreep, when he's been the posterboy of selecting technology for it's efficiency in the past.

The problem is that people just assume that because KDE comes with loads of stuff - it's "bloated". Yet, when you run it, it works fine and it's perfectly responsive. The perception of bloat can easily get in the way. At the end of the day, it works pretty well. I just wish it was packaged in a way that it becomes easier to pick and choose which components I want.

kensai · 2005-12-13 16:36:45

The great thing of OSS is that Linus Torvalds means nothing. The kernel development can go on without him and not even a word he says count if you don't want it to. Linus Torvalds has been a non-professional developer whcih cannot market Linux at it should be. Linux would be more withouth his ignorance and poor knowledge of marketing. He should be neutral in matters like this like all professionals. Linus Torvalds dissapoints me.

Moo-Crumpus · 2005-12-13 16:50:33

.... he complains about a printer dialogue of gnome that does not include ALL features ... omg, when did he became such a lame duck? Such a debate as if one can't control cups in every other way, if one likes. This is shocking. As if I can't touch a setting when there is no full featured gnome thing. Bah.

I love gnome for what it is. Gives a small set of functionallity for every day usage.

... the usability team of GNOME was against
listing these options. They clutter the dialog and can be more confusing
than useful to the user.
But on the other side the user wants to make use of the full
functionality of his printer. He has payed for it.

Hey! I want my money back! I can't use my printers full functionality because they've been stolen by gnome! Isn't this a terror attack? Call the police, the cia, the army! And make brezel-w notice it, so he will bomb gnome.org! :shock:

arooaroo · 2005-12-13 16:59:51

kensai wrote:

... He should be neutral in matters like this like all professionals. Linus Torvalds dissapoints me.

I think that's a tad unfair. He's entitled to be as critical as the rest of us.

kth5 · 2005-12-13 17:21:24

i agree that GNOME desktop is not exactly more lightweight than KDE is while providing the same features, it's totally the opossite. just take a look how scattered its parts are and yet doesn't even come with a proper default browser which is - at least in my opinion - an essential part of the DE. that said, how many additional packages do you need to install to get all the features combined in KDE with just kde{libs,base}?
going even farther down the ladder, i have the choice to use which WM i'd like to use with the GNOME desktop. what the heck? none of them is optimized for all features, right? so why not combine all these into one and do what's best to fit the DE image people build up around GNOME? shouldn't the default be all i need?

oh well, i think GNOME kind of aims away of being a DE anyway. let's take a peek at what they say about themselves:

What is GNOME?
The GNOME project provides two things: The GNOME desktop environment, an intuitive and attractive desktop for end-users, users, and the GNOME development platform, an extensive framework for building applications that integrate into the rest of the desktop.

so it's only half a DE and the other half is meant to be a library of things one could use to build applications, as i understand it.

i remember i tried GNOME desktop 2.10 a while back, ok it had a panel to modify keybindings but only for those predefined. i actually needed to install gnome-config-editor to add custom ones, i bet the editor itself was bigger than the whole thing in GNOME. only one example i remember dearly.

oh well, ignore me. i just became a happy KDE user soon after GNOME 1.4 was declared deprecated.

cactus · 2005-12-13 18:06:18

I used be a KDE user. Seems like long ago..

I really can't stand QT though. If I see an app written in QT..I pretty much write it off. Not my kettle of tunafish, not to mention the sizable library requirement for QT..

I do use gnome currently, but I am not what you would consider a "happy gnome user".
For some reason, gnome (and KDE) are really the only DE's that make fonts look readable on my setup (monitor/Graphics card). I have been using Ubuntu..which has nice fontage.. but yeah. Not happy with gnome. From my desktop screenshots, you can see how much I have bastardized it.

Raster needs to get e17 done.
Ubuntu needs to use that as the default WM.
Ubuntu needs to base the distro off Arch instead of Debian.

That would make me a happy little user.

kensai · 2005-12-13 19:58:09

arooaroo wrote:

kensai wrote:
... He should be neutral in matters like this like all professionals. Linus Torvalds dissapoints me.
I think that's a tad unfair. He's entitled to be as critical as the rest of us.

He should be neutral he kills GNOME and Linux marketing because of his stupidity. Now morons following Linus Torvalds will change from Ubuntu and others based on Gnome just because a moron like Linus Torvalds who does not know nothing about marketing can't stand to be neutral and just work for linux to be a great OS. Thats why I'm putting my hopes on BSD now. Linux is inmature and I love it but Linus Torvalds kills it. So take a marketing class and learn how is Linux failing because of Linus itself. Linux would have been a better OS by now if it weren't for Linus Torvalds stupidity.

gunnix · 2005-12-13 20:16:20

Linus seems quite an asshole to me

But the fault doesn't really lie with him. People should just not pay so much attention to him. It's just like Richard Stallman who maybe thinks he created the free software movement...

The bad thing is that people who know nothing about linux think Linus is the leader and what he says can hurt the whole linux community.

I didn't really pay too much attention to linus since I knew he drives a Mercedes SLK , loves fireweapons, etc. He's nothing special

Snarkout · 2005-12-13 20:24:53

kensai wrote:

arooaroo wrote:
kensai wrote:
... He should be neutral in matters like this like all professionals. Linus Torvalds dissapoints me.
I think that's a tad unfair. He's entitled to be as critical as the rest of us.
He should be neutral he kills GNOME and Linux marketing because of his stupidity. Now morons following Linus Torvalds will change from Ubuntu and others based on Gnome just because a moron like Linus Torvalds who does not know nothing about marketing can't stand to be neutral and just work for linux to be a great OS. Thats why I'm putting my hopes on BSD now. Linux is inmature and I love it but Linus Torvalds kills it. So take a marketing class and learn how is Linux failing because of Linus itself. Linux would have been a better OS by now if it weren't for Linus Torvalds stupidity.

It seems like you're taking Linuses opinions kinda personally. It's absurd to say that Linus isn't entitled to post his opinion about whatever he feels like. It is, however completely reasonable to disagree with him. Personally, I'm with him though -- I really like a lot about gnome, but IMO they've trimmed way more than the fat at this point.

Snarkout · 2005-12-13 20:31:24

gunnix wrote:

Linus seems quite an asshole to me
But the fault doesn't really lie with him. People should just not pay so much attention to him. It's just like Richard Stallman who maybe thinks he created the free software movement...
The bad thing is that people who know nothing about linux think Linus is the leader and what he says can hurt the whole linux community.
I didn't really pay too much attention to linus since I knew he drives a Mercedes SLK , loves fireweapons, etc. He's nothing special

If you have that reaction to Linus, check out the OpenBSD lists sometime . FWIW, Linus himself freely admits that he's an opinionated, arrogant bastard sometimes. I don't have a quote or a link, but I've seen several posts on lists where he points out that he's not always interested in making sure that everyone feels good, he's interested in shipping a good product.

arooaroo · 2005-12-13 20:32:00

I find it interesting to think there are hordes of users who only use software that comes with the Linus 'Star of Approval'. I.e., now that Linus has publically snubbed Gnome, said hordes jump ship.

Whilst Linus gets a lot of press, and people listen to what he says, they don't automatically accept it as gospel. (Or maybe they do, in which case they're stupid).

lunke · 2005-12-13 20:35:04

From personal experience, GNOME is slow considering what it offers, KDE is almost equally slow however it offers a whole lot more. If I only didn't hate Qt as much I'd be a KDE zealot

gunnix · 2005-12-13 21:16:48

Snarkout wrote:

Linus himself freely admits that he's an opinionated, arrogant bastard sometimes. I don't have a quote or a link, but I've seen several posts on lists where he points out that he's not always interested in making sure that everyone feels good, he's interested in shipping a good product.

I don't think his opinion matters that much to make people feeling bad or good

Gullible Jones · 2005-12-13 21:22:45

I like Gnome better for two simple reasons:

a) Its components are stuffed ten at a time into big packages, so it's easier to customize.

b) It uses GTK, which is a more common toolkit among graphical *nix apps than QT.

However, it needs improvement with regard to multimedia - GStreamer 0.8.x should never have been used as the main backend for any Gnome stuff, and Totem's plugin should just work (it did in Totem 1.1.3, so why the hell not now?!). Also, it ought to give you more customizability - a menu for selecting different WMs, for example.

Oh, and did I mention that Metacity is still not up to the standards of, say, Fluxbox, never mind OB3 or FVWM?

Dusty · 2005-12-13 21:52:45

ITs very hard to follow the intermixed flamewars (KDE > gnome || KDE < gnome && Linus == moron) in this thread.

Like Judd, Linus started Linux as a personal hobby, and as far as I know doesn't give a damn about what other people use it for. Of course people are welcome to market it as they like, and he's allowed to code it as he likes. And other people can code it as they like too. I'm sure he'd be much happier if nobody else used it and he could just worry about making the kernel perfect for his personal purposes.

Bear in mind that the guy is probably one of the top five genius-level programmers in the world.

Now, the other flamewar, KDE vs gnome is very much like comparing Toronto to, say Los Angelas. Both are very big cities, and neither are very nice places to live.

Wonder if I should become a moderator again so I can lock silly topics like this... where's a mod when you need one? ;-)

Dusty

iBertus · 2005-12-13 22:17:31

can't stand Qt or KDE! If I *MUST* use a DE then I use GNOME. Maybe it's just habbit?>!

JGC · 2005-12-13 22:56:57

I don't get this guy. Linus is very childish in my opinion, he should know better at his age and with his profession:

the thread starts with a call to improve the printing usability in gnome, since many things aren't usable in the current printing dialog. The thread starter makes a good nice and shiny startpost with his opinions about what he wants to see changed in the printing dialog...
Then comes linus, he flames ahead on gnome and promotes his KDE... voila, a DE war has started, completely off-topic...

kensai · 2005-12-13 23:09:46

It's tru nobody cares what Linus says. I use KDE and GNOME so I'm not inclined to any of them. But, that Linus is a moron is for sure.

pikass · 2005-12-13 23:15:09

yea nobody cares, that is why there are thousands threads out there regarding his comment and hundreds posts like yours...

Arch Linux

#1 2005-12-13 14:53:03

Linus's review of Gnome

#2 2005-12-13 15:33:29

Re: Linus's review of Gnome

#3 2005-12-13 15:40:34

Re: Linus's review of Gnome

#4 2005-12-13 15:48:40

Re: Linus's review of Gnome

#5 2005-12-13 15:49:59

Re: Linus's review of Gnome

#6 2005-12-13 15:59:53

Re: Linus's review of Gnome

#7 2005-12-13 16:00:01

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#8 2005-12-13 16:36:45

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#9 2005-12-13 16:50:33

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#10 2005-12-13 16:59:51

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#11 2005-12-13 17:21:24

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#12 2005-12-13 18:06:18

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#13 2005-12-13 19:58:09

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#14 2005-12-13 20:16:20

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#15 2005-12-13 20:24:53

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#17 2005-12-13 20:32:00

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#18 2005-12-13 20:35:04

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#19 2005-12-13 21:16:48

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