Linus's review of Gnome

Gullible Jones · 2005-12-13 23:15:28

Linus seems to be a Mozart-like type - smart, but damn rude.

(There are a a bunch of others like him... Just look at Theo de Raadt - that guy's smarter than I could ever hope to be, but he can be a real asshole. And I've heard the same thing of some FreeBSD devs.)

LB06 · 2005-12-13 23:35:33

Hmm, I remember an interview with Theo de Raadt about Linux, titled: "Linux is for losers" or something like that. Linus just said something like: "Theo is difficult". That sounded a lot more diplomatic than this response. He really must hate Gnome

Of course, in some sense he is right, but he overlooks one major fact, imho. Fact is that the vast majority of computerusers ARE indeed idiots who NEED a dumbed down interface. And that is where Gnome comes in.

On the other hand, it is also possible (at least theoretically) to create a simple and elegant interface that is not lacking in functionality. That is probably what Linus was aiming at. Gnome probably has gone too much to the simplicity side, without really looking at functionality.

Gullible Jones · 2005-12-14 00:02:11

Well, XFCE is simple and elegant, but functional... And as of 4.4, it will also cease to be plagued by ugly icon and a crappy file manager. 8)

rasat · 2005-12-14 00:02:41

Dusty wrote:

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

It become "silly" when taking this as flamewar, not trying to see the point what Linus said. The expression of his was bad, but the content has some validity..... its about the functionality. This particular aspect made me long time ago not wanting to touch GNOME.

Dusty · 2005-12-14 00:21:28

rasat wrote:

Dusty wrote:
Wonder if I should become a moderator again so I can lock silly topics like this... where's a mod when you need one? ;-)
It become "silly" when taking this as flamewar, not trying to see the point what Linus said. The expression of his was bad, but the content has some validity..... its about the functionality. This particular aspect made me long time ago not wanting to touch GNOME.

sure the original post was legitimate, and yes, I also agree with Linus. But I don't see how that justifies the flaming that is going on here. Esepecially since the guy isn't even here to defend himself, though I'm sure he doesn't care what a bunch of kids who want to pretend they are superior to a proven programmer think of him...

This thread is not about the functionality, plain and simple.

Dusty

cactus · 2005-12-14 00:33:20

Dusty leads the charge for being on-topic and civil?
/me passes out

You are right though Dusty. This thread has needlessly descended into useless chaos.

I recommend lockage.

xterminus · 2005-12-14 00:34:21

It become "silly" when taking this as flamewar, not trying to see the point what Linus said. The expression of his was bad, but the content has some validity..... its about the functionality. This particular aspect made me long time ago not wanting to touch GNOME.

For me, Gnome was offcially hijacked by the interface nazi's when they switched the window manager from Sawfish to Metacity. The gnome folks basicly moved from a fun Lisp based window manager to a featureless, boring, and untweakable one. So in one regard, Linus does have a point.

I really think that KDE is not the right alternative though. If Gnome has interface nazi's who nuke cool features, the KDE dev's include every checkbox, widget, and application they can dream up. When I fired up the newest KDE a few weeks ago (this was a default install), I felt like I was sitting down to a Windows machine that my little sister had used for a year. Totally unorganized and about 70 applications were installed which I'll never use.

I think I'll stick with Enlightenment and/or Ratpoison. After all, you too can fulfill X's true purpose: higher text resolution.

iBertus · 2005-12-14 00:35:55

Well, I've never found GNOME to be lacking anything. I typically don't submit the the entire desktop environment paradigm so it doesn't really matter to me, but when I'm using GNOME and I need to do something that isn't automagically handled for me on some configuration dialog, I use the console. I just don't see who or what is served by saying negative things about GNOME.

Now, if he had said something negative about gconf I'd probably agree

Snowman · 2005-12-14 00:43:16

cactus wrote:

This thread has needlessly descended into useless chaos.

Agree. Locking.

Arch Linux

#26 2005-12-13 23:15:28

Re: Linus's review of Gnome

#27 2005-12-13 23:35:33

Re: Linus's review of Gnome

#28 2005-12-14 00:02:11

Re: Linus's review of Gnome

#29 2005-12-14 00:02:41

Re: Linus's review of Gnome

#30 2005-12-14 00:21:28

Re: Linus's review of Gnome

#31 2005-12-14 00:33:20

Re: Linus's review of Gnome

#32 2005-12-14 00:34:21

Re: Linus's review of Gnome

#33 2005-12-14 00:35:55

Re: Linus's review of Gnome

#34 2005-12-14 00:43:16

Re: Linus's review of Gnome

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