Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 2nd Apr 2009 16:12 UTC, submitted by Rahul
Only a few days ago, we ran an article on the future of KDE and GNOME, and which of the two had the brighter future based on their developmental processes. Barely has that discussion ended, or the GNOME engineering team comes with a pretty daunting plan to introduce a fairly massive reworking of the GNOME interface for GNOME 3.0 (2.30). Read on for the details.
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Member since:
2006-09-12
Gnome seems to me to be becoming a desktop environment with a split personality. I think the only way not to end up with an over sized and over complex behemoth, is to get back to basics. Why try making a desktop do too much?
Let's play a mind game; Imagine if gnome had no applications. None at all. What are the bare minimum set of functions expected of the desktop environment?
- eye candy (window decorations, alpha blends, themes)
- an effective way to open external apps
- default font & color management
- provide ways for apps to communicate; dbus, clipboard, IPC interface wrappers
- provide one or more workspaces
- provide interfaces to operating system functions
- file system interface(s) incl. search, bookmarks, thumbnails etc.
- networking configuration
- printer configuration
- display hardware configuration
- keyboard configuration
- USB or other removable device mount/unmount
- RPC & initd services config
- user and general security management
- sound hardware config & control
- software package management & installation
- crontab management
- mail subsystem configuration
- remote display config & management
- basic command line interface
- desktop management (icons, desktop folders and intuitive user interface)
The latest idea of using Clutter seems to be addressing only the last issue, that of the Desktop paradigm. Even if 70% of users actually like the Clutter idea, this would be alienating 30% of Gnome users.
Gnome would be better off defining a standard interface for desktop functions, and allow the choice of Nautilus, Compiz, Clutter or any others that follow to remain in the hands of the user.