What is wrong with KDE 3.x? What is wrong with GNOME 2.8+? These seem to be the two questions arising from the recent revival of Linus vs. GNOME spat. We all know the history; Linus called the GNOME guys 'interface nazis' and advised Linux users to use KDE, which resulted in the longest comment thread on OSNews ever. That kind of fizzled out, only to be brought to light again by Linus submitting a few patches to make GNOME behave more like he wants it to behave.
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Member since:2006-01-21
Sorry for being that exhaustive in my GP post, and sorry for not providing explicit examples. I will try to do shorter this time
It's been some time since I left GNOME (last regular use was 2.6.1, last flyby was FreeRock GNOME 2.12), so please bear with me. From the top of my head, what bothered me in/up until 2.6 was for example, that I couldn't get rid of the (volume) icons on the desktop (seems to work at least since 2.8 via gconf), that epiphany somehow refused to let me set the lifetime of my cookies, that I had found no way to have a list of background images instead of a single one, that there was little consistency in how the toolbars could be configured (some applications refused to allow me to adapt the toolbar at all like evolution, while the degree of what was adaptable varied among applications) and similar stuff.
Things I've been missing even in GNOME 2.12 (perhaps this has been adressed in the mean time) and where XFCE has spoiled me is, that
- scrolling with the mouse wheel over the desktop (and
not only the pager) can switch virtual desktops
- the direct availability of Gamma correction controls
- grouping of keyboard shortcuts to themes
I realize - thanks to yours and dylanmrjones posts in this thread - that the situations concerning advanced settings seems to have got better. Perhaps it's time to give GNOME 2.16 or 2.18 when it's out a spin :-)
Note, that flat or non-flat buttons in the taskbar are not a big deal. They are an example, that one possibility for a project like XFCE or GNOME is to honor the experience of advanced users and let them access advanced configuration options in a sane manner, or to axe the feature and ban it to the other second-class configurations into the gconf menu.
I prefer the first approach, you seem to have no problem with the latter, which is OK for me, but explains why we have different tastes wrt our desktop environments. BTW, Your screenshot brought up old memories, except, that I kinda liked the ability to tweak the desktop to the nth degree once and for all (a better way to group/layout the options would have been nice, though)
Regards
Edited 2007-02-21 17:26
Member since:2005-07-06
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Member since:
2005-07-06
Wow! 528 words and you still didn't answer the question:
What specifically is missing [from the GNOME 2.x series]?
Do you have any concrete examples, I'd really like to know? Is it just the ability to set flat/non-flat buttons on the task-bar?
I'm a Gnome user since the 0.3 series, and I'm perfectly happy with the usability focus that's been integral to the project since 2.0. From my perspective, I'm happy to never have to wade through pages and pages of useless junk-settings to find the one I'm looking for. Here's an example from the bad old days:
http://www.gnome.org/~jdub/2003/sequelsyndrome/mgp00015.html