GNOME (et al.): rotting in threes
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 8th Nov 2012 20:54 UTC, submitted by Elv13
Gnome "Theme development is a tedious and difficult task, and for the GTK devs to be so careless in breaking their API at every turn disrespects the many hours people put into making themes for it. [...] I was given to believe that this breakage stems from a Microsoft-like climate of preventing users from customizing their systems, and deliberately breaking the work of others so that your 'brand' is the best. Anytime I hear the word 'brand' being used in Linux, I know something valuable is being poisoned." I find the tone of this one a bit too harsh and overly negative at times, but his point still stands.
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RE[5]: Why not use Qt?
by ssokolow on Fri 9th Nov 2012 21:45 UTC in reply to "RE[4]: Why not use Qt?"
ssokolow
Member since:
2010-01-21

I'm afraid I do - and XFCE. It looks and feels like what it is - a mid-to-late nineties post-CDE, barely-better-than-a-window-manager, not-quite-a-desktop that even a small minority of Linux desktop users use. Now that is small. Ditto XFCE.


In other words, you're redefining "barely more than a window manager" to include any desktop which doesn't provide its own re-invention of every application users commonly want? Nice way to move the goalposts.

I'm honestly curious how you reconcile the fact that so many people pretend Epiphany and GOffice don't exist and use Firefox and LibreOffice instead.

I'm willing to consider LXDE "minimalist" compared to GNOME and KDE but I think we'll have to agree to disagree on what is barely more than a WM... especially since I strongly agree with the LXDE view that good applications rely on standards to be featureful without tying themselves too strongly to one desktop.

GQView isn't "part of" any desktop but, for my needs, it's superior to every DE-provided image viewer in existence.

Balkanizing desktop components just works to kill off one of Linux's greatest strengths.

There's a reason they are used by a minority and only by those who believe they can see miniscule time delays on extremely modern hardware and believe that if they run it on modern hardware it will be blazzzzing fast. Or something.


It's very obvious that you have an impression of who I am and you're just twisting my words to fit it.

There are several reasons I run LXDE:

1. most importantly, the only reason I have a shiny, fast computer is because my motherboard and video card failed earlier this year and I got a bundle deal on a new mobo, CPU. and memory.

If my time hadn't been more valuable than the money I paid, I'd probably have sourced a replacement mobo, 1GiB DDR2 DIMM and some capacitors and still be willingly remaining on an Athlon64 X2 5000+ with 4GiB of RAM (I use VirtualBox) and a GeForce 7600GS... both bought at least five years ago when they were state of the art.

When I get better hardware, I expect to be able to do more with it, not do the same things with a few new animations and fewer features because the developers lack discipline. (Hence why I actually test my desktop on an old 2Ghz Celeron every 6 months and make any adjustments necessary to keep the system requirements down)

I think the only upgrade which I actually considered warranted was the GPU upgrade and only because the old GeForce 7600GS couldn't use VDPAU to allow the Athlon64 X2 5000+ to play 1080p video.

2. with Trinity (the KDE 3 fork) being apparently too under-manned to implement things like the XDG Icon Naming spec, PCManFM is the most comfortable file manager I find practical. (I've already mentioned that Konqueror 4 gained some issues in the process of being ported to Qt 4)

3. Plasma actually cannot do certain things I liked in Kicker. (eg. Having one big activity span both monitors so my taskbar widget can span smoothly across.) Why should I run a heavier desktop when I don't use the features it adds and do want a feature it removed?

4. Aside from the Aero Snap clone, KWin 4 doesn't offer me any advantages over Openbox and I'd already written and grown used to a basic WinSplit Revolution clone by the time they added it.

5. I use Vim for my programmer's text editor and LibreOffice for my office suite. Kate/GEdit, KDevelop/Geany, and KOffice/Calligra/AbiWord/Gnumeric are not applicable.

6. Vim loads faster than KWrite or GEdit, gives me more of the functionality I desire, and, when I don't need syntax highlighting, Leafpad loads in under 500ms.

7. I play my videos in bare MPlayer with no GUI beyond the playback surface. Why waste space and CPU on GUI widgets when I do everything with keybinds anyway?

8. Beyond that, my motto is "right tool for the job, no matter where it comes from". I run K3b because it's the best combination of stability and comfort, Filelight or ncdu depending on what I want since Baobab doesn't know the meaning of "cached results", etc. etc. etc.

People are not going to trade features and functionality for your perception of 'slowdowns' I'm afraid.


That depends. My mother runs LXDE because she never saw the point in GUIs like Unity and my brother just switched to LXDE in the last few months for reasons similar to mine. (It does everything he needs of it... more quickly)

Many Linux desktop people, and especially those around Gnome and GTK, take the 80/20 rule as to why you just don't need all those features and why you should choose something 'lightweight'. Alas, the problem is it is never the same 20% of features that people use.


Exactly why I couldn't even stand GNOME 2.x. Their 20% of features people "actually need" are very different from mine.

They don't even define lightweight either, but they don't tell you what it is - software that looks like arse and does less.


Ok, now that's just an attempt at provocation.

I'll admit Vim can look ugly at times, but everything else I use looks great and is, if anything, MORE featureful than the DE-bundled stuff.

For example, I challenge you to find ANY Linux media player that's still being maintained that'll play my esoteric chiptune and Amiga module formats as well as Audacious.

...or Geeqie. Sure, things like Gwenview look very fancy, but try quickly spinning your scroll wheel to skim through a bunch of images until you find the one you want. I've never found anything with such well-written asynchronous image loading.

While you're spinning away, Geeqie may or may not be able to finish loading the images, but you're guaranteed to at least see a glimpse of the top of each image.

Gwenview fakes that kind of performance by skipping images if your scroll events start to pile up.

I could go on all day.

What I find ironic is that you clearly love 'lightweight software' but GTK itself has chosen to be more and more 'lightweight' - and you don't like that.


Don't conflate being lightweight with being unnecessarily rigid.

As I said before, I'm not satisfied with my desktop look and feel being limited to "big fat widgets: light" or "big fat widgets: dark" just because the GNOME devs think everyone either wants a touchscreen or has money to burn on ever bigger monitors.

I can personally vouch for the fact that both GTK+ 1.x and Qt 3.x are capable of high-performance theming and GTK+ 2.x had no problem offering a stable API, so whoever's developing GTK+ 3.x is either irresponsible or incompetent.

Ever see any software companies marketing 'lightweight' software, 'lightweight' word processors or 'lightweight web browsers? No? That's because there isn't a market for software with less features and with the tagline 'lightweight'. You just don't see it.


Given that you leaped on my mention of the word "lightweight" and brushed off my comment about them fitting my needs better, I get the impression you misinterpreted my phrasing.

When I said that Geeqie and Audacious fit my needs best, that was the primary point. The point in parentheses was simply that tools manage to exist which do that while also being lighter than GNOME or KDE offerings.

Do you see me as some kind of threat to your preferences or something? Because all I'm trying to do is argue that, since GNOME can't possibly please everyone, the diversity fostered by stable GTK+ APIs is a good thing.

I'm perfectly happy with the tools I have. All I want is for them to stay alive, well, and part of a healthy ecosystem.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[6]: Why not use Qt?
by phoenix on Fri 9th Nov 2012 22:22 in reply to "RE[5]: Why not use Qt?"
phoenix Member since:
2005-07-11

3. Plasma actually cannot do certain things I liked in Kicker. (eg. Having one big activity span both monitors so my taskbar widget can span smoothly across.) Why should I run a heavier desktop when I don't use the features it adds and do want a feature it removed?


I used to think I wanted one large panel that spanned multiple monitors so there would only be one taskbar. Then I actually looked at the settings for the taskbar plasmoid and noticed it featured an "only show icons for tasks on this monitor" checkbox.

Now, I live quite nicely with separate panels on each monitor, with separate taskbar plasmoids on each panel, each configured to only show tasks that appear on that monitor.

And, I can now stick the system tray and the menu on the inner sides of the monitors (so the bottom-right corner of the left monitor and the bottom-left corner of the right monitor), which would be impossible to do on a "single large panel that spans both".

And, when I finally get a three-monitor setup working, the menu and systray will only appear on the centre monitor. ;)

Reply Parent Score: 3

RE[7]: Why not use Qt?
by zima on Fri 9th Nov 2012 22:31 in reply to "RE[6]: Why not use Qt?"
zima Member since:
2005-07-06

And, I can now stick the system tray and the menu on the inner sides of the monitors (so the bottom-right corner of the left monitor and the bottom-left corner of the right monitor), which would be impossible to do on a "single large panel that spans both".
And, when I finally get a three-monitor setup working, the menu and systray will only appear on the centre monitor. ;)

Doesn't that make them harder to aim/click? ;)
Per Fitt's law - if they would be in "really corner" the target effectively has a sort of unlimited size.

(but seriously, your PC, your business how things are done ;) )

Reply Parent Score: 3

Read more of this thread... >
RE[7]: Why not use Qt?
by ssokolow on Fri 9th Nov 2012 23:23 in reply to "RE[6]: Why not use Qt?"
ssokolow Member since:
2010-01-21

I used to think I wanted one large panel that spanned multiple monitors so there would only be one taskbar. Then I actually looked at the settings for the taskbar plasmoid and noticed it featured an "only show icons for tasks on this monitor" checkbox.


I didn't migrate off KDE 3.5 until I found that option. However, despite it being superior in theory, I could never get fully comfortable with it for some reason.

Switching from Plasma to LXPanel was actually a bit satisfying because I regained the ability to have all my windows pile up on the left-hand monitor's taskbar (regardless of which monitor they were one) when there are no more than five of them.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[6]: Why not use Qt?
by segedunum on Sat 10th Nov 2012 13:23 in reply to "RE[5]: Why not use Qt?"
segedunum Member since:
2005-07-06

In other words, you're redefining "barely more than a window manager" to include any desktop which doesn't provide its own re-invention of every application users commonly want? Nice way to move the goalposts.

I'm afraid you're trying to split hairs now in order to avoid the main point - it's a pile of crap that does very little that a minority of the minority use.

Ergo, you don't matter.

I'm honestly curious how you reconcile the fact that so many people pretend Epiphany and GOffice don't exist and use Firefox and LibreOffice instead.

I have no idea what that means, but put simply Firefox and LibreOffice have features people want, Epiphany and and GOffice don't. Very simple.

It's very obvious that you have an impression of who I am and you're just twisting my words to fit it.

I'm afraid you made that very clear when you started talking claptrap about being able to shave milliseconds of response time off by using LXDE - having spent quite a bit of money on hardware and 16GB of RAM no less. You just don't matter I'm afraid.

There are several reasons I run LXDE:

Don't care. You're a minority of a minority.

Don't conflate being lightweight with being unnecessarily rigid.

Ahhhhh, there we have it.

Given that you leaped on my mention of the word "lightweight" and brushed off my comment about them fitting my needs better, I get the impression you misinterpreted my phrasing.

I'm not talking about your needs here. You're a minority of a minority. If that work for you great, but you're a very small minority nonetheless.

Do you see me as some kind of threat to your preferences or something?

I hardly think so. My point is that this is the same claptrap that has been espoused by users and developers of Linux desktops for ten years.

Because all I'm trying to do is argue that, since GNOME can't possibly please everyone, the diversity fostered by stable GTK+ APIs is a good thing.

GTK has made a decision that they can't possibly please everyone. They just don't have the manpower to maintain it properly.

I'm perfectly happy with the tools I have. All I want is for them to stay alive, well, and part of a healthy ecosystem.

Great. However, you've missed the point that you are not important here.

Reply Parent Score: 3

RE[7]: Why not use Qt?
by ssokolow on Sat 10th Nov 2012 14:08 in reply to "RE[6]: Why not use Qt?"
ssokolow Member since:
2010-01-21

And now you're resorting to the adult version of putting your fingers in your ears and saying "na na na na na"... coupled with an ad hominem dismissal.

I can still see a lot of avenues I could take to further my argument, but you're obviously too attached to your view of who I am, what I want, and the state of GTK+ so I'm not going to waste time talking to a brick wall.

Reply Parent Score: 2