Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 28th Nov 2012 16:32 UTC
Thread beginning with comment 543527
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I think this idea about changing the way everything looks appeals to just a tiny minority of nerds and powerusers... unfortunately for gnome, linux's userbase is entirely this minority
Maybe not so any more... Ubuntu & Unity doesn't seem to target them for example, and it might be the only non-Android distro with a nice growth (compare the shares of all Linux distros from http://stats.wikimedia.org/archive/squid_reports/2012-10/SquidRepor... with http://stats.wikimedia.org/archive/squid_reports/2011-10/SquidRepor... )
Oh yeah, and do we include Android or ChromeOS?




Member since:
2006-07-01
I think gnome shell is great, but then I never used gnome 2, I also don't use linux everyday, but when I do use it I find gnome and ubuntu very good.
I think the gnome people wanted to make something different, something that was so good you wouldn't feel the need to change anything, maybe so that users of macs and windows may try and swap to linux. I find it funny though that after years of reading from linux users in forums that linux shouldn't try and be like windows and should be different, the people behind gnome get slated by a vocal minority for doing just that. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Personally I have no interest in changing the way an OS looks, and don't ever change anything except the wallpaper, but I guess if you like to do that kind of stuff that fact that you can't change it would be annoying. But I have seldom seen anyone with a mac that changes anything about the way the os looks, or anyone on windows. I think this idea about changing the way everything looks appeals to just a tiny minority of nerds and powerusers... unfortunately for gnome, linux's userbase is entirely this minority, so much so that people who don't want to change everything are the minority.
I saw on linux action show this month that freiberg is going to stop using OOo and go back to MS office because of the split/fork to libre office. The presenters couldn't understand this, but normal people have no idea what a fork is, and to them there is a great deal of difference between OOo and libre office.
Forking gnome and having all these different desktops and projects just being abandoned by developers scares normal people... they want consistency and people don't see that in linux or open source.
Edited 2012-11-29 09:51 UTC