Is Customization of desktop environments going out the window?

[runny6play]

Ive been doing research on the new DEs that have recently come out. I have tryed unity, gnome 2.0 and KDE 4.0 and I have read up on Gnome 3.0 and some of the lighter weight DEs. When i made my initial switch I switched because I had grown bored of Windows and there limited shell (CLI) and desktop environment. Almost everything Linux is suppose to be free and highly customizable. The only DE ive found to be easy to manipulate and customize is Gnome 2.0. In KDE you can add widgets and other things but I feel like thats not true customization. From what ive read about Gnome 3.0 is your going to be stuck with the default menus and even apperence of Gnome. I dont expect to completely change the way the Shell works or How the Desktop is set up to run through the Gui, but It seems like their removing all of the customiabilty options of DEs... It could be just me as I am still pretty new to linux and i wont claim to know everything. More than likely Ive just hit the very tip of an iceburg. Although the thought of linux's customabilty even without modification of source code (which i do eventaily plan to read, write and modify) starting to dissapper scares me. I am wrong? Are the DEs keeping their customabilty and im just a ignorant noob? Will more options be later added to the Gnome shell?

[ibutho]

I'm surprised you think KDE is not customisable. It usually gets a lot of flack for being "too" customisable. Did you dig into the advanced options that are available in the KDE Desktop Settings and individual apps?

[lykwydchykyn]

I'm surprised you think KDE is not customisable. It usually gets a lot of flack for being "too" customisable. Did you dig into the advanced options that are available in the KDE Desktop Settings and individual apps?

I agree; back when 4.0 came out it was not very customizable, but more has been added back in with each release. As of 4.7 I think it's probably more customizable than 3.x was, if memory serves.

I suspect as GNOME and Unity mature, they'll follow suit.

[mcduck]

Well, Gnome 2 wasn't very customizeable at the time of it's release either. Desktop environments are rather large projects, they don't get released with all the possible features and options but instead as a working setup, and all the nice features get added over time. (Actually Unity has a lot more stuff you can configure and tweak that Gnome 2 had in the beginning)

I would expect both Gnome3 and Unity to get to the same level of customizeability as Gnome 2 had, just like Gnome 2 did. :)

(And of course it should be mentioned that the "free and highly customizeable" when talking about Linux definitely doesn't mean having everything full of graphical menus with every option one might ever want. It simply means that if you want to customize something, you are free to do so. There is no law or license or anything else than your own level of skills ad willingness to work for it stopping you from making the changes you want.)

[grahammechanical]

I am thankful that I do not need to spend a lot of money on software to use my computer. I appreciate the effort and skill that many are putting into the Ubuntu project and the related projects that Ubuntu depends on.

I am willing to give the developers the freedom to take their projects in the direction they wish to take them. It might not be they way I would go but I can still use their project or find something else.

It is fine to have complete customization when only a few technically minded people are using the OS. But as more and more people install Linux then there is a strong argument for limiting customization.

Or do we have the freedom to break the OS and then demand that someone else fix it for us?

Regards.

[oldos2er]

KDE 4.0? I'm surprised you got that to work. If you're running 11.04, enable backports and give 4.7 a try.