We Need to Kill GNOME

[kadath]

I ran across this blog post tonight: We need to kill GNOME

I'm interested Ubuntu users' reactions on this, primarily because Ubuntu is heavily biased towards GNOME.

[curuxz]

I would not sasy kill Gnome....ever, because its peoples personal choices. But I strongly agree that from a techincal stand point KDE is far far superieor.

lately a lot of focus is going on the future paths of the projects and I think this is causing a lot of concern, on one hand we have KDE 4 and the synaptic desktop of KDE and loads of people want to really get on board with KDE and on the other hand we have Gnome not getting the benifits of a mass upgrade like KDE 4 but instead further adopting mono which given its .net base is not exactly pleasing people in parts of the community.

This blog does seem to be stiring trouble a bit though!

PS: we are not all gnome baised here

[karellen]

gnome/kde....those are choices and it should stay the same. the main problem is the one described in the first third of the article:

Although Ubuntu comes with a lot of (open source) applications, this should prove my point that hardly anyone is writing competitive proprietary software for the Linux platform, while they are doing it for the Mac platform, and that people is willing to pay more money for those proprietary applications, which means they are demanded.

There are three overused arguments to deny this is an issue:

1. Some people think that proprietary software is not the future and that eventually all of these applications should be replaced by open source alternatives, but even if you are one of these you’ll have to admit that this isn’t going to happen anytime soon, so it would be better to have that software available in Linux at the moment, so that we can have a good market share in the future.
2. Some people think there’s not interest in using this kind of software in Linux, but just take a look at the Wine project (a piece of software that lets you run some windows applications under Linux) and all the people using it.
3. The third option is that you are one of those positive thinkers that really consider The Gimp to be equal or better than Photoshop, in that case can you at least admit that some people like professional users will need proprietary software? You know, even if you go out of the way to use free software professionally, sometimes you receive files in proprietary format and you can’t allow yourself the luxury of telling your clients to convert the files for you. There are also other features that you might not need but other people do.

Traditionally, Linux users have assumed that it’s hard for Windows users to switch because they are used to a particular kind of system or there are concepts involved that are difficult to grasp such as “operating system”. But people aren’t as stupid! They are perfectly capable of understanding that they have a particular kind of computer and that they need to look for software packages with the Apple logo or the Windows logo, in the same way they do with the fuel of their cars. They are also capable of understanding that their “kind of computer” may have some pros and some cons, they may even be willing to sacrifice some functionality in exchange for other things, and the growth of Mac OS X is showing all this.

.....

[K.Mandla]

It's neither here nor there to me, because I don't use either one. If I had to, I'd pick KDE just because I think it looks better, and because I think Gnome treats users like dummies. But the fact that there's a choice is the most important thing, in my book.

I doubt there will or would be any mass migration from the G camp to the K camp, unless his (I'm assuming it's a him) predictions start to come true. In which case I think he might be right.

But my crystal ball is foggy, and no one's going to get me to install Gnome over my Openbox.

[Nano Geek]

I think Gnome treats users like dummies.

I'm somewhat surprised that you, as a member of the forum staff would say that. Everyone knows that when you say that GNOME is for dummies or that sort of thing, it always ends up in a flame war.

[aks44]

Firefox would crash at least once every 2-3 hours in Gnome, but hasn't crashed yet in KDE.

Firefox crashes on Gnome? I thought it only crashed on Windows...

Granted, I'm a KDE user.

I'm somewhat surprised that you, as a member of the forum staff would say that. Everyone knows that when you say that GNOME is for dummies or that sort of thing, it always ends up in a flame war.

There's a big difference between "Gnome is for dummies" and "Gnome treats its users like dummies".
And indeed, removing some established feature because "it may confuse the user" is treating the user like a dummy IMHO. YMMV though.

[chameleonkid]

Firefox crashes on Gnome? I thought it only crashed on Windows...

Apparently it didn't like digg at all.

[ComplexNumber]

nd indeed, removing some established feature because "it may confuse the user" is treating the user like a dummy IMHO.

that was merely linus torvald's view of how he believes the gnome developers see things. it has no current basis in fact. it's just an oft-quoted view, so it has stuck in people's minds and gets conveyed from one person to another as if it were fact.

[tbroderick]

The blogger is an idiot. All these Miguel de Icaza conspiracy theories are moronic.

[mostwanted]

The blogger is an idiot. All these Miguel de Icaza conspiracy theories are moronic.

+1

There should be a tinfoil hat filter for Firefox in the same it way it has a malicious sites filter.