Michael Larabel writes at Phoronix that the GNOME Foundation is running into a budget shortfall and funds are becoming very tight. According to Larabel one of the reasons the Foundation got into this situation is through its Outreach Program for Women (OPW) which had around 30 interns for their most recent cycle and managing the program (and funds) for a number of other participating organizations. The GNOME Foundation staff and board fell behind in their processes with being overwhelmed by administering OPW. "Making matters worse, in their 2014 budget they made assumptions based upon the previous year's incomes and expenditures, which were more optimistic. There's also the matter of payments from GNOME sponsors and others owing the GNOME Foundation money being rather fluid or coming in late."
To rectify their budget shortfall, the Foundation is going through with its invoicing of conference sponsors, more pro-actively following up on unpaid invoices, better invoicing OPW sponsoring, increasing their general fundraising efforts, and taking other efforts. The Foundation also voted last week to "freeze Foundation spending which is not essential to the running of the Foundation. By keeping expenditures to a minimum while some delayed revenue is regained, the board aims to have things back to normal within a few months." Those wishing to support the GNOME Foundation can figure out various donation means by becoming a friend of GNOME.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:15PM
Couldn't happen to a nicer group of people. Isn't this what happens when you shit on your users? Maybe they should stop being arrogant asshole to their users and they might get more support?
(Score: 2) by forsythe on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:51PM
(To begin, from what I've heard there's actually no need to donate, it's just that the OPW sponsors need to fulfill their end of the bargain and pay up, because Gnome has been generously covering costs out of their own pocket while they wait for the money).
Frankly, I'm taking pleasure in this (well, less pleasure than when I thought it might actually have consequences for Gnome). Developers displease their user-base, get funding cuts. Democracy in action. Reaping what you sow. Eye for an eye. Justice. Sure, it's petty, but I guess that makes me a petty person.
At this point I'd like to say something noble-minded about how by donating just ten dollars each, we can do our part to make sure software we see as quality doesn't suffer. Earlier this year, for example, there was news that OpenBSD was running into funding problems [marc.info]. (I've heard that was mostly resolved for this year [arstechnica.com], by the way.) But these stories only seem to show up when the debts are at or beyond the level of flash crowd-funding or corporate sponsorship. So if I decide to reward X and spite Y, I might see Y change their policies... or simply spend their resources designing a beautiful donation page and spreading the link around through social media, reaching the millions of other users who don't feel, like I do, that introducing a technical reliance on libZ and deprecating support for W are grievous offenses.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday April 15 2014, @06:51PM
I'll get hate for saying it but fuck it, I hope they go broke as I HATE political correctness and OPW is practically textbook political correct bullshit! Its the classic "We have to have X number of (insert what they consider a protected class, be it women, blacks, transgendered, whatever)" so they "create opportunities" (read discriminate against anybody that isn't in X) until they get their number of X.
Now call me crazy but I always thought you should merely insure that EVERYBODY was welcome and then if transgendered wanted to work on FOSS? Then they could, same with women or blacks or hindi or those that believe in FSM or whatever. What something like OPW does is tell me that transgendered are NOT as good as anybody else, because they have to be given special breaks just to compete, they and the women hired by OPW are tokens and simply aren't as good as those not hired by OPW. That is what happens when you create quotas and victim classes, you create discrimination and looking down upon the victim classes. if that is your goal GNOME? Congrats, mission accomplished.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday April 15 2014, @09:39PM
In general, I agree. To me, ideally, everything should be treated like a meritocracy -- all aspects of a person that are irrelevant to their performance relative to other candidates should be ignored. Ethnicity, gender, culture, political affiliation, etc. is all arbitrary and should not matter for most things.
People don't generally think that way, though, so it's good to be introspective and question if you're letting biases interfere with your organisation's purpose, especially if there is a large disparity. That doesn't mean creating quotas, though, it means verifying that you're really giving everyone an equal chance to play and then choosing the best fit.
Ironically, bias interference is what seems to be happening with GNOME. In their charter [gnome.org] they claim to be a meritocracy, but their financial problem right now is caused by trying to be the exact opposite. It's awesome that they want everyone to have a chance, but these outreach programs are targeting specific groups, which isn't a meritocracy. It's creating a special sub-class and saying, at the same time, both "you need hand-outs because you can't cut it otherwise" and "you're more special than these other sub-groups that don't deserve help". The whole thing is insulting.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:09PM
What happens when it finally flounders and you get a flood of infected people spreading the disease to other projects?
The symptoms look like:
Corporateocracy
Monolithic systems instead of small tools
Never use a standard when you can create a new one
authoritarian decision making
NIH
coveting a walled garden
Lots of politics with who's in as an app in the environment and out as a mere unsupported 3rd party
us vs them thinking with no one thinking of the users at all
style over substance and functionality
complexity always enshrined over simplicity
massive dramatic systemic forklift upgrades are the only way
Lots of academic ivory tower theorizing over who and what users are rather than at least making dogfood they can eat themselves at the very least.
Doing anything equals doing the right thing.
The two big DEs have converted over time from WIMP window managers, to bloated Biosphere-II-scale ecologies, to something akin to neo-feudalism where all the peasants clicks belong to the nobleman who makes all the decisions from his ivory tower.
If the two big DEs fall, which seems inevitable and is frankly a net gain to the OSS community, and this zombie horde descends on the civilized WMs of the world, is my WM doomed to be ruined?
Or rephrased, if everything I don't want in a desktop is in two isolated festering pools of infection, I should do what I can to isolate the infected from the rest of the community, and should at least hope the big DEs don't fall.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @06:30PM
If the two big DEs fall
MATE - Fork of GNOME 2
Trinity - Fork of KDE 3
Xfce - Predated the Big 2 and is doing just fine
LXDE - Came from nothing to being a viable DE is a relatively short time
Enlightenment - Spent some time in Limbo but is making impressive strides now
Unity - Hey, some people like Brussels Sprouts too
I can't remember the name, but there was another fresh DE project I saw announced recently.
The KDE 4.0/4.1 fiasco and GNOME 3.0 slap in the face were seriously retrograde for many folks, but there are still LOTS of choices available.
{Cue for someone using only a window manager to chime in.}
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by emg on Tuesday April 15 2014, @06:57PM
"{Cue for someone using only a window manager to chime in.}"
My HTPC doesn't even run a window manager, it just boots into Xbmc.
If anything, the Gnome 3/Unity debacle has encouraged a much greater variety of Linux UIs as people have been forced to look elsewhere for a usable desktop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 17 2014, @07:44AM
doesn't even run a window manager
8-) You're making me think of Topper. [dilbert.com]
the Gnome 3/Unity debacle has encouraged a much greater variety
...and it's obvious now that I forgot to include Cinnamon.
Amen.
Still can't remember the name of that new project I read about.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday April 15 2014, @07:29PM
Is Trinity viable? The rest seem like good choices, though several appear to depend on Gtk, it's probably Gtk2.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by boristhespider on Tuesday April 15 2014, @07:36PM
Doesn't matter. If KDE fall then, well, we can simply fork KDE4 and keep using it, perhaps renamed Quad, or Quaternion or something like that.
(Score: 1) by LukeSkywalker on Friday April 18 2014, @05:53AM
Here is a posting over at IgnorantGuru's Blog (the author or SpaceFM file manager), and his issues dealing with themes in Gnome3, and posts from the dev's on their opinions of themes being included with Gnome as well as the ability of users to change the look and feel.
http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et -al-rotting-in-threes/ [wordpress.com]
(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday April 15 2014, @09:18PM
To be fair, the GNOME dev/PR flak/whatever that was working his ass off defending GNOME in the Slashdot discussion [slashdot.org] about this was very polite. Of course, he was still arguing that no configurability is ideal, that good defaults should justify the removal of all configuration, including changing font sizes, and that if you really want to modify something you should just use extensions and edit the registry -- I mean gsettings.
But he was very nice while being obtuse and telling everybody how wrong they were.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday April 16 2014, @12:26AM
Being able to configure the environment is one of the best parts. Windows is a joke in comparison.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday April 16 2014, @01:37AM
Both are a joke compared to KDE, though, which actually exposes most of the configurability via GUI. No need to muck around with the command line or obscure registry-like crap just to get the environment usable and to taste.
Which was my point -- Gnome aped the Windows style of obfuscating configuration, but worse, and then they defend it and tell people they're wrong for wanting to change font sizes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:16PM
All those users they alienated with Gnome 3, and who went to other desktops as result, are unlikely to donate to the Gnome foundation. So I'd not be surprised if their current situation isn't just the result of their past decisions regarding Gnome 3.
Bottom line: If you think you know better than your users what your users want, you'll eventually get in trouble.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:20PM
But the GNOME developers are just misunderstood geniuses. You morons just can't see how brilliant they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @06:02PM
Only morons bite the hand attached to the moronic being that feeds them.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:24PM
The same by mixing up cis and trans women [gnome.org] and publicly admitting it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by velex on Tuesday April 15 2014, @06:52PM
I feel like I have some homework to do here, but I'm honestly curious exactly what you mean. Mixing cis and trans women together? Or did some genius over there think that cis woman was a term that referred to somebody assigned the male gender at birth and is currently living as the female gender?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 15 2014, @10:48PM
FTFY (hint: follow the link). Other then that, I'm equally dumbfounded but have the feeling a display of a smartassesness is not of the nature to help them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by velex on Wednesday April 16 2014, @12:08AM
There, went off to TFA.
Well, maybe I get you, maybe not. I think they should have just used women without throwing in cis and trans and then needing to cover their asses with the term genderqueer. Is that what you mean?
I think this is what they were thinking: there's a mean streak of feminism, the kinda of folks who felt that they needed to shame transsexuals who could "invade" feminist meet-ups by virtue of being indistinguishable from... erm, by inventing the term womyn-born-womyn. So, it's a bit of a sore spot for some folks like me that feminism would dare to pretend to be about gender equality and then turn around and invent a shaming term that can't even spell the word woman right. So, there's this whole line of thought in feminism that despite having body parts (notably the one between the ears) that are female, despite living as women, despite that most people who know the individual in question probably don't even realize that individual wasn't assigned the female gender at birth, that transsexuals are "really" men and guilty of rape and male privilege and blablabla
So hence now we have to be specific, and why it's more horseshit than you might realize: in addition to just cis women, now we have to specifically denote that trans women are welcome. No, we have to make sure that those filthy trans women (I'm using the term transsexual to be equivalent), despite all their male privilege, despite their rape-y-ness, are included, too.
It's like watching politically correct go super-saiyan. But wait, that's not all. Where there's a super saiyan, there's a super saiyan level 2! Now just think about all the intersexed individuals we've just offended! Think about all those tumblr posters who are hermaphrodites trapped in men's bodies! We need to include them, too! Genderqueer!
Fuck.
They just should have said women and been done with it. It's a fucking internship, and despite a few lucky ones, that means we're talking college kids, which practically means you're not getting anyone who's already started gender transition.
-=-
Glossary --
cis woman: An individual who was assigned the female gender at birth and is currently living as the female gender. (ymmv, some exclusions may apply, offer void where prohibited)
trans woman: An individual who was assigned the male gender at birth and is currently living as the female gender. (ymmv, some exclusions may apply, offer void where prohibited)
genderqueer: Catch-all term. You name it. Hell, I think Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs falls under genderqueer.
transsexual: Historical term used for an assigned male who was on track for bottom surgery. This term is deprecated by the term trans woman. See the release notes for details.
woman: Somebody living as the female gender. What was wrong with this term alone for what OPW is attempting to accomplish??? Sorry, OPW, throwing cis-trans-queer-gender-omgwtfbbq in front doesn't forgive the wrongs of feminism against trans women, the same bigoted, sexist, unscientific bullshit thinking that is creating an increasingly hostile environment for individuals who have done nothing wrong outside of being assigned the "rapist" gender at birth and turned an interest in programming into a career.
-=-
tl;dr fuck feminism. It's gender equality gone beta.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday April 16 2014, @01:49AM
Yes. When it comes to everyday life (read: statistically long times allowing for events to happen) and/or huge intended audience (statistically large set), I found that using the "principle of minimal astonishment" works best (let a disruptive expression manifest if/when/where it matters)
Agreed. If they wanted to say: "women are welcomed and supported", what's simpler than saying... just that? Why give opportunity to interpretations they may not have intended?
Good that you found the time to explore possible semantics. I didn't (or was not inclined to), thus... astonishment. Being an everyday-life fact, the astonishment got a negative connotation in my mind: highly probable that wasn't exactly their intention; also I'm not sure it would help them in any way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by velex on Wednesday April 16 2014, @03:22AM
Ah ok, makes sense. Thanks!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:16PM
Some day the wikipedia article for scope creep is going to be replaced by a link to GNOME (or KDE, same problem)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_creep [wikipedia.org]
So you start with a glorified menu system most folks use to launch a web browser, maybe for some power users a console. Maybe a mp3 player for music.
Then after decade(s) of scope creep you have an incredibly complicated ecosystem the size of a small terraformed planet, which most folks still use solely to launch a web browser, maybe some power users start a console.
With 30 interns, my current "desktop environment" would have about 10K of source code per intern?
http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Guided_t our_of_the_xmonad_source [haskell.org]
(Score: -1) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:18PM
I belive its spelled genome.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Marneus68 on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:23PM
>Those wishing to support the GNOME Foundation can figure out various donation means by becoming a friend of GNOME.
Keep in mind that if you are donating to the GNOME Foundation, you are donating to that "Outreach Program for Women" too. I'd suggest you check their website before doing so, that may or may not change you mind on donating your money to these clowns.
From https://gnome.org/opw/ [gnome.org]
> "The Outreach Program for Women (OPW) helps women (cis and trans) and genderqueer"
I don't want to give my money to support that kind of tumblr joke.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:25PM
Oh no! You're gonna catch the gay!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @06:51PM
that "Outreach Program for Women"
Not sure why you got modded Flamebait.
This is a meme in the news of late.
It reminds me of Mandrake Linux's side project for education that siphoned off too much operating capital and caused the downfall of that corporation.
these clowns
Oh, I think I see why now.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday April 15 2014, @07:06PM
Why is he getting flamebait? I'm as socialist liberal as they come and I will NOT support discrimination which is EXACTLY what OPW is. Its saying "We don't have enough of a victim class, so we should "create opportunities" (discriminate against any that isn't part of the victim class) until we have the token number of X that we require".
I'm sorry but victim classes and quotas are wrong no matter how you slice 'em or wrap them in fuzzy PC bullshit, and the fact that they are pumping so much cash into this PC bullshit, which hasn't a damned thing to do with creating DEs, should give ANYBODY pause.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1) by urza9814 on Wednesday April 16 2014, @12:06AM
He referred to transwomen as a "tumblr joke." You don't think that's flamebait?
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday April 16 2014, @04:12AM
Well maybe I'm reading it wrong but from what I took he is referring to the whole OPW IDEA as a fricking joke, on which I concur. The fact that they focus on trans women (what is wrong with trans men? A vagina only counts if they are having one added as opposed to removed?) a group that has been pretty big on equality versus special treatment? Just adds flavor to the fail IMHO.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1) by urza9814 on Wednesday April 16 2014, @08:26PM
Perhaps, and I agree with you there. But if that's the case there would be no real purpose to the text he quoted from the OPW page, which is why I interpreted it the way I did.
Their genitals have nothing to do with it, their identity does. A trans man by definition does not consider himself to be a woman.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by NullPtr on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:30PM
I would have care, because I used gnome them. But then they did a Unity, so I left for KDE. Now I don't care any longer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:49PM
Although I'm not using either one of those, I would advocate in favor of KDE as well, just because Qt is such a well designed framework. In comparison GTK+ is trash and a lot of projects are migrating away from it lately (such as Google Chrome).
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:31PM
As long as KDE doing well I'm happy. I never did like Gnome, which is what kept me on Mandriva so long. Well, that, and there were a lot of things about Mandriva I liked but didn't about Ubuntu, switched when I heard rumors Mandriva was dying and found kubuntu.
Pink Floyd wrote a song about Gnome [wikipedia.org] before Linux existed.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday April 15 2014, @07:38PM
FWIW I preferred Gnome2 over KDE4, though not over KDE3. And KDE4 *still* isn't as good as KDE3, though it's gotten nearly as good as Gnome2.
My ideal desktop would allow both me and my wife to use the computer comfortably. We have very different goals. Neither KDE4 nor Gnome3 nor Unity are even headed in the right direction, though KDE4 is closest of that bunch. The problem is that when I head for the less well known desktops, either I or my wife end up being rather dissatisfied. (And, yes, we can use two different desktops. But that also has it's problems, e.g. I end up not being well informed about the desktop she's using when she asks for support.)
So we're currently both using KDE4, and wishing that people would stop breaking things.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Marand on Tuesday April 15 2014, @10:02PM
I haven't liked GNOME since the 1.x series. 2.x is when they started their insane "fewer options! choice is bad!" crusade that continued into GNOME3. On the other side, KDE was largely unusable to me until 3.5, so I spent a lot of time between that using things like WindowMaker.
I think KDE4 had a rough start, but in my opinion, it's currently miles ahead of GNOME2 and has gotten better than KDE3 overall. Defaults are improving, flexibility is better than it was, things like multiple displays are smoother, etc. I may just be missing some bitterness that early KDE4 adopters acquired, though; I use Debian and didn't even see KDE4 until something like 4.4 or 4.5, when a lot of the early problems were ironed out. People might mock the Debian's conservativeness with these sorts of changes, but it saved me a lot of pain with KDE.
Still has some rough spots (Plasma-desktop can still crash sometimes, nepomuk/akonadi issues) but it's insanely configurable, easy to extend, and generally comfortable. It introduces new metaphors (activities) that work with old ones (virtual desktops/pager) in a way that lets you use either/or/both/neither. Improvements to Kwin alone are worth the upgrade; performance is very good, you can set per-window rules easily via menu options, and being able to turn compositing on/off with a keybind or automatically when certain applications open is very useful.
Plus, despite its flaws, the Plasma desktop shell is nicer than what KDE used, though if you dislike it you can replace it with something else, maybe from razor-qt, and keep the rest of KDE4. They haven't gone completely insane like GNOME and tried to tie everything together into one inseparable blob.
In summary: while I enjoyed KDE3.5 at the time, I wouldn't want to go back to it if I were given the choice. The rough patch early in KDE4's life was unfortunate but it has become something that works quite well now while (supposedly) being built in a way that allows easier improvements for the future.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday April 16 2014, @05:00PM
I know that many people agree with you. For my taste KDE4 still isn't as good as KDE3. OTOH, even with KDE4.1 I didn't have the technical problems that many reported. (I don't do a lot of fancy stuff, and dislike doing lots of configuration.) For my personal taste, xfce is nearly good enough. There's a few problems with the menu bars hiding application window controls, etc. Annoying, but not major. But enough to make it unusable by my wife. (OTOH, IIUC xfce is dependent on Gtk. This may cause problems in the future.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday April 16 2014, @09:23PM
Yeah, I can see why you wouldn't like KDE4 much if you dislike configuration-twiddling. Some of the old-style stuff (like the KDE3-style K-menu) is there but requires switching out plasma widets, so while it's a sensible default (the new K-menu is generally nicer) it may turn off users that just want an XP-style menu instead of a searchable/tabbed one. The fact that you can switch it out at all is awesome if you don't mind tweaking, though; there are even third-party ones like Lancelot that do additional things, such as merge in IM/email/calendar/etc. all into one launcher.
As for Xfce, I've preferred it to gnome even since gnome2. If I hated KDE that's probably where I'd be. I'm curious what will happen with it when Gtk2 stops being supported by distros; there hasn't been a major Gtk2 release since 2011, just what looks like maintenance updates. Majority of the dev time is going into Gtk3, including people porting their Gtk2 apps to Gtk3. Even gimp is working on it, albeit very slowly.
A quick search shows that the Xfce devs aren't even sure what's going to happen at that point. There was some discussion about whether to use EFL, GTk3, or Qt5, but I didn't see anything decided. I did learn that Lxde and Razor-qt merged, though; apparently Gtk is on its way out for lxde because the project leader was unhappy with Gtk3. If Xfce does the same, most of the interesting DEs are going to end up Qt, while gnome and its couple forks (cinnamon, mate) are going to be on their own little Gtk3 island.
Speaking of Lxde and Razor-qt, have you tried either of those with your wife? I don't have much experience with them, but maybe one could pass the wife test. If not, there's always Windowmaker. (I still have soft spot for WM and use it for remote X sessions or extremely poor hardware)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday April 17 2014, @06:57PM
I haven't tried Razor-qt. LXDE was interesting, and I liked the appearance of the screen better, though it was a bit garish, but it wasn't as pleasant to use. I'd prefer it over Gnome3, but that's not saying much. OTOH, LXDE is still being developed, so perhaps in a year or so...
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by efitton on Wednesday April 16 2014, @10:46AM
Isn't that damning. I loved KDE 3.5 and have thought about giving TDE a try. What saddens / upsets me is the thought of how far we would be if KDE 3.5 had 5 more years of improvements rather than being abandoned for a rewrite and paradigm shift.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:41PM
Gnome - perpetrated Gnome 3 against users wishes and is going bankrupt
Microsoft - perpetrated Win8 against users wishes and is back peddling as fast as they possibly can to undo the mess
Ubuntu - perpetrated Unity against users wishes and have slid into irrelevance
I'm glad that companies aren't getting away with ignoring users and forcing UI changes on them.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:04PM
Apple tells their users how they should work and the lap it up. Those other platforms are simply lacking the cult factor.
(Score: 1) by VLM on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:15PM
Missing the leader/follower insight
"Hey guys, new idea here, lets all try pale gray with rounded corners" Lap it up
"Hey guys, it only took a couple years and now we finally have pale gray with rounded corners too, just like the cool kids had a long time ago" Ugh, tired, try something new, boring, anyone who wanted that switched to a mac like 3 years ago, blah
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:17PM
No, Apple provides a product people want to use. Apple has never once told me how to work. Besides people have complained about changes Apple has made in OS X and iOS in pretty much every major version.
Nope, those "other platforms" are simply worse. Despite what you jealous nerds think people really do buy Apple products because they like using them not because of this silly cult nonsense.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:31PM
You're holding it wrong, fanboy!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Iskender on Tuesday April 15 2014, @06:07PM
Have to agree with this, even though I've never owned a Mac system yet. Take backups: Apple came up with this slickly branded thing where you connect an USB drive, and it syncs a backup for you. It's a really simple technology. But no one else has done it, or at least did it then. In practice, it means Mac users lose data less often.
Yes, I know you can use rsync and whatever. I've also heard people say "that data was lost in an rsync accident". Even if all the program does is make sure the command is run in the right direction, it's still worth paying for.
Also, I've used Unity for a year (switching to Xfce Mint), and it's no OS X (yes, I know Unity is not an OS). It looks like OS X - the same way Russia *looks* like Europe.
Apple products tend to have in-depth attention to detail, and that's why people pay even when the performance may be lower.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @06:11PM
Note: Apple was not on the list because instant karma from iOS 7 has not hit the company yet. iOS 7 came out later than Gnome 3, Unity, and Win8. What sort of karma hits Apple has not yet been revealed.
(Score: 1) by emg on Tuesday April 15 2014, @06:28PM
What's wrong with iOS 7? To me, it looks like iOS 6 with different icons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @11:02PM
Do you know what 'instant' means?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:40PM
Gnome 3, Unity, and Win8 all had 2 fundamental problems:
- UI designers wanted change for change's sake. That's how you create an initial "Ooh, shiny!" factor. It's also how you make a name for yourself as a UI designer - nobody gets famous for making incremental improvements to what is basically the same UI we've had for about 20 years.
- They all tried to treat tablets and desktops as the same thing when they aren't. I understand the instinct that it makes UI development work significantly easier, but the fact is that tablets and desktops don't have the same user interactions, and trying to treat them the same will result in a bad interface for both.
And yes, that meant that they quite happily ignored their users, because the UI designers weren't really designing for an audience of users, but an audience of other UI designers.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by emg on Tuesday April 15 2014, @06:26PM
Problem is, most people making a name as UI designers are making a name for driving once popular UIs out of business.
I couldn't care less what happens to Gnome after I switched to MATE.
(Score: 1) by LukeSkywalker on Friday April 18 2014, @02:24AM
I agree, once I moved to Linux Mint and started using Mate I didn't give a shit about what happened to Gnome. Although I actually preferred KDE, for quite a while there after v4 came out it wasn't even usable until just recently.
To me it feels like Mate is the real forward progression of Gnome not Gnome v3.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @07:41PM
They all tried to treat tablets and desktops as the same thing when they aren't
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." [wikipedia.org]
The US military had an infamous *must do everything for everyone* episode.[1] [wikipedia.org]
You'd think that the folks who came up with these UIs (as well as those who came up with the F-35 notion) would learn from the mistakes of others.
[1] Now, the F-111 did serve to prove the viability of some concepts which lead to a design with 3 decades of service, [wikipedia.org] so maybe some good can come from these terrible UIs.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by Buck Feta on Tuesday April 15 2014, @06:15PM
> I'm glad that companies aren't getting away with ignoring users and forcing UI changes on them.
Also, fuck beta.
- fractious political commentary goes here -
(Score: 3) by Lagg on Tuesday April 15 2014, @05:16PM
And yes this joke that they're financing is just as sexist as that Suey Park moron. I hope they're satisfied in their contribution to undoing the work of actual feminists. But whatever, gnome is becoming irrelevant already and even GTK is being replaced by Qt. Which is technically better despite being written in some weird preprocessor mangled version of C++ and also despite its bloat. So goodbye Gnome. Maybe you'll serve as a lesson of what not to do for better orgs.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 1) by bart9h on Tuesday April 15 2014, @06:45PM
Long live MATE!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 16 2014, @11:00PM
What I'm currently is thinking about is what I should do to "becoming a friend of MATE" instead?
(Score: 1) by bart9h on Thursday April 17 2014, @02:41PM
http://mate-desktop.org/donate/ [mate-desktop.org] ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 16 2014, @01:12AM
Gnome needs to go away, so there really is no problem here.