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posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the better-together dept.

Debian Jesse is going to have Gnome3 as the default desktop.

The desktop re-qualification page, used to help choose which desktop will be default, has in the Jesse version a weight for systemd integration, and of course only Gnome3 does it (at least for now). This will surely make the systemd/gnome3 fanbase happy, but possibly will make others unhappy, as it [may] be seen as another step towards mono-culture, until we soon end up with all distros being redhat clones.

 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Marand on Wednesday September 24 2014, @08:30AM

    by Marand (1081) on Wednesday September 24 2014, @08:30AM (#97544) Journal

    Add a flamebait topic!

    but...some topics are worrty of enduring flames.

    Is it still flamebait when it's accurate? If you look deeper at the "requalification" info, the integrity of the whole thing appears dubious. For example, the accessibility team declared MATE to be the best for accessibility, but on the table it got the same +1 as GNOME. Also, it considers "systemd integration" a necessary bonus, when it's something only GNOME has, due to GNOME devs deliberately tying them together. Nobody else is going to get a ranking there because the other DEs try to remain init-agnostic, which makes it a bullshit metric that exists solely to push GNOME ahead.

    They don't even have results yet for internationalisation, portability, or install size, and it's already "80% sure" that GNOME will win. No shit? That's what happens when you massage the data to support the desired outcome.

    Some other statements of questionable merit:

    Systemd/etc integration: Xfce, Mate, etc are stuck paying catch-up to ongoing changes in this area. -- no shit, that's what happens when systemd and GNOME are inextricably tied together. Same reason wine is perpetually playing catch-up to windows.
    Since gnome 3 was the default in the previous release, existing Debian users should find it consistent to use it for jessie. -- GNOME 2 was the default for a lot longer than that, so why not MATE?
    I'm not sure [gnome]'s friendly for users with low visual capabilities . . . The problem is: not customisable enough, no magnifying possible with the needed quality, not enough visual customisations -- This doesn't sound like +1 to GNOME accessibility to me.

    I'm a KDE user, but if anything, I think MATE would be a better default than the alternatives, considering the accessibility and familiarity aspects.

    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @12:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @12:17PM (#97613)

    systemd integration should be considered a negative, and any desktop offering it should be penalized. Any desktop requiring it should be penalized even more. systemd needs to be quarantined and marginalized. Any desktop that isn't helping in that effort needs to be quarantined and marginalized, too.

  • (Score: 2) by gallondr00nk on Wednesday September 24 2014, @12:42PM

    by gallondr00nk (392) on Wednesday September 24 2014, @12:42PM (#97623)

    I'd really like to know what happened to keeping the init system separate from the desktop environment. What was the harm in it?

    What's missing from the Systemd debate is what Linux as a whole actually gets out of it. I havn't seen this quantified in any meaningful way. Is it faster boot times? Better stability? A more user friendly or elegant init system? More features?

    I mostly use the BSDs, and so don't follow Linux user groups or mailing lists that closely. Are people communicating with the community at large about what all this disruption is in aid of?

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @01:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @01:12PM (#97634)

      Are people communicating with the community at large about what all this disruption is in aid of?

      Spurious technical non-arguments are presented as indisputable fact in response to even the most balanced criticisms. So while there is often some form of "communication", the systemd camp have been incapable of responding with anything more than a dictatorial "because fuck you". Add resentment over the pushiness and dubious politics taking place and it seems the schism isn't going to be resolved amicably. The "fuck you" attitude having become mutual across both camps.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:43PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:43PM (#97722)

        why haven't there been any physical beat downs. These fucks took over everything and banned anyone opposed. They need to be hurt.

    • (Score: 2) by metamonkey on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:18PM

      by metamonkey (3174) on Wednesday September 24 2014, @03:18PM (#97701)

      The primary thing systemd has going for it is faster boot times because you skip all the script interpretation overhead and the ability to fork off services that are not interdependent.

      The problems depend on who you ask. The main one that annoys me is, well, I liked having scripts for services. It makes it very easy to see exactly what's going on when a process starts or stops, and it's very easy to modify and create new custom services. You just need to know basic shell scripting. It's also easy to backtrack. Want to know how a certain service is being started? Just grep through /etc/init.d. You'll find it. On systemd they're all started in the same way. You just have a config file that tells systemd what options you want, but you can't just add to the start up process for a service. It's also very, very poorly documented. So we went from easy to understand and modify scripts to poorly designed and poorly documented inflexible config files. Oh, and then instead of just logging all the output to text files, it uses a freaking binary log that has to be read with another systemd program, journald. So now you can't just grep through your logs, or have a daemon that just sits watching the tail of a log file for certain events.

      You combine all of that shit and it's just not very "UNIX-y." "The UNIX way" is for programs to do one (or few) things and do them very well, and output text. Then you can string together small, simple programs to accomplish complex tasks. Systemd, on the other hand, is monolithic and obfuscated.

      I use it (I run Debian 7.6 Wheezy), and it's "fine." I'm not on a holy war against it. But to be honest I'd be happier with init.

      --
      Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:00PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:00PM (#97799)

        Wheezy is sysv

        • (Score: 2) by metamonkey on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:35PM

          by metamonkey (3174) on Wednesday September 24 2014, @06:35PM (#97821)

          Oh. Then I must have been thinking of my other box that runs fedora.

          --
          Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @01:39PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @01:39PM (#97648)

    Another weird statement:

    The Debian Mate team is making a pretty good case for Mate, but OTOH it's new in Debian, without much testing or many users. While at the same time being basically gnome 2.0. I am uncomfortable with Debian regressing, despite that being a fine desktop environment.

    So, it's fine, but because the number after Gnome is "2" and not "3" , it's regressing ? biased much ?