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Taking a Linus-like Attitude Towards Gnome
For those of you who may have missed his original post the high point follows: Why rehash this now? A number of people have written to me about the wonders of Gnome 2.14. One reader of my review of Fedora Core 5 here on O’Reillynet went so far as to suggest that the performance improvements I was seeing were because of the wonderful new Gnome code. They aren’t. Carla Schroder, the author of the absolutely wonderful Linux Cookbook, was one of two people to praise the alacarte menu editor. On my systems it seems very broken. I really wanted to like the new Gnome. Honestly, I did. Gnome generally consumes less resources and memory than KDE and that, combined with excellent internationalization and localization, made it worth another long look. Sadly, I came away feeling every bit as frustrated with Gnome as I had been with previous versions. The good news is that in Fedora Core 5 the performance improvements do result is a snappier, crisper KDE. On a modern system with significant resources I will repeat Linus’ sage advice: Just use KDE. For those of us dealing with embedded systems, nano-ITX technology, or older systems with limited resources KDE may not be an option. The good news is that other alternatives just keep improving. Some are reaching the point where they are worth looking at even on a well equipped high end system. The idea that the “desktop wars” are strictly a Gnome vs. KDE battle may be a bit passé. XFCE, which started out as a CDE look-alike, has become much, much more. With version 4.4 (now in beta) it offers Thunar, a new file manager to replace xffm. XFCE is also the only desktop environment other than KDE or Gnome that has a great number of translations done and which offers full right-to-left support for languages that need it, including Arabic, Hebrew, and Thai. While XFCE is not nearly as lightweight as it was in early versions the developers have done an excellent job balancing adding features with retaining as much performance as possible. After a very long period of inactivity Enlightenment has been undergoing active development and also seeks to be a full desktop environment rather than just a window manager. While it was once viewed as eye candy and as anything but lightweight in today’s world it’s rather fast and thin. With DR 17 Enlightenment begins to look like a future contender in the desktop wars. One thing it does sorely lack is the multilingual support seen in Gnome, KDE, and XFCE. As always there are a variety of lightweight window managers that you can use if you’re not looking for the “desktop environment” experience. WindowMaker, IceWM, Fluxbox, AfterStep , and many others continue to be developed. The good news on this front is that there are now a wide variety of add-on applications that can add some of the creature comforts of the heavier desktops to almost any window manager. fbpanel does a good job adding a feature-rich desktop panel to any window manager that is NETWM compliant while only using a modest amount of resources. If you want desktop icons you can use http://garuda.newmail.ru/xtdesk_e.dhtml">xtdesk to add them. Looking for a lightweight file manager? emelFM may well be the answer. With these possibilities I have adopted a Linus-like attitude towards Gnome. I may use a few apps that require Gnome libraries. I just don’t use it as my desktop any longer. I also have to wonder how long distributions like Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Fedora, and Ubuntu will continue to have Gnome as their default desktop if it remains a source of frustration rather than a pleasant desktop experience. |
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Comments (9)
I rarely do anything to my desktop.
I've used KDE since it was in betas back in 1998. I still use it. It makes my happy. If I want to mess with it, I can. Mostly, though, I just go about doing the things I need to do.
Sometimes, I come up in a lightweight Window Manager so that I can do a heavy Cinelerra session, but, with my 64-bit gigabyte ram computer, I don't do that very often any more.
Both of my youngest daughters have gone through a "Potato Guy" stage.
What could be better than that?
Chances are they'll become bored quickly.
Give them a whole bunch of leggos and chances are they'll build something interesting and not be bored anytime soon.
I look at Gnome and find it lacking quite a bit of what I want to do. With KDE, maybe it has a ton of stuff but I can trim it down within 10 seconds. I'd rather have to trim the fat off my meat than to have someone trim it for me.
I don't know that “interface Nazis” isn't a little harsh, but, 'control freaks' would be quite appropriate. If you can live with 'someone's' idea of what "Sleek, stylish and elegant" is, then Gnome might work for you. But, In my experience, two 'control freaks' simply don't coexist well under one GUI.
You should change the name to oscar desktop...
codename: the grouch
'Fess up -- is there any pixel on your desktop that you haven't manipulated, maneuvered and hand-painted?
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He said, neatly avoiding any reference to what it is he wants to do and can't.
I'm not going to pretend I understand the technical side of this debate. As one who installs Linux into situations where it's never been seen before I can only say this. From my experience, Gnome does not a happy user make.
KDE on the other hand seems to produce a response from people. They customise it, they respond to it, they own it. The Gnome users, by and large, are still slugging away with default desktops and give the impression that work is now a grind. When work is a grind you stop learning, stop listening, stop responding and retreat into yourself. When problems occur you over react to them and it further adds to the sense that "work is not fun anymore". If you spend 90% of the day on a computer and it's no fun at all then the desktop has failed.
Sad really, because a well configured Gnome is a joy to use. Sleek, stylish and elegant in a way that KDE only dreams of. But Gnome goes too far one way and makes it seem like there's little you can change and KDE goes too far the other way and there's bazillions of options every where you look. The idea that people are inherently lazy and stupid is negative and destructive and a terrible motive for design.