Gnome Linux – A Complete Disaster?

Re:Gnome Linux – A Complete Disaster? by dylan-m on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @02:55PM (#30183092)

Sorry, but this article is bad. What exactly are they comparing GNOME to? It sounds like they want GNOME to be like Windows, such that "lack of desktop icons" and "there are no minimize and maximize buttons" is an automatic con and not, say, a simple reality of how it works; it is a desktop environment that doesn't do desktop icons. Instead, your equivalent to the "desktop" is the dash, your files are in the Files app, the background is just what you see behind your windows, and there is a reason the window menu replaces "minimize" with "hide". It's fine if it doesn't work for you or you think it's the wrong direction, but if you're going to pretend computers are a solved problem and everything should be frozen in time or it's wrong (a "disaster", at that!), I am going to find it very difficult to care about your opinion.

> For instance, requiring a full browser engine (i.e. WebkitGTK) to use a desktop environment is anything but minimalist.

That right there is absurd. Name one complete desktop application platform from the last ten years that doesn't come with an equivalent to WebKitWebView. If GNOME isn't hosting this, somebody else has to. If what you really want is a way to organize all of your xterm windows, that's fine, go and do that, but don't tell people they're wrong for existing in this century.

> In many file managers F4 key launches the terminal, but not in Files

I know this will be very upsetting for people who use "many file managers" and switch between Linux desktop environments like they change clothes, but for the vast majority of users, that type of concern is completely irrelevant. For what it's worth, you can always right click on a blank space, or click the current folder in the breadcrumbs bar, and choose "Open in Terminal".

> Just to build WebkitGTK can take one hour and more than 16 GB of RAM, while Xfce on the same machine can be fully built in 5 minutes, requiring less than 500 MB of RAM.

One hour? That's luxury. Have you tried to build Chromium lately? And I'm sure XFCE can be built in five minutes if you just grab a prebuilt libgtk, but you should probably be asking, where did that library come from?

> [Scary screenshot] Building GNOME Display Manager can be a nightmare

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-build-meta

You're welcome?

Anyway, choose a less inflammatory title next time.

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Re:Gnome Linux – A Complete Disaster? by fulalas on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @10:38PM (#30188275)

> What exactly are they comparing GNOME to? To everything else that is not GNOME. I gave many examples along the article.

It's not a matter of being 'frozen in time'. Changing just for the sake of change doesn't add much. As I said, new UI paradigm is welcome but it has to be at least more efficient, which is not the case.

> Name one complete desktop application platform from the last ten years that doesn't come with an equivalent to WebKitWebView.

This 'last ten years' may be misleading. GNOME was created more than 20 years ago. Does it count? If you mean, desktop environments that are still being developed, which includes GNOME, then I have some examples that don't depend on any browser engine: LXDE, LXQt and Xfce.

> you can always right click on a blank space, or click the current folder in the breadcrumbs bar, and choose "Open in Terminal".

It works, sure. But it is less efficient for no good reason, and that's my point.

> And I'm sure XFCE can be built in five minutes if you just grab a prebuilt libgtk, but you should probably be asking, where did that library come from?

GNOME also depends on GTK. Actually, it's worse than that: it depends on both GTK3 and GTK4. But anyway, GTK3 compiles in less than 15 minutes on my machine. :)

> You're welcome?

Thanks, but you didn't get my point.

> Anyway, choose a less inflammatory title next time.

Thanks again. You have a point here, indeed.

[ Parent | on HN ]