Ars has reviewed GNOME 3.0, and concludes: “The solid technical work that has been done under the hood really complements the new user experience features in GNOME 3.0. Despite some of the gaps in the feature set, I think that the environment and the new shell is a good starting point for building something even better. The GNOME contributors will be able to iterate on the design and move it forward in future updates.”
I am guessing the way this works is that when it comes to Gnome and KDE, Gnome is geared toward people who want a very simple and straightforward desktop without a million different options to deal with, while KDE is more for tweakaholics and power users? Is that the best way to differentiate the two?
If that is the case, it seems to closely parallel iOS and Android, and I bet the pissing contests are equally as epic
Edited 2011-04-07 19:29 UTC
Or the difference between MacOS and Windows. And you’re absolutely right about the pissing contests!
Broadly speaking, yes. For a long time now (and especially for 3.0), Gnome has aimed for simplicity, at the expense of some configurability (although there are many settings not visible in GUI that can be tweaked with gconf-editor). Whereas KDE has always been customisable in pretty much every aspect.
As a Gnome user though, I’d dispute that “power user” is a distinction between the two – being more customisable doesn’t necessarily make a difference to the user’s ability to use the desktop effectively. I find Gnome is *customisable enough* for my needs, and a lot of the settings in KDE are things I see little value in changing.
But yeah, it’s just different philosophies…
Yeah, it’s like iOS in that way; it will work well for power users, assuming it’s set up out of the box the way they like to work, and so they don’t need to change much in order to start working with it.
And in practice you don’t change settings on a daily base anyway.
In some cases I think that some of the Gnome applications lack features. Nautilus was quite bad but is getting better at a constant pace. I mean not being able to mark files with the mouse in list view is really stupid.
In regards to Gnome 3.0 I tried it for roughly have an hour yesterday and I am _really_ amazed.
It works quite smooth and does what a Desktop should do imo. Help you in starting applications and managing those that run already. Also the notifications are a good thing, the KDE 4 notifications really annoy me. They are like “look at me, look at me, click me, click me”, those in Gnome 3.0 work a lot better imho.
Further Gnome 3.0 really makes me wanna use workspaces. I never/hardly do that in KDE. It is too uncomfortable to assign applications to it and to switch between them. And no I don’t want to remeber keyboard shortcuts, especially not when I want to work with the mouse. Yeah I know you can assign actions to screen edges, but those have a disadvantage for me themselves: I end up hitting them by accident.
This does not happen in Gnome 3.0, since it is not just a screenedge but also a clickable area which has a specific purpose.
All in all imo Gnome 3.0 is a very good desktop already. Yeah it has flaws but for a .0 release …
Mac OS X and GNOME share something in that regard: as long as you like what someone else decided it should be like, you’re fine. I find the very idea that someone else’s choices are more important than mine, to the point where they choose for me, to be abhorrent. If being a “power user” means placidly accepting the dictates of some remote designer or developer, then GNOME is for power users.
Incidentally “power user” has never meant “able to use the desktop effectively.” It means someone who uses more features, demands more features and generally exercises his software to its limits. For a power user it isn’t about something being “enough for my needs” but about things being there. Why climb the mountain? Why overclock the CPU? Why push the limits? Because you can. That’s a power user.
Not that GNOME doesn’t cater to such people to some extent; gnome-do comes to mind as a definite power user tool.
It seems to me that at this point, KDE is not only for tweakaholics, but people who just want a solid, modern desktop environment that doesn’t flush years or even decades of experience and familiarity down the toilet… as long as you have a modern machine with loads of system resources, of course.
Luckily for anyone who has fewer resources, there are a whole bunch of alternatives available. But it’s still sad to see the giants get so damn heavy on resources.
Edited 2011-04-07 23:12 UTC
I think that is as accurate as calling Emacs bloated and Vi[m] streamlined.
I don’t think KDE is for super-tweak-a-holics anymore. Mainly because tweaking isn’t just for tweaking sake anymore. With KDE 4.x, you have real flexibility to dramatically change real behavior and real appearance.
Gnome 3 is so different that I don’t think its as successful being a simple system with sane defaults. Its too different to conform to how people think it should work, because people have never worked that way before.
No. There is the perception that KDE is for tweakaholics, but I don’t think that’s true. Certainly you should not think “Oh, since I don’t like to change my settings every day I should not use KDE.” This is the kind of mistake people make when talking about GNOME vs. KDE; they hear about the differences and then read in to it things which are not there.
Most users don’t change their settings most of the time. The GNOME people hear this and say “Aha! So all we have to do is provide the most average set of behaviors that satisfies the largest set of people the largest set of the time and then we can do away with all of the complex configuration dialogs!” What you’re left with is just what GNOME people consider the “most essential” options, which is an assessment with which most users will probably disagree on at least a few points. If what GNOME picked as your settings is good for you then you’ll probably like GNOME just fine.
If the GNOME-given defaults are not good for you then you might be able to get what you like by going through third party tools or gconf and changing the “hidden” settings. Sometimes that will be sufficient to get what you want and then you will probably be satisfied with GNOME.
Although most users don’t change their settings most of the time if you’re a KDE person you think “Ah, but doesn’t everyone want to change some of their settings some of the time?” And so you make an environment which can be changed. Most KDE users don’t change most settings and sometimes are daunted by the options when they find there’s something they do want to change, which leads to a perception that KDE is complex. But, I think, what happens for the majority of KDE users is that when they want some behavior they just go and change it, usually just after installation, and then it’s set and their system works for them.
Beware people saying “Shrug, GNOME works for me.” Do these people also share your tastes in clothes, food and music? If you’re just like them then perhaps GNOME will work for you. Beware people saying “KDE has too many options!” Do you really care about something you don’t look at very often? It’s not as if you are required to tweak any settings; the defaults on KDE are good (except for single-click selection!) and better on a good KDE-based distribution. Perhaps you really like GNOME’s choices and perhaps they’re exactly what you need, but there’s at least as good a chance that you’d really like to have an environment where whenever you find that something doesn’t work just the way you want it to you can go and set it just so and not have to just shrug your shoulders and say “Oh, I suppose it’s not that important.”
Reviewing this I note that it comes off as kind of pro-KDE. That was really not my intention. I’m just trying to say that the environment must suit the individual. I find it unlikely that GNOME really suits everyone (so I suppose this is an anti-GNOME post more than a pro-KDE post) but more that people are used to being okay with almost-perfect. Don’t be afraid to try new things and decide for yourself if you like them.
The lack of an option to make themes for Gnome 3 is very puzzling. Removing such customization functionality, which was successfully used in Gnome 2 will for sure offend many users. (For example why should everyone like that Adobe-like coloring with white on black?) That along with not allowing to customize many aspects of the UI layout. Switching to KDE now seems like a sensible idea.
Edited 2011-04-07 21:43 UTC
https://live.gnome.org/GnomeTweakTool
http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-tweak-tool
not very well known.
Yeah but, if I need a third party piece of software to configure my desktop I might as well use Windows and Stardock!
it’s not third party, it’s part of gnome
Fair comment, what I meant was this functionality should be built into Gnome in the first place. Instead you have to find out there’s a little known tool available for tweaking it! How many users are going to get peeved off when they find that their DE can’t be configured as expected?
Oh no, the world is ending… a user can’t change their desktop colour scheme.
Give them a break… it’s version 3.0, first release of a new series, major changes all around, and some stuff that couldn’t make it in on time. KDE 4.0 was no different, released to get people to start using it, even if some stuff wasn’t finished yet. “Release early, release often”, right?
You really think they will add *more* configuration options in later releases? You’ll be lucky if the close button survives another point release.
Yeah, “who needs close button” arguments can easily pop up. After all “one can configure to close the window with some double middle click” or something. (The arguments to remove the maximize button were in the same fashion).
In the dialogue you move windows to different activities, you just have another one that is a trash can, pit leading to hell or something. They already have one interface for moving windows. Isn’t closing a window really just moving it to an inescapable pit of nothingness?
Reminds me of the TweakUI tool from the Windows Powertools days. So much extra tweaking power to make Windows useful … but you had to know to go looking for the tool.
If the GnomeTweak tool has a menu entry (or Applications icon), then it’s ahead of the game. If not … perhaps it should be added?
Very few, considering most users won’t be using vanilla Gnome 3. The distros will be modifying it as they integrate it into their offerings and many if not most will be adding functionality back into their default setups as they see fit.
Because that is the most important thing for users of a desktop. Themes!
<Goes back to his Mac and changes the the appearance to Graphite>!
or rather key sentences and expressions:
—————————————-
solid technical work that has been done under the hood
gaps in the feature set
good starting point
iterate on the design
future updates.
Says enough. Dunno about you, but I personally hate this kind of speech. Basically saying GNOME3 is clearly not finished, yet praising it at the same time. All and the opposite in the same paragraph.
This happens a bit everywhere these days and the writers pulling this off seems proud of it. I find it annoying at best.
What software is ever finished?
DWM
I have a petchset here which says otherwise…
Aren’t they paraphrasing a basic aspect of these types of open-source projects?
Aren’t they almost always a work-in-progress? So somehow next year’s work-in-progress is going to be better or worse than this year’s or maybe it’s all just a work-in-progress, always with new features on the horizon and bugs to be squashed. It’s ambiguous, and reviewers are picking up on that.
I looked for a video review in Youtube and found this one. It lasts almost 30 minutes, but gives you a nice impression, how Gnome 3 is. The guy also showed, how you can add the “missing” minimize buttons to windows.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joBXc3IGRBw
Personally I have not tried Gnome 3 yet, but I’m waiting impatiently, when it will be available in the repositories of Arch Linux.
I watched much of that. I see some good intentions, but I’m afraid GNOME 3 is balls.
The best part of Gnome 3 in Fedora 15 is how easy it is to switch to XFCE 4.8 – especially if you set it up to start gnome services and set up a panel or two to resemble previous versions of gnome.
I tried some of the older versions of gnome shell in Fedora 14, etc. and I fime the releases layout from some of those to be a step backward. They yanked the recent lists and places from the Activities and left only the favorite apps making the whole concept almost useless.
The whole Expose style show all open apps by moving the mouse to the corner is nice – it’s long been so,ething I set up on my Mac, but its just too slow when you”re flipping between a few windows. Panels and window selector buttons are way faster most of the time, unless you’ve really ‘lost’ something in the clutter.
Im silly like that but I like it, it’s very functional when you get over the fact that it’s not traditional.
As long as an interface does what I want it to do and easily, Im indifferent on what color panels it has.