This is a message from Patrick Volkerding in regards to his thoughts on Gnome and Slackware. It was originally posted on the Dropline Gnome Forum. Editor’s note: Pat has made similar comments to me as well regarding Gnome’s bugs and maintainance problems.
Gnome to be (possibly) dropped by Slackware
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Eugenia Loli
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These are the packages that are NOT installed on my system (from your list):
libgnome-2.6.1.1
libbonoboui-2.6.0
gnome-keyring-0.2.1
GNOME Icon Theme-1.2.1
libgnomeui-2.6.1.1
GNOME Themes-2.6.1
ScrollKeeper-0.3.14
GNOME Desktop-2.6.1
libwnck-2.6.1
GNOME Panel-2.6.1
GNOME Session-2.6.1
VTE-0.11.10
GNOME Terminal-2.6.1
libgtop-2.6.0
GStreamer-0.8.1
gst-plugins-0.8.1
GNOME Applets
EEL-2.6.1
Nautilus-2.6.1
Control Center-2.6.1
So yes, it’s about half the packages, and if I understand correctly, this is just a basic gnome install. And what is installed should suffice for most of the programs that need gtk/gnome libraries. So the desktop layer is not that thin as someone suggested (and if we consider not just a basic working gnome install, than my figure of 1/3 can be more or less accurate).
Look here is what I will say,
I was able to build KDE from scratch my first attempt, hade to back off maybe one time and that was due to a simple error on my behalf
Gnome took me 6 attempts to get the thing to build.
quite some time ago when both KDE and Gnome started to become just a bloat of mess IMO and no longer did what I wanted them to do, creat an intuitive to me, easy, clean, quick, desktop, I quit installing them all the way, instead I just install the basics to enable me to run some apps that requier them.
I can do this with KDE while watching Star Wars at 2 in the morning, hell I have written scripts to handle the entier process. No problems.
Gnome is a friggin nightmare, what order does crap go in, what is needed by apps that depend on it. The process is long and tediouse, just as soon as I think I have it down, a version comes out that screews everything up, I have given up trying to document what is needed or make any sence out of how it works, infact I have for the most part just stopped running any apps that requier gnome at all.
The developers are so out of tune with with one another I can not even understand why any but the total die-hard fan distros or the big distros with many developers, or a developer that works on the Gnome project even bothers to keep this in thier repository
I remember when UserLinux announced that they wouldn’t be shipping KDE, all the KDE fnaboys screamed about choice and how it was good for us.. Now I would like to see just one of those people stand up to have GNOME supported on Slackware officially under the same guidelines. But I guess I’ll have to endure the double standards of that userbase once more.
I understand that Pat is doing this basically singlehandedly, maybe it’s time he reached out to the community, afterall Slackware does have a lot of capable users, surely someone could step to the plate and handle GNOME for him in the official distro.
Why I choose Slack to play with linux? Because of its simplicity, which amounts to a clear system layout, init system, configuration files, and most importantly: the cleanlyness of the system. (It is not a coincidence that among BSD users, Slackware is the favorite linux distro). What I am trying to say is that you confuse a clean system with a simple interface (UI).
You’re right, I was mixing it up. Though I do maintain that usability wise it does fit better with Slack, I don’t use Gnome myself so I wouldn’t hold up in a debate.
It’s funny, the main reason I don’t use Gnome is that it makes an absolute mess of the home directory, which is also an example of why it doesn’t fit into the Slackware and Arch philosophies. I definitely think there’s a conflict, though: usability vs package and filesystem organization (probably overall project organization). Maybe that’s why XFCE4 is so popular in Arch.
The average home user is going to use windows. If you want more control you use linux. If you really like it or *need* to setup servers etc then you go from that point. I am sick of the OS – DISTRO – WM/DE flame wars.
IT MAKES NO SENSE.
I use Slackware because it has never failed me and
has the tools I need to complete my daily tasks as a server admin.
Neither your or my comments are going to make a hill of beans in the big picture. Slackware users (the diehards) will stick with slackware for better reasons than a desktop.
Those reasons being that Slackware is a solid simple distrobution. Period. If you switch distros for desktops then you are an “average user” who needs to point and click
and are probably not involved in running servers so you may as well load win*.
Therefore why punish yourself asking questions for 6 months
instead of just loading windows and moving on.
Windows has its place and so does Linux.
Anyone changing distros because of a WM/DE has no valid
point whatsoever IMHO.
Windows will fall on it’s own, eventually, I don’t think anyone needs to worry about contending with them. That focus would just end up infusing GNU/Linux with a lot of the same problems Windows has, by following many of the same goals Microsoft followed. If you look at the big distributions like Fedora and Mandrake you’ll see evidence to this (namely bloat).
Honestly, the average user shouldn’t even need to worry about DE’s when Linux is ready. The Distribution throws a set of software on the CD, the user installs it, and then upgrades and installs from their repository. If a distribution uses KDE, you don’t have to worry about Gnome and XFCE. Is the community there yet? Not fully, but we’re definitely getting there.
That was a different case. Bruce Perens made a political decision imho, while Pat is making a technical one. And I have written off Bruce Perens as a man of integrity since that incident, for he knows damn well what is the difference between royalty and licencing, and yet he choose to defend his position of dropping KDE with the argument of ‘wanting a royalty free’ development platform.
As for me, I don’t care if GNOME is included in a distro or not. I’m happy for my fellow FreeBSD users who prefer gnome (there are many). I also have great respect for the gnome@freebsd folks, for I only heard good things about them. Problem here is that there is no good gnome@slackware folks, but one developer who is tired of spending a total of 1/3 of the time spent on the distro for the sake of one DE.
So how should I stand up for GNOME support in this particular case? I already said this: the solution is to have some volunteers who would maintain gnome for slackware (or help dropline or whatever), or better, persuade the GNOME project to make their DE more maintainable. What else do you think should be done? Petition pat to keep on struggling with the massive amount of work involving building GNOME (not to mention the massive amount of bugreports?) Would you do that? I won’t…
the real issue this highlight is that GNOME messes up your otehrwise clean and logical system. if that was fixed or better designed there would be no issue. and why is gnome so ugly to build? something is clearly wrong.
@Lovechild: There are some differences between Bruce excluding KDE and Pat potentially dropping GNOME.
Pat is talking about the broken GNOME build process, not about dropping all GTK applications. Bruce decided that not a single Qt or KDE application may exists within UserLinux.
Pat is wondering how to spend his own time, since Dropline GNOME exists. Bruce declared that the function of UserLinux is to be a “standard” for ISVs, and that he alone decides which packages may be included in the “standard”. Several developers were willing to do the work for including KDE and Qt applications in UserLinux, and Bruce showed them the door.
Pat’s problem with GNOME is technical: Building GNOME takes one third of his time. Bruce’s arguments against KDE were purely political: He is against GPL’ed libraries, because mean ISVs cannot use them freely for non-free software.
The reply to Bruce political arguments have been political. The reply to Pat’s technical observations should be technical.
I recall a previous thread where people were complaining that Gnome was too difficult to compile. Then someone (presumably pro-Gnome) mentioned that end-users weren’t even supposed to compile things so making Gnome easy to compile wasn’t an issue. Well … now that the distros themselves are talking of dropping Gnome due to difficulty compiling and maintaining it, that argument doesn’t seem to hold as much water.
Slack was my first distro. It was very simple and I was very resistant to moving to RedHat. I thought RedHat added unnecessary complexities. However, after using RH and following the Fedora releases, I’ve come to realize that the other features, though they made things a bit more complex, are actually better off because of the carefully chosen complexity.
That said, things should be kept as simple as possible without sacrificing functionality. Perhaps a splinter faction could check out to see if the Gnome packages can be made simpler to compile by unifying the procedure.
To be honest, though, I compiled Gnome 2.4 from scratch using tar.gz sources and everything was pretty much straightforward “./configure –prefix=/usr && make && make install”. I didn’t bother to try “make DESTDIR=<dir> install”, but I assume it should all work.
It’s amazing. Let me repeat it: it’s amazing!
How come we don’t get excited by such a dispute between these two wonderful desktop environments?
We can’t know all the forces behind one or the other. We don’t know their motivations. We only know that we use one or the other very well, and wish everybody used the same. How ingenuous of us.
The supporting libraries of both are important for the desktop, because they both are needed by programs, some of which we’ve never heard of, so we can’t be sure if we would like to use them or not.
It’s not about indecision, but rather about balancing of forces, and support for the development of next generation applications, which could use one or the other, depending on the need of the developers.
If we believe that broadband will ever be ubiquitous, then we have to let these two live, because in the future, without the limitations of slow network or CDs, we could really enjoy what we don’t even know yet. 🙂
Well let me give my two cents on the issue since I can. As to whether it is a good decisions or not will be debated on many forums and such I am sure. As for the technical merits of the claim by Pat this is not true when we talk about versions, and install issues. However on the shear magnitude of work required to keep up with gnome this claim is true. Gnome needs to get a handle on what it is doing. There are so many sub projects to it that no one can keep track of it. You have so many libraries and many of these are just needed by one program. If you look at other large development projects you will not see this X11 and KDE come to mind. This makes the simple fact of building gnome a real pain in the butt. However if this is all you are doing is building a distro then so what its part of the job grin and bear it.
If doing this is is a good choice I would say no, but here me out on it first. The idea is to gain as much of a user base as you can, by removing Gnome you will loose some of this base. If you look at its history it has not had security or stablity issues as of late. These are usually his arguments for removal. Of course Pat isn’t one to be the most wisest of folks when it comes to gaining a user base. If you consider the fact that it is one of the oldest distributions out there and is last in this group when it comes to user base. It is one thing to be stubborn but another thing to let ego get in the way of running a business. Every person you loose is a possible lost sale of a Slackware CD. Slackware had it oportunity to be on top many years ago but due to ego maybe it was left behind the rest. With its great stability and security record it could have dominated the Linux server market. You know 50 years from now when we are all dead they will not be saying wow he was a great man he didn’t change his software. No they will be saying like some do now that wow he wasn’t very bright he had the chance to make a difference and didn’t.
In the past I always used Gnome or some other DM besides KDE. KDE to me was just MS Wanabe bloatware. As time has gone on and KDE has found its calling it does make for a good DM. However if Gnome is removed you will find a bunch of good useful applications just wont compile on Slackware anymore. Having GTK and Glib is one thing but there are many good applications that need the rest of gnome to compile. If he tries to remove it he will still see he is going to need a bunch of the libs from it if he wishes to keep some of the GTK related applications around. So he will still end up having to keep up with some of it.
As for the Dropline thing. Until dropline stops trying to do its own thing it just isn’t going to be a good alternative. All dropline is doing at this time is basically porting the Ximian desktop over to Slackware. If you have ever seen Ximian installed you will know what I am saying. If dropline was to try and be more compatible with Slackware it would make for a good alternative and even a wise choice for Pat to direct user to. The problem with it now is that it is not compatible with a standard Slackware install. If dropline was to remove the PAM, the full LDAP install, X11 and a few of those other non gnome related packages it would be very compatible with a current Slackware system. They would also need to recompile for an i486 arch so to give it a wider audience. Current data shows that optimization results in very little noticeable difference and at times has shown to slow a system down. Even Linuxpackages will not allow packages built on dropline systems for this reason. It also runs the old time Slackware users away from it. Dropline should sit back and take a look and see what they can do to become more compatible with Slackware. This is an excellent opportunity with Pat having doubts about the future of Gnome with Slackware to step up and give the Slackware community something that follows the true nature and heart of Slackware and not try and turn a Slackware system into a Redhat system.
“You know 50 years from now when we are all dead they will not be saying wow he was a great man he didn’t change his software. No they will be saying like some do now that wow he wasn’t very bright he had the chance to make a difference and didn’t. ”
Oh lord, I cannot believe the pathetic manipulation some of you people are trying to pull here. Contrary to many posts here, it’s not the end of the world, and you’d still have Dropline!
poor todd. dropline.net is totally /.’d now……
The one thing I liked about Slack in concern with the desktop was that it gave you simple desktop for both Gnome and KDE–neither was “specialized” (e.g. KDE=SuSE Gnome=RedHat/Fedora)
stay cool, be friends. kde is good, gnome is goood, and pat has his choise – why make noise?
I use Slackware 9.1 with DLG, so this really won’t affect me. I think since it’s his distro, he can do whatever he wants with it. I really think it is the best thing he could do anyway; if he were to drop KDE instead of Gnome, I think he would lose many more Slackers.
The way I do it is by leaving out Gnome and X (and of course KDE) in the Slackware install, then running the dropline installer for Gnome. This ensures the cleanest possible system. If you just don’t like DLG (I didn’t at first either), well I guess you can try garnome or another install script.
I tried a lot of time to build GNOME from source (also using garnome). Always failed. I tried a lot of time to build KDE from source. Always successed. Maybe I’m an exception.
I just thought of something; if Pat prefers KDE to Gnome so much, why in Slackware 9.1 and 10 is GDM the default login manager? I mean, the rc.4 script has an IF…ELSE structure that loads GDM if found, KDM if no GDM, and XDM if no KDM. It would make more sense to either use KDM first (since he uses KDE), or better yet, to use XDM first so it is truly DE-agnostic.
i noted that slackware installation places KDE in /opt, i use only Gnome, so i’ve not /opt partition standalone, my / partiton is about 300MB… (not enough to place KDE in it)so i’ll have to change all my disk partitions ?
“Oh lord, I cannot believe the pathetic manipulation some of you people are trying to pull here. Contrary to many posts here, it’s not the end of the world, and you’d still have Dropline!”
I agree. I believe Pat should focus his resources exclusively on Slackware. I absolutely love Slackware. It frigin’ rocks and is solid.
Let the GNOME and KDE people focus on the window managers. Personally, I use Dropline GNOME since it is extrememly stable on my machine and intergrates well into Slackware. I dislike KDE. That is not a jab at people who use it or like it.
> The problems building and maintaining GNOME on just about > any Linux distro out there extends from the fact that
> there is no set standard of how a Linux system should be > > constructed. Every independent Linux distro has an almost > completely different set of config files with an almost > > completely different syntax. You can’t find 2 independent > Linux distros that have the exact same set of libraries in > the exact same places with the exact same minor or even
> major version. Until there is unity into what goes into a > Linux distribution’s core and how it’s put there, you’re
> going to run into these kinds of problems. In fact, I’m
> wlling to bet the problem is going to get worse as time
> goes on. It all extends to the fact that Linux as an OS is
> a gigantic hodgepodge of componentry and nobody is
> communicating with each other as a consortium to make
> standards. We have to leave it up to the poor saps that
> build our so called Linux “distros” to pick up all the
> pieces, figure out how they all go together, and see if
> they all play nice with one another. Is this any way to
> build an OS?
[snicker]
Eh em. Sounds like the UNix days of late 1980′ early 1990’s to me. It’s called fragmentation.
It’s a force that’s tough to deal with, and as it turns out, Linux is even more susceptible to it that propreitary UNIX is or ever was.
Good luck.
Jim
If Pat takes 1/3 of his time just fixing what gnome has wrong where it comes to Slackware there are two, and only two possibilities:
(1) Slack is broken.
(2) Gnome is broken.
(“Broken” is defined very broadly.)
Everything else works with Slack, I mean *everything*, so I doubt #1 is true; that leaves only #2 to be true. If Slack needs to be tweaked for Gnome, then Gnome should be either:
(A) dropped entirely, or,
(B) installed in default, “broken” configuration only — then make the end-user fix it if they choose, the documentation, as crappy as that may be, is available.
The only “winning” move for Pat is “A”. If he does “B” then he will be shipping a known broken system — hardly a good thing to tell the buyer.
Pat’s decision will force Gnome to get its act together, or Gnome will just give up on Slackware. The former is a good thing for everyone involved, and the later is a bad thing for Gnome.
Thus Gnome will have no choice but to get their act together (i.e.: fix their install methodology.) This is a good thing.
Although KDE isn’t that wonderful in itself, it at least works right the first time.
As someone that uses neither gnome or kde, I can offer a less biased opinion.
I think you can’t drop gnome because too many programs rely on its libraries. That’s all, thanks.