Re: Suggestions from a User

[John Williams <john williams lists gmail com>]

On Mon, 2006-06-19 at 17:57 -0700, d2004 cosmopod com wrote:

> 8.  My biggest grief with GNOME relates to my dial-up USB modem.  I know that 
> it is supported under my current system (Fedora Core 5)  because I can run it 
> successfully under kppp.  However, attempting to configure it under GNOME 
> results in failure as it cannot be detected.  This is annoying as, for one 
> reason, it limits me from using a GNOME-only distribution such as Ubuntu.  
> kppp is a more than adequate workaround but it would be great for GNOME to 
> also support these.  I realise that dial-up is slowing giving way to 
> broadband but in my (first-world) country there are still many home users 
> with dial-up only.  We are also cutting ourselves off from the third world.

Hi Danni, and thanks for your mail.  At the risk of adding a trivial "me
too" message, I would like to amplify your point above.  I believe that
our problem (I have a similar one) is part of a bigger picture for
GNOME.  It is this:

Software developers, in general, appear to have (and develop on)
higher-end systems than those of the average user.  I am referring here
in particular to CPU speed, RAM and network access speed.

One of the many consequences of this is that GNOME networking
applications and associated infrastructure are very, very poor at
accommodating users with modems, and relatedly, with slow (57k, say)
access to the Internet.

Not only is it very hard (I have never managed to do it) to set up
GNOME's modem tool (I have to use the Network Configuration tool, and
log in as root as a consequence), once you are connected many
applications have no idea how do deal with:

 (a) slow connection speeds; and
 (b) intermittent connectivity

Issues related to this can be seen most clearly in Evolution, but also
in yumex.  In fact, I am about ready to give up on Evolution totally
after having used it ever since its first release.  I kept on hoping
that it would improve, but years down the track it appears that due to
the point I raise above (developers not walking in the shoes of users)
it will never happen.

Sigh.

After all that, I would like to say a huge THANKS to all the GNOME
developers for all the really, really good stuff that the GNOME
community has produced over the years.  GNOME is really cool.  But let's
face it: it's not ready for the (non-corporate, general user) desktop
yet.