Re: Gnome 3 desktop issues

[Tim Murphy <tnmurphy gmail com>]

On 9 December 2011 20:18, Tassilo Horn <tassilo member fsf org> wrote:
> Tim Murphy <tnmurphy gmail com> writes:
>
> Hi Tim,
>
>>>>Essentially if you don't like it then it's apparently your fault.
>>> is a fair thing to say. It's different and it's new. You CAN move to
>>> something else if you don't like it.
>>
>> This, to put it very politely, is manure.
>>
>> It has been a huge struggle to find an alternative that's sustainable
>
> It is free software.  The people that invest their spare time in working
> on free software of course do that for making the software fit their own
> purpose, if you like it or not.  Because of that, any free software's
> license comes with a statement like that:
>
> ,----[ ~/repos/el/emacs/trunk/src/buffer.c ]
> | GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
> | but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
> | MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
> | GNU General Public License for more details.
> `----
>
> So you've been warned.

They present their work to the world and I can say what I like about
it and I am naturally going to recommend the work that suits me and
the people that seem to listen to me.  People send out work partly to
get feedback - another opinion - and partly for the fame and partly
for all sorts of reasons.

Users make a bit of investment too, really - I mean we put Linux on
our machines when our IT departments are hostile, we help our friends
to install it, we find out how to make all sorts of vital things work
for other people and we thus expand the pool of knowledge and interest
about Linux so that there is a bigger audience and more talent.  We
invest something too, basically, so it's not surprising that having
our careful efforts zapped is going to get negative feedback.

Everyone's in this position - even developers. Every developer out
there is more in debt to other people than they have ever contributed
- e.g. you use GCC to compile stuff and that's a tool that's taken a
mountain of effort to get where it is - probably a lot more than
GNOME.  If gcc started breaking your code and preventing your build
tools from working and there was no practical benefit you'd complain
even if someone came and told you to shut up because gcc is free.

In the end, though nobody has to listen to me and I don't have to
flatter them. So what's your point?


>> - in other words something that works and that's getting updates.
>
> Why do you think you have the right to demand any maintenance and
> development work done by *others* in the direction that pleases *you*?
> That's a quite anti-social attitude.

Jeesh! I have downloaded Linux Mint because it's maintaining a UI that
I want and if I like it I can donate to them and you're accusing me of
being antisocial because of that?

> Beside from that, it's not that there are too few options for window
> managers and complete desktop environments in the free software
> ecosystem like KDE, GNOME, XFCE, LXDE, Enlightenment, just to name the
> most prominent DEs.

Yes, I have used them all and they're all deficient in one way or
another.  I have also used twm, FVWM, ROX, sawfish, gnome1, cde,
Nextstep, GEM, OSX, GNOME2, GEOS, OS/2, BeOS and half a dozen other
things and GNOME2 is the least bad that I could find on linux -
actually pretty good really.

Regards,

Tim

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