Re: [Usability]Feedback on GNOME 2

["Derek D. Martin" <gnomeuse pizzashack org>]

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At some point hitherto, Jeff Waugh hath spake thusly:
> > As it stands, I think the Windows UI is more configurable than that of
> > GNOME 2, and I think that is shameful.
> 
> We consider that a rousing success.

And I consider that sad.

> I consider the now very serious consideration of GNOME on the
> corporate desktop to be a rousing success (administrators and users
> alike don't want to deal with the configuration hellhole that both
> GNOME 1.x and Windows present).

I have no idea where you get such an idea.  I'm an experienced system
administrator, having managed very large environments with Unix users,
Windows users, and Linux users.  I've never heard a single person
complain that any of those things were too configurable.  The concept
is preposterous.  And for the record, as a system administrator and a
user, I strongly disagree with you.

For those who don't care about configurability, there's nothing to
configure.  Just leave it alone.  For those who do, it should be
there.

As for serious consideration of GNOME on the corporate desktop, I
worked for an all-Linux on the desktop company.  They used KDE as
their standard desktop, as did another mostly-Linux shop I'm familiar
with.  In cases where people were looking for a bit more flexibility,
I recommended that people try gnome, but I won't be able to that in
the future.  I'll grant you that it's better than CDE or other desktop
environments provided by commercial Unix vendors; but that's really
not saying much.  Where I have a say in the matter in the future, I'll
be recommending KDE as the standard default desktop, for all the
reasons that you claim are unimportant.

I haven't taken a survey or anything, so I could be wrong, but based
on discussions I've had with "real users" as you call them, I think
you're rather less in touch with what users really want than you
think.  But then, in my experience, that's often (though far from
always) the case with developers...

One other point: it's also not true that people don't care about
the registry vs. plain text file issue.  In general, plain text files
broken down by application (or some other reasonable criteria) make it
far easier to migrate an entire configuration to a new place, and make
hand or scripted edits to fix those things that need to be modified
for the new location.

Anyway, it no longer matters to me.  I was only trying to help.  I
think your "vision" does the community a disservice.  Since it's what
you seem to want, I'll happily run something else.

- -- 
Derek D. Martin
http://www.pizzashack.org/
GPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D

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