[Usability] GNOME 2.6+ usability: points of critique

[Robert Fendt <rmfendt web de>]

Hi,

I am a longtime GNOME user (since 1.2.x), albeit not a GNOME developer
(mainly due to lack of time, sorry). While unfortunately I cannot really
participate in the development of GNOME, I can (and feel I should at
this point) give some feedback on usability. To make a long story short:
I am on the verge of switching. Where to? Anything. Essentially just
away from GNOME. Why? Well that is what this mail is about; just
silently switching away from the desktop environment I have been using
for many years just does not feel right.

It mainly boils down to two essential points: flexibility and arrogance.
GNOME has been "simplified" more and more for some time now, almost
always at the expense of flexibility and configurability. And when
someone complains, the reactions often are along the lines of "we know
better than you, we will not change it back, so get used to it or get
lost". Want examples? Sure.

1) I use a focus scheme usually known as "focus on mouse contact", and
am used to being able to trigger mouse events in a window (i.e.,
'click') _without_ raising it. While Metacity fortunately still can do
this (so the wm itself is not to blame here), why on earth do I have to
set this in a lousy 'regedit' rip-off (which of all things pops up a
window telling me I am not supposed to use it anyway)?

2) I am used to and can productively work with browse-mode file managers
like Nautilus used to be until GNOME 2.4. In GNOME 2.6 spatial mode was
added. Fair enough. But why does the upgrade simply change the default
behaviour without asking me, seemingly expecting me to re-learn before I
can get any work done? That is quite arrogant. Again: the possibility to
switch off spatial mode was first hidden in the GNOME configuration
editor and only added into the GUI of 2.8 (AFAIK). And yes, I have tried
spatial mode, albeit not for very long. Desktop environments should help
me improve my productivity, not force me to re-learn all the time.

3) Somewhere along the way from 2.4 to 2.8 (I am not exactly sure when
since my reference installations are 2.4 and 2.8) the possibility to
dock views into Nautilus was either dropped or hidden so well that I
could not find it again. Up to 2.4, I usually configured Nautilus that
HTML and text documents are shown inside the browser window. In 2.8 that
does not seem to be possible anymore.

4) Simple details of themes, like the size of icons in applications
cannot be modified. The icon size and arrangement of most themes is
almost ridiculous. At least on a 1024x768 laptop screen. Simple
possibility to reduze size and space between icons? Not that I know of.

5) Every directory having its own view settings in Nautilus is nice, but
absolute nonsense without a "set this view for all" function. If it does
exist, I did not find it. And manually changing the settings for every
directory I ever visited is quite tedious.

Those points are mostly minor annoyances, treated separately. But they
are only the most prominent examples, given time I am sure I could still
extend that list quite a bit. Their combination has reached a point
where using GNOME has become one big annoyance. I will definitely retry
GNOME at some future time, but when I extrapolate the current
development, I am not very confident.

Regards,
Robert