I remember when I got my first laptop. It was running Windows XP, and for the first time in my life I could actually customize every aspect of the environment I was working in, unlike our family computer which required some consideration for others.
I would intentionally theme it to use tiny fonts and turn off any supposed eye candy as I didn't notice it anyway and it seemed to be a waste of RAM.
Ironically it was the eye candy that caught my attention with Linux. I had already tried Mephis on my family computer, which I suppose wasn't so considerate of others, because I liked the idea of a free operating system. I was going through my paranoia-of-copyright phase. The idea of such an open policy to what you can and can't do with the operating system appealed to me. I had previously hated trying to legitimately come up with Windows licenses and had resorted to using Windows 98 SE because I didn't have enough licenses for XP.
It was shortly after this time that a friend showed me Compiz Fusion. If you haven't seen it, I suggest you search youtube. Basically it's a collection of eye-candy goodness for linux. However I have found it to be very practical too. It makes it easy to manage windows and assign keyboard shortcuts to virtually anything you want.
I decided to take the plunge and install Ubuntu. I had many difficulties and the learning curve was great. I essentially had to force myself not to go to Windows when I didn't know how to do something, kind of like immersing yourself in another country in order to learn the language.
With the help of my friend, I was finally able to get linux set up how I liked it. Things became fluid, easy to use, and highly customizable. I came to feel like everything was easier and better on linux except for some of the bugs I would run into and the lack of commercial games.
Compiz is what brought me to linux. Now I love other things immensely too, such as the terminal and package manager, as well as gnome 2's layout/organization. Slowly but surely they worked out many kinks and Ubuntu seemed to actually be a perfect 10 at version 10.04 and 10.10.
That's when it started going down hill for me...
I was used to how I had tweaked my computer. I had very nicely organized shortcuts and macros to do virtually everything I wanted. Ubuntu was toying with the idea of using Unity on a netbook version of the operating system. I decided to try it in 2010 just to see if it was more light weight or any better. I ran the live CD and found that the graphics couldn't handle the new interface and it was buggy.
In 2011, someone at Ubuntu got the brilliant idea to put the netbook edition of Ubuntu as the primary desktop edition. Like fitting a round peg into a square hole, they tried to put a tablet interface on a desktop operating system.
Everything about Unity seemed to require more clicks and a whole new paradigm to thinking about desktop applications. It was application-centric like a Mac instead of process-centric like Windows and Gnome 2. I decided to switch to "classic Gnome" and read around about the recent trend in interfaces.
To my horror, I couldn't just switch linux distributions and get gnome back in the long term. Gnome was changing too, and it seemed to be changing very similar to what Unity looked like to me.
I had made the plunge a few years before this point to try linux, so I was willing to try something else new. I tried Gnome 3 for a few days. I switched back to Gnome 2 using substitute curse words under my breath.
Who's brilliant idea was it to change Gnome so fundamentally that it didn't even resemble the same project? It's one thing if a new project, like Unity had shown up as an alternative, but they actually went as far as to
overwrite existing libraries and dependencies with their new creation.
If the people at Gnome wanted to create a new window manager, then they should have given it a different name. Now I was finding that the longer Gnome 3 existed, the less the programs I used and loved in GTK would work with Gnome 2's libararies.
Gone were the simple menus organized intuitively. They replaced it with an intrusive menu that covers the screen, allows little customization, and has huge icons big enough for your thumb on a touch screen.
I felt like Linus Torvalds did, that my "sane" interfaces had been replaced with something with the intent to make it difficult to get any actual work done. I remember shortly after reading something like "Linus is starting to like Gnome 3" only to read a quote from him that made it sound like it was becoming tolerable. Hardly and endorsement. Even funnier, one person suggested to Linus that he make "his own distro." How ironic.
So I tried newer versions of linux, trying to find one that had later drivers and kernel for my laptop, but still supported Gnome 2. That's when I found out about Mate.
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| Good old Gnome 2 menu system |
Mate is a great idea. They forked Gnome 2 and basically did a search and replace on everything "gnome" in the code for "mate". I highly support the initiative. It pains me to think how much easier it would have been if Gnome 3 wouldn't have
overwritten functionality with their new interface instead of making a new project for it.
Unfortunately, now I'm in a bind. I'm uncertain to the direction linux is taking. I'm hoping Mate will be well supported, but for now it's annoying how things using GTK2 vs GTK3 have to have their theme's synchronized if the theme exists for both, and there are bugs from the refactoring.
Mate created a fork of the major Gnome 2 projects, like nautilus becoming cuja, gedit becoming pluma. The problem is, I develop plugins for gedit 2. So now what do I do?
On the one hand, they have written gedit 3 to work and look much like gedit 2. But there are some problems. One, the plugin infrastructure is totally different, requiring me to rewrite every plugin. For plugins I didn't write, I have to wait until they are ported or port them myself. There have been some annoying bugs in gedit 3 with all of the new code as well. The terminal doesn't match the mate-terminal theme, and the keyboard shortcuts for the tools weren't working for a while. I'll admit, the
plugin structure does seem improved, but is gedit as light weight as it was before?
On the other hand, we have pluma, gedit 2 rebranded. I can easily port my python plugins to it, but some of the functionality or C plugins haven't all been successfully ported yet.
I feel stuck at this crossroads. Do I make my plugins for pluma, or for gedit 3? Will pluma be around in the future when even one of the guys working on mate seemed to say they just use gedit.
People may say I should leave gedit anyway, but I want a native, light weight syntax highlighter that looks and feel like the rest of the OS. Not something bloated like Eclipse or graphically out-of-place and non-integrated like jedit (file browser integration).
In the mean time, I need to get work done. So I've switched to Linux Mint 11. It's still supported for now, has gnome 2, with even the fun little tooltip scrollbars, and still plays nicely with Compiz Fusion. I've had friends suggest Xubuntu, but they have the same problems of mixing old with new GTK dependencies as Ubuntu does. Ubuntu, even when first switching to Unity made compiz much harder to configure with emerald not being in the package manager and Mac-like themes conflicting. I still remember maximizing a window with the window buttons on the right only to have them move to the left when maximized. If I wanted a Mac, I would have chosen a different distribution.
Here is the thing I really don't understand... Gnome developers claim they have done usage studies, but in the end, it's like they've abandoned their market. Even if you are arguing that Gnome 3 is more intuitive for the computer illiterate, then I ask you how many computer illiterate people do you know that use Gnome? I have no problem with them trying new things, but I have to get work done, so couldn't they have done their playing somewhere else? Some distributions, perhaps Edubuntu, would be a great place to want to try things out on computer novices, but by overwriting they make it difficult to get the interfaces we've all come to love and understand.
Linux has come a long way in becoming the wonderful interface that can put to shame both Windows and Mac. But now they seem to regress. They abandon their main markets just after getting some real polish to their product.
I know some will say "linux is free" and "go make something you like yourself". I love that linux is free, and if I had more time I'd love to make things better in it than I already do. That said, I find it very restrictive how Gnome has essentially forced it's customers to either a paradigm shift or to get lost. That's why I support Mate and their efforts, since Gnome 3 should have been the fork instead.
Sources:
Linus Torvalds rant - I want my sane interfaces back!
Linus Torvalds google plus post comment:
Where there is room to do things several different ways, recognizing
different people have different needs, Fluxbox, XFCE, KDE, LXDE, etc,
etc, etc, allow end users latitude in what options are available and how
they configure their desktop. Whereas Gnomes attitude is “This is what
is best for you, it is best for you in the long run. You will like it
and thank us later. We have usability studies to prove it.”
I keep checking back to see if things have changed, but they only seem
to be more restrictive. So I vote with my feet. I run and support (with
code, documentation and helping users) other desktops.
Sick and tired of gnome shell
Mate Desktop
