We could do well with change on the desktop, but very little of the change I've seen during the past 10+ years is actually benefiting the user. Even on Linux, the changes happening are stuff like bugfixes and reducing jank; small incremental improvements that have already been done, but are just getting their final round of polish.
All the other changes I see are just shuffling around the UI, which doesn't really help anyone. And even newer features are either so marginal as to not matter, or can't be trusted to stick around. Why bother to learn a new UI, when all that does is get you back to square 1, and it might not even stick around? I'd be much more interested in tweaking my DE if I could be confident in knowing that those tweaks will persist and not cause other problems down the line, but I have no such assurance.
I don't blame the casuals for hating UI updates. I myself went to Linux to get a more cohesive and stable experience. If we're going to make changes, we need to not break workflows that already exist. New features and workflows need to either not be in the way for established users, or opt-in until they're established and known good. Doing anything else is user hostile, and by this time, given how much we know users don't like changing UI, dare I say, evil.
One of the most unfortunate things to happen to Linux on Desktop is Gnome and their childish and contemptuous behaviour towards users. Of close to the 20 years of using linux on desktop the large part of it away from Gnome has been the best.
In fact, I think decoupling things from Gnome has been one of the best outcomes of Wayland.
The year of Linux will start the day we have a capable wayland desktop environment that is not foreign to Mac and Windows users without chasing stupid churn. /rant
GNOME 3 doesn't implement very basic, table-stakes DE features and patronizes users for expecting them, turning them instead toward a horrid, unsandboxed, privileged user script extension system which has no place in a DE.
They could have just kept hacking on GNOME 2 and we'd have been in a better place. If it wasn't for modern KDE I'd still be using xfce, a project which respects its users.
I wanted to wire an webcal/https ics link into the GNOME calendar the other day: absolutely no way to do that. There's a prominent calendar in the top bar of GNOME, and it seems no one actually uses it?
There are no DE features I'm missing from GNOME 3. GNOME 3 respects the majority of the users, and this entails not making it a mess by catering to the vocal minority who can't move on from Windows 95.
Telaneo · · focus · HN ↗
All the other changes I see are just shuffling around the UI, which doesn't really help anyone. And even newer features are either so marginal as to not matter, or can't be trusted to stick around. Why bother to learn a new UI, when all that does is get you back to square 1, and it might not even stick around? I'd be much more interested in tweaking my DE if I could be confident in knowing that those tweaks will persist and not cause other problems down the line, but I have no such assurance.
I don't blame the casuals for hating UI updates. I myself went to Linux to get a more cohesive and stable experience. If we're going to make changes, we need to not break workflows that already exist. New features and workflows need to either not be in the way for established users, or opt-in until they're established and known good. Doing anything else is user hostile, and by this time, given how much we know users don't like changing UI, dare I say, evil.
asdf88990 · · focus · HN ↗
In fact, I think decoupling things from Gnome has been one of the best outcomes of Wayland.
The year of Linux will start the day we have a capable wayland desktop environment that is not foreign to Mac and Windows users without chasing stupid churn. /rant
jampekka · · focus · HN ↗
soulofmischief · · focus · HN ↗
They could have just kept hacking on GNOME 2 and we'd have been in a better place. If it wasn't for modern KDE I'd still be using xfce, a project which respects its users.
jrimbault · · focus · HN ↗
Miraste · · focus · HN ↗
soulofmischief · · focus · HN ↗
jampekka · · focus · HN ↗
asdf88990 · · focus · HN ↗