[Gllug] Gnome Vs Kde Vs

[Nix]

On Tue, 31 Aug 2004, Matthew King mused:
> Nix wrote:
>> I wish! Alas, they're not giving people any freedom in the area of user
>> interfaces: oh no, anything that looks like an option must be torn
>> out and left partially undocumented in a GConf setting, otherwise it
>> might `confuse the users'.
>> I used to be a major GNOME fan, but they've gone so lowest-common-
>> denominator that I now think they're effectively unusable by anyone who
>> wants a user environment that adapts to *them* rather than vice versa.
> 
> I feel the same. I don't even remember what was removed now, but it
> was when Galeon went from Gtk 1 to 2

85% of the options? And pointing out that one *used* the removed options
was faced with a `oh, no, nobody really used that option, the
preferences screen was too complex' despite the presence of direct
evidence to the contrary :(((

I mean, who spends so much time in a preferences screen that its
complexity is worrying?

Bloody UI theoreticians (with an emphasis on `lack of attention paid to
the real world of active users but only on what theoretical New Users
Who Have Never Heard Of Computers may do').

> I've found that a good solution, simple as it may sound, is to replace
> metacity with fvwm (see http://www.fvwm.org/documentation/faq/#2.8)

I've always used fvwm2 :) I tried to switch to sawfish, but never
finished the transition, and now that sawfish is (sob!) de facto dead
(rumour says, thanks to Apple telling its author to stop working on it
if he wanted to work for them), I have no decent wm to switch to,
so I stick with horrible old fvwm.

> Bear in mind that fvwm takes a lot of configuration and
> (unfortunately? Not.) there's no GUI with which to do so, so you'll
> have to write your ~/.fvwm2rc yourself. I have a more-or-less working
> one if anyone wants it.

I have a terribly simple and undecorated one if anyone wants it (flashy
stuff on window borders looks nice until it distracts you, and I get
distracted by *everything*).

> Well, OK it doesn't really solve the
> Gnome-is-designed-for-people-that-can't-use-MacOS problem, but it's
> still quite funky and I thought I'd let people know all the same.

I'm thinking of trying KDE; apparently it's more suitable for
tweakaholics like me, and though I despise the default look of Qt, maybe
there are nicer-looking themes than come in the Qt distribution.

-- 
`The copyright file is for everyone.  That we make it available in
 plain-text, uncompressed form rather than in spinning, throbbing
 OpenGL-rendered 3D text over a thumping dance music soundtrack is a
 feature, not a bug.' --- Branden Robinson

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