[Nottingham] gnome-3

[david at gbenet.com]

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Hi All,

Having endured the horrors of gnome-3 - and wishing to get back to  gnome-2 I decided to
ditch (yet for the hundredth time) my Linux Mint - the only "good" thing going for it was
the fact that support for VLC was just a download away (as with Ubuntu)

Gnome-3 is by any stretch of the imagination a disaster. You can't place items on your
desktop they have to  be on a favourites side bar. You can't even edit the main menu of
pretty icons - I suspect that the heavy use of icons is in relation to the general level of
 education in that people cannot read - they need pictures. I gave up on Linux Mint with
Gnome-3 and headed so I thought to a  better world of KDE.

I decided to go for a KDE-based Ubuntu. After clicking on a very good and no doubt colourful
graphical user interface for several hours (3 hours 20 mins) I eventually got a wireless
connection. Having explored a bit and an hour and a half for updates - I  finally decided to
change the splash screen - which I did and rebooting - low a black screen of death but  I
managed to get my name and password in by feeling my way like a blind man. In fact any
change from the default splash screen lead to the screen of death.

So whilst KDE is pretty - in the - "my little pony" - kind of way - one has to ask what
drugs are the developers of KDE on? It's not sharp and snappy - not particularly functional
- - or very fast - slow to load and slow to shut down. A bit like every Microsoft O/S. Plastic
pink for the girls and plastic blue for the boys - I got the distinct feeling the developers
of KDE sat in a Toys R Us on acid.

By 7.30 pm I was starving I'd spent since 7 am sodding around with Mint Linux and KUbuntu
and trying unsuccessfully to get KUbuntu to go back to Gnome-2. Now - comes an interesting
observation. In the past - as  much as 3 years ago - one was not locked in by branded Linux
distributions. You  could quite easily switch from a very snappy KDE - to a lot slower Gnome
- - and they would each support each.

Now we are being locked in Fedora Opensuse the various Ubuntus. Linux Mint in particular
it's very very difficult to  change the boot splash - and it's support of Gnome is well only
about 60 per cent - there is an increasingly simplified graphical user interface and a 100
per cent increase in product branding - which  ultimately leads to frustrations in the
limitations of programmes available and  the severe limitations of creating your own start
up splash screens sign on screens. GNU Privacy Assistant is not available in Linux Mint and
I suspect other programmes too. KGpg is not available in  though you install it on
Gnome-Ubuntu - as it installs and is not available in the latest Gnome-opensuse - which is
what I'm using now.

This increased branding is about money. This increased locking people in to a desktop
environment which can not be changed and the limitations of programmes  is due to money.We
are all used to Microsoft be anti-open source locking people into their products. We are
increasingly getting Linux Distros that are more like Microsoft as the months pass. Opensuse
as I recall was criticised by having its  head firmly wedged up Microsoft's arse.

It begs the question: Is Microsoft funding Linux Distros? Not all Linux developers are
entirely working full-time for Linux. Many (thousands) work within a Microsoft dominated
world. We find that Branding either the ACID (Lysergic acid diethylamide) KDE or the
impracticality and ugliness of Gnome-3 is causing real concerns for end users of Linux.

We are losing the fast flexible and licence free principles of open source GNULinux and
shifting more and more to the locked-in branding of distributions with less functionality
less choice less freedom - all these terms are more associated with Microsoft Apple I-pods
e-books and the like.

Increasingly we see the marketing and branding concepts are the same -the storage of photos
- - the entertainment - the mobility the streaming of multimedia. These are the branding terms
of the Microsoft Corporation. Yet Linux Product Branding - is identical. The locking in is
Microsoft as it is with Linux. We may  as well talk of Microsoft/Linux as distinct from
GNU/Linux to   which an increasing number of new users to Linux will never know. I've been
using Linux for over 15 years and  well remember the early days when it was a real pain in
the arse.

I have used opensuse since 9 and stopped at 11.2 Fedora Red Hat Debian Ubuntu Mint Linux and
increasingly I have found that whilst they have moved towards an easy graphical user
interface and an interoperability between KDE desktop and the Gnome desktop and there has
been the increased locking in the increased loss of freedom in the development of all these
major distributions.

What can be said of Gnome-3? A disaster? A cfucking mess? Useless? Fanciful junk? Ugly?
Sadly the answer is yes.

David




 .




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