16 thoughts on “Where have all the GNOME fans gone ?”

1. Hi!

   I was once Arabic gnome translation coordinator, I ditched Linux completely and I am using Windows XP.
   Sorry! But I need a working OS..

2. Ditched it for KDE. Developing for QT beats GTK by miles and miles.

3. Do you know that gconf development was stopped like 10 years ago because dconf will replace gconf. And do you know that dconf development was stopped for 2 or 3 years? That’s why.

4. Oh, forget the add the history of a new canvas widget. Please check out the canvas development trolls on gtk devel list.

5. GNOME become only a corporation made project. The code become ugly and only python or mono may have a chance to simplify the development. The codebase is old and in plain C. May be cute but is hard to make it back and GNOME starting from GNOME 2.16 seems stagnating, very small improvements (which start with Cairo + XGL) that give no intention to feel that something is changing.

6. gnome fans tend to defect to kde or lose interest completely when their (usually very good ideas, mockups etc) are rejected out of hand (see the osx menubar patch for gtk, dying topaz section on gnome-look.org).

   gtk development has also stunted the growth of the gnome community, as it is so backwards and X like.

7. I still use GNOME exclusively and greatly appreciate it, but I think it must be said that the GNOME community focused on minor UI details for far to long.

   Polishing had been much in need and was greatly beneficial for a time, but it started to look like GNOME was going nowhere fast.

   Nonetheless, _I_ am _greatly_ excited about some of the ideas I’ve seen proposed for GNOME 3 in the last few weeks.

8. Where did all the brightest go? Macintosh. Like Gnome (values usability high) but it’s more polished and finished, bundled with great software.

9. Are you considering to pull your post now? 🙂

10. @Arafat then ditch XP if you need a working OS. Baring the legal issues with creating content/code using that OS it’s stability after many years is STILL not so great.

    Krog has a point. QT is very VERY easy to write. While I like to do thinks in python where QT and GTK are pretty close to being just as easy as the other one, if I was writing in C++ I would probably go for QT.

11. As far away from Jeff Waugh and the rest of the pro-Microsoft faction in GNOME as we could get.

    GNOME is a Microsoft-sponsored assault on Free Software.

12. I’ve been bouncing back and forth (as a user, not a developer) between GNOME and KDE for a while. I’ve done lots of Qt/C++ coding and some Clutter coding, so I am familiar with GLib-style C APIs. I must say that I like Qt/C++ a lot better. I haven’t tried GTKmm, though. Python levels the playing field considerably, but Python has its own set of issues. I think GNOME 3.0 should be taken as an opportunity to do some really innovative things, similar to what KDE did with KDE 4. I’ve been using KDE 4.1 since it was in beta (maybe earlier), and I hate going back to KDE 3. I would love to see GNOME do something similar.

13. Pingback: Cobbling some thoughts together at Random thoughts and serendipity
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14. Interesting post and some of the replies, a little visceral, but fairly accurate. I think that the issue with stagnating technologies and a dislike of doing objects in C seem to be the biggest issues. I have been a long term Gnome user but after learning C++ and developing in it, it just makes GObject based C seem, well, clunky.

    I installed KDE4 the other day, with KDevelop I managed to knock up a simple paint program (usually the first thing I do with a new toolkit/language) and was surprised by how much easier it was when compared to Gnome. I dislike the checkbox mania of KDE but QT wins hands down against GTK for development ease/power.

    For 3.0 PLEASE make a big thing about doing objects in an object based *language* (C++). Yes, Python does objects, but it is a scripting language, and I find myself wanting to use the languages I love/know rather than the latest and greatest intepreted language.

15. @Nick: What about gtkmm and gnomemm?

16. Now that Qt is going LGPL, what about some discussion about porting GnomeLibs to Qt for Gnome 3.0. This would unify the Toolkit layer in the desktops going forward. Since there was already a planned break in API/ABI compatability for Gnome 3, I see this as a significant step forward for Gnome.

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