Well, if you're UI designer and designed the UIs launched it and all works... what else you're going to do ?
Same disease that plagues GNOME, change shit for sake of changing shit, fuck users that got used to the old way, they don't matter, is new way faster ? Who knows, we don't.
It's funny how the huge silent majority get on just fine with GNOME but the vocal few act like the devs have poked them in the eye and called their mother fat.
As I recall, the UI designers didn't even ask for feedback. It was a case of "we know what you want better than you do". That design approach is basically always a mistake.
Well, yes, but if most people who is going to give feedback are tech-inclined Linux people and your aim is to build something which can be used by anyone at the end?
Your initial design might land somewhere very wrong, but starting to ask for feedback from that point on will lead you better since it's wrong for everyone, no?
The word for the audience that GNOME developers are targeting is "lowest common denominator".
It's the same problem with all excessively friendly interfaces, great if you are a day one user (pretty rare on Linux), obstructive and shitty if you know what you're doing.
I know what I'm doing and I have no idea how people can deal with gnome on a day to day basis. I can survive only with plugins and those break very often,sadly.
Unfortunately I'm too lazy to switch to KDE (way too much stuff is broken if you install it not from the start and I don't want to reinstall), so I stick to gnome on my work computer.
I really, really appreciated KDE customization and power user options (hidden but there). It is messy and the UI is worse at times, but it's way ahead.
Me too. That being said, I no longer use it on any of my devices. I heartily disagree with their development roadmap and feel somewhat lost as a former GTK tinkerer.
Well, this is a very strong and wrong assumption. There are ordinary people who are using Linux because of various reasons (my dad being one of them), and we want more people to use Linux, too.
If we continue to cater to only technically inclined people, we have no right to criticize Linux for being for the knowledgeable people only. If we want to attract more users from a more diverse community, we need to make some changes to user experience.
There is no buts or ifs. There are plenty of desktop environments. Technically inclined people can tinker with gconf, or install something different (KDE, E17, or any of the TWMs).
Sure, but you don't ignore your core audience to attract other users.
Valve built the Steam Deck knowing very well that their core users will be PC gamers and not console gamers. The steam deck is made as open as a pc, with functionality to jump back-and-forth between that and a pc (dynamic cloud sync).
Console gamers will come, but you don't ignore the people that are at the core of your business.
What do you mean as you recall? Did you follow the project updates on their issue and bug tracker? If you're not happy with it you know you can fork it and create your own derivative, right? Oh, so you just like to complain about how people spend their free time and want them to work for you for free?
I use GNOME, it's not great, but some people really hate it, go out of their way to tell everybody how pissed they are at it and that GNOME is the worst thing to have ever happened to the Linux world. I guess complaining about GNOME has become part of their identity, a trait shared by the vocal systemd haters that just won't shut up about it.
Many Linux users haven't gone past the "it's cool to hate" teenage phase. Goes hand in hand with the obnoxious elitism and anime avatars.
I've despised GNOME since version 1.x. I've developed a solution to deal with all this pent up hate and rage toward GNOME.
I just don't use it.
About as desktoppy as I'll get is XFCE. I gave my girlfriend (now wife) a Kubuntu-based laptop once to hold her over until I bought her a MacBook Air.
Systemd is another matter because Lennart doesn't seem to want me to have the "I just don't use it" option without stuff breaking. But Void seems to truck along quite nicely with runit so I'm content with that.
Hating shows their lack of skills. They are the kind that know just enough to complain but lack any significant skills when it comes to development. They probably work in some point and click system administrator job. Eventually they either learn they can lead the change they want to see in open source and shut up because they aren't willing to do it, or they keep throwing a fit like a baby thinking that'll help them get their way.
Well, I'm used to Ubuntu updates breaking my workflow and potentially breaking some of my boot services, which is genuinely inconvenient. So I don't think those vocal few are wrong.
What does that have to do with Ubuntu updates breaking things? If a tornado hits McDonalds while you're in it are you going to say you hate McDonald's for not being tornado proof?
While I'm a die-hard KDE user, I like how GNOME experiments with new ways of evolving the desktop paradigm and workflow attached to that.
Yes, they remove a lot of settings, and have a binary format for storing settings (and I don't like these design decisions), but it looks that they're becoming a very good DE for non-technical Linux user.
If any Linux desktop environment had 5% of this inconsistency, they would be battered to hell and back. Today, thanks to efforts of KDE and GNOME, even Qt and GTK apps can be rendered almost identically.
One might not like the direction of a particular DE, but I think we can agree that they're putting a lot of work towards a better, more usable desktop experience (and, I had my fair share of 3rd degree burns during GNOME3's teething as a developer).
AFAIK, GNOME 2.0 and KDE 3.5.x is still maintained as independent, different projects now, too.
I'm not complaining about the visual appeal of the UIs, I think they look great. I think MacOS is a good example of iterating on your UI experience and improving it, but not changing it to the point where half your OS ends up looking out of place due to tiny inconsistencies like the colour of titlebars or because the entire style of your OS keeps changing upon every new version.
Imagine if the next version of MacOS had square icons for close/minimise/maximise and to update your app to use that new style, you had to switch UI frameworks. Then you'd end up with 2 different styles of apps on your system because not every app out there made the switch, and one would now look very out of place. That's the sort of thing Windows seems to do every major release.
GNOME3 was released in 2011, and around then, KDE did the same major overhall. I haven't seen too many major changes in the overall approach to the UI either has taken since then. Probably the most dramatic was the GTK4 update, which took quite a while.
Same disease that plagues GNOME, change shit for sake of changing shit, fuck users that got used to the old way, they don't matter, is new way faster ? Who knows, we don't.