Re: My 2 cents

> As mentioned already: It's a really dumb idea to alienate your current
> user base in an attempt to cater to potential future users who don't
> actually exist at the moment. It's even worse when obtaining said future

I disagree here: sometimes it's best not to care about the past, but do
a completely new design - including the complete user interface.
It feels to me like gnome2 did this, less inconsistent config files and
so on, but more unification, while still keeping stuff modular and not
just merging everything into one huge thing (like KDE feels to me).
I also agree with them about removing some stuff, like this small puzzle
game, or the bunch of clocks...
Some things are just a matter of change: some changes take some time to
accept... i still regularly click onto the clock to pop up my
calendar... well: of course i can just add an icon for the calendar next
to my clock and use that. Maybe it would have been better if clicking on
the clock never had worked.
I'm quite happy with most of gnome2 - sawfish is just like the old
sawfish (i never really tried metacity, it lacks lot of stuff i DO want)
Not being able to assign Win+R to the "run program" function is another
thing (i worked around that by using a sawfish keybinding)
And not being able to add the gnome menu to a panel so it opens
_unfolded_ (i hate this extra hierarchy "Apps", "Debian", "KDE" at the
top level... it's unnecessary. my screen is big enough) really sucks.
It makes me accept that big Menu at the top, because i can't achieve a
similar result with a panel at the bottom any more...

> I still use gnome1 and galeon1, meaning that I'm hard pressed to roll
> stuff in to galeon2, as marco is well aware. Why is this? Lack of

I do run gnome2 - but galeon1. As does my father, who doesn't know
anything about the console, who didn't even configure his UI himself: i
pre-configured the account for him, and he likes using it.
Well, i told him that galeon2 got the javascript options removed (in the
preferences dialog it is _as_good_as_removed_!) and he said that it is a
pity. Yes, my father, too, liked that quick settings stuff.

> well; The user is stupid and, in anycase, Seth Nickell knows best.

Yep: that is where i disagree, too: IMHO Gnome2 enforces too much onto
the user. This is ok when the admin of a large site does so, like
locking the wallpaper on corporate desktops, so no policital incorrect
wallpaper can be chosen.
But they overdid it. They make a desktop _only_ people not caring about
their system can use.
That is a big mistake: you might gain a share of desktop users - right
now an insignificant amount - but you loose a big share of your
potential developer and contributor base. It's like sawing the branch
of a tree you are sitting on...
If i look at myself: Galeon1 is my favourite browser. Galeon2 right now
never will, because i need certain features. So i'll probably switch to
mozilla then - but i won't spend my time on maintaining a galeon2
package - because i presumably won't use galeon2. Sure, someone else
will pick up the galeon2 package...
I also installed GNOME2 at our university. More and more people are
switching to WMaker and KDE now. It definitely has lost a lot of share.
(Partially to it not working properly on some displays, admittedly)
And that even with users that don't know a shit about unix. They just
want to surf the web and read their emails (most stick with pine for
that, which i find pretty amazing...) - they don't even change their KDE
desktop or their icons.

> find easier to use; instead I am forced to conform my usage patterns to
> Seth's ideal. No one is going to convince me that that's an improvement.

Well, that is what corporate users prefer: if you limit the useage
patterns of your users it's easier to give them support.

While i havn't heard the name Seth before, i'm getting more and more
unhappy with the directions GNOME2 and Galeon2 are taking.

Gruss,
Erich Schubert
-- 
        erich@(mucl.de|debian.org)        --        GPG Key ID: 4B3A135C
         There was never a good war or a bad peace. - Benjamin Franklin
     Mancher findet sein Herz nicht eher, als bis er seinen Kopf verliert.
                    Der Wissende weiß, dass er glauben muß.


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