Liam on Linux

[Repurposed mailing list reply]

I mentioned that I still don't use GNOME even though there are extensions to fix a lof of the things I don't like. (My latest attempted ended in failure just yesterday.) Someone asked what functionality was still missing. It's a reasonable question, so I tried to answer.

It is not (only) a case of missing functionality, it is a case of badly-implemented or non-working functionality.

I can go into a lot of depth on this, if you like, but it is not very relevant to this list and it is probably not a good place.

A better place, if you have an OpenID of some form, might be over on my blog.

This post lays out some of my objections:

"Why I don't use GNOME Shell"

& is followed up here:

"On GNOME 3 and design simplicity"

Here's what I found using the extensions was like:

A quick re-assessment of Ubuntu GNOME now it's got its 2nd release

For me, Ubuntu Unity worked very well as a Mac OS X-like desktop, with actual improvements over Mac OS X (which I use daily.) I used it from the version when it was first released -- 11.04 I think? -- and still do. In fact I just installed it on 19.04 this weekend after my latest efforts to tame GNOME 3 failed.

I don't particularly like Win95-style desktops -- I'm old, I predate them -- but I'm perfectly comfortable using them. I have some tests I apply to see if they are good enough imitations of the real thing to satisfy me. Notable elements of these tests: does it handle a vertical taskbar? Is it broadly keystroke-compatible with Win9x?

Windows-like desktops which pass to some degree, in order of success: Xfce; LXDE; LXQt
Windows-like desktops which fail: MATE; Cinnamon; KDE 5

If I was pressed to summarise, I guess I'd say that some key factors are:
• Do the elements integrate together?
• Does it make efficient use of screen space, or does it gratuitously waste it?
(Failed badly by GNOME Shell and Elementary)
• Does it offer anything unique or is it something readily achieved by reconfiguring an existing desktop?
(Failed badly by Budgie & arguably Elementary)
• Do standard keystrokes work by default?
(Failed badly by KDE)
• Can it be customised in fairly standard, discoverable ways?
• Is the result robust?
E.g. will it survive an OS upgrade (e.g. Unity), or degrade gracefully so you can fix it (Unity with Nemo desktop/file manager), or will it break badly enough to prevent login (GNOME 3 + multiple extensions)?

If, say, you find that Arc Menu gives GNOME 3 an menu and what more can you want, or if you are happy with something as minimal as Fluxbox, then my objections to many existing desktops are probably things that have never even occurred to you and will probably seem trivial, frivolous, and totally unimportant. It may be very hard to discuss them, unless you're willing to accept that, as an opening position, stuff that you don't even notice is critically, crucially important to other people.

Elementary is quite a good example, because it seems to me that the team trying to copy the look and feel of Mac OS X in Elementary OS do not actually understand how Mac OS X works.

Elementary presents a cosmetic imitation of Mac OS X, but it is skin-deep. Its developers seem not to understand how Mac OS X works and how the elements of the desktop function. So, they have implemented things that look quite Mac-like, but don't work. Not "don't work in a Mac-like way". I mean, don't work at all.

It is what I call "cargo cult" software: when you see something, think it looks good, so you make something that looks like it and then you take it very seriously and go through the motions of using it and say it's great.



Actually, your aeroplane is made of grass and rope. It doesn't roll let alone fly. Your radio is a wooden fruit box. Your headphones are woven from reeds. They don't do anything. They're a hat.

You're wearing a hat but you think you're a radio operator.

Although the launch of GNOME 3 was a bumpy ride and it got a lot of criticism, it's coming back. It's the default desktop of multiple distros again now. Allegedly even Linus Torvalds himself uses it. People tell me that it gets out of the way.

I find this curious, because I find it a little clunky and obstructive. It looks great, but for me, it doesn’t work all that well. It’s OK — far better than it was 2-3 years ago. But while some say it gets out of the way and lets them work undistracted, it gets in my way, because I have to adapt to its weird little quirks. It will not adapt to mine. It is dogmatic: it says, you must work this way, because we are the experts and we have decided that this is the best way.

So, on OS X or Ubuntu, I have my dock/launcher thing on the left, because that keeps it out of the way of the scrollbars. On Windows or XFCE, I put the task bar there. For all 4 of these environments, on a big screen, it’s not too much space and gives useful info about minimised windows, handy access to disk drives, stuff like that. On a small screen, it autohides.

But not on GNOME, no. No, the gods of GNOME have decreed that I don’t need it, so it’s always hidden. I can’t reveal it by just putting my mouse over there. No, I have to click a strange word in the menu bar. “Activities”. What activities? These aren’t my activities. They’re my apps, folders, files, windows. Don’t tell me what to call them. Don’t direct me to click in a certain place to get them; I want them just there if there’s room, and if there isn’t, on a quick flick of the wrist to a whole screen edge, not a particular place followed by a click. It wastes a bit of precious menu-bar real-estate with a word that’s conceptually irrelevant to me. It’s something I have to remember to do.

That’s not saving me time or effort, it’s making me learn a new trick and do extra work.

The menu bar. Time-honoured UI structure. Shared by all post-Mac GUIs. Sometimes it contains a menu, efficiently spread out over a nice big easily-mousable spatial range. Sometimes that’s in the window; whatever. The whole width of the screen in Mac and Unity. A range of commands spread out.

On Windows, the centre of the title bar is important info — what program this window belongs to.

On the Mac, that’s the first word of the title bar. I read from left to right, because I use a Latinate alphabet. So that’s a good place too.

On GNOME 3, there’s some random word I don’t associate with anything in particular as the first word, then a deformed fragment of an icon that’s hard to recognise, then a word, then a big waste of space, then the blasted clock! Why the clock? Are they that obsessive, such clock-watchers? Mac and Windows and Unity all banish the clock to a corner. Not GNOME, no. No, it’s front and centre, one of the most important things in one of the most important places.

Why?

I don’t know, but I’m not allowed to move it.

Apple put its all-important logo there in early versions of Mac OS X. They quickly were told not to be so egomaniac. GNOME 3, though, enforces it.

On Mac, Unity, and Windows, in one corner, there’s a little bunch of notification icons. Different corners unless I put the task bar at the top, but whatever, I can adapt.

On GNOME 3, no, those are rationed. There are things hidden under sub options. In the pursuit of cleanliness and tidiness, things like my network status are hidden away.

That’s my choice, surely? I want them in view. I add extra ones. I like to see some status info. I find it handy.

GNOME says no, you don’t need this, so we’ve hidden it. You don’t need to see a whole menu. What are you gonna do, read it?

It reminds me of the classic Bill Hicks joke:

"You know I've noticed a certain anti-intellectualism going around this country ever since around 1980, coincidentally enough. I was in Nashville, Tennessee last weekend and after the show I went to a waffle house and I'm sitting there and I'm eating and reading a book. I don't know anybody, I'm alone, I'm eating and I'm reading a book. This waitress comes over to me (mocks chewing gum) 'what you readin' for?'...wow, I've never been asked that; not 'What am I reading', 'What am I reading for?’ Well, goddamnit, you stumped me... I guess I read for a lot of reasons — the main one is so I don't end up being a f**kin' waffle waitress. Yeah, that would be pretty high on the list. Then this trucker in the booth next to me gets up, stands over me and says [mocks Southern drawl] 'Well, looks like we got ourselves a readah'... aahh, what the fuck's goin' on? It's like I walked into a Klan rally in a Boy George costume or something. Am I stepping out of some intellectual closet here? I read, there I said it. I feel better."

Yeah, I read. I like reading. It’s useful. A bar of words is something I can scan in a fraction of a second. Then I can click on one and get… more words! Like some member of the damned intellectual elite. Sue me. I read.

But Microsoft says no, thou shalt have ribbons instead. Thou shalt click through tabs of little pictures and try and guess what they mean, and we don’t care if you’ve spent 20 years learning where all the options were — because we’ve taken them away! Haw!

And GNOME Shell says, nope, you don’t need that, so I’m gonna collapse it all down to one menu with a few buried options. That leaves us more room for the all-holy clock. Then you can easily see how much time you’ve wasted looking for menu options we’ve removed.

You don’t need all those confusing toolbar buttons neither, nossir, we gonna take most of them away too. We’ll leave you the most important ones. It’s cleaner. It’s smarter. It’s more elegant.

Well, yes it is, it’s true, but you know what, I want my software to rank usefulness and usability above cleanliness and elegance. I ride a bike with gears, because gears help. Yes, I could have a fixie with none, it’s simpler, lighter, cleaner. I could even get rid of brakes in that case. Fewer of those annoying levers on the handlebars.

But those brake and gear levers are useful. They help me. So I want them, because they make it easier to go up hills and easier to go fast on the flat, and if it looks less elegant, well I don’t really give a damn, because utility is more important. Function over form. Ideally, a balance of both, but if offered the choice, favour utility over aesthetics.

Now, to be fair, yes, I know, I can install all kinds of GNOME Shell extensions — from Firefox, which freaks me out a bit. I don’t want my browser to be able to control my desktop, because that’s a possible vector for malware. A webpage that can add and remove elements to my desktop horrifies me at a deep level.

But at least I can do it, and that makes GNOME Shell a lot more usable for me. I can customise it a bit. I can add elements and I could make my favourites bar be permanent, but honestly, for me, this is core functionality and I don’t think it should be an add-on. The favourites bar still won’t easily let me see how many instances of an app are running like the Unity one. It doesn’t also hold minimised windows and easy shortcuts like the Mac one. It’s less flexible than either.

There are things I like. I love the virtual-desktop switcher. It’s the best on any OS. I wish GNOME Shell were more modular, because I want that virtual-desktop switcher on Unity and XFCE, please. It’s superb, a triumph.

But it’s not modular, so I can’t. And it’s only customisable to a narrow, limited degree. And that means not to the extent that I want.

I accept that some of this is because I’m old and somewhat stuck in my ways and I don’t want to change things that work for me. That’s why I use Linux, because it’s customisable, because I can bend it to my will.

I also use Mac OS X — I haven’t upgraded to Sierra yet, so I won’t call it macOS — and anyway, I still own computers that run MacOS, as in MacOS 6, 7, 8, 9 — so I continue to call it Mac OS X. What this tells you is that I’ve been using Macs for a long time — since the late 1980s — and whereas they’re not so customisable, I am deeply familiar and comfortable with how they work.

And Macs inspired the Windows desktop and Windows inspired the Linux desktops, so there is continuity. Unity works in ways I’ve been using for nearly 30 years.

GNOME 3 doesn’t. GNOME 3 changes things. Some in good ways, some in bad. But they’re not my ways, and they do not seem to offer me any improvement over the ways I’m used to. OS X and Unity and Windows Vista/7/8/10 all give me app searching as a primary launch mechanism; it’s not a selling point of GNOME 3. The favourites bar thing isn’t an improvement on the OS X Dock or Unity Launcher or Windows Taskbar — it only delivers a small fraction of the functionality of those. The menu bar is if anything less customisable than the Mac or Unity ones, and even then, I have to use extensions to do it. If I move to someone else’s computer, all that stuff will be gone.

So whereas I do appreciate what it does and how and why it does so, I don’t feel like it’s for me. It wants me to change to work its way. The other OSes I use — OS X daily, Ubuntu Unity daily, Windows occasionally when someone pays me — don’t.

So I don’t use it.

Does that make sense?

I recently saw a mailing list post condemning Maté (the GNOME 2 fork)
as something to be deprecated and avoided because it uses Gtk2 and
that is now superseded code.

I think that's a bit sweeping to denigrate all Gtk2 desktops like that.

Yes, GNOME Classic and Cinnamon both offer Windows-like desktops
now with taskbars and start menus. If you don't like Unity or GNOME
Shell, then there are "traditional" alternatives.

But the un-Windows-like nature of Unity and GNOME Shell are not the
only reasons that people use them. There are other issues than the
cosmetics to consider.
( Read more... )