Revolution is a project being proposed over at the Ubuntu Forums by a fellow called darkmatter (Go here for the original thread). He proposes to develop a new desktop environment, based off of GNOME’s core, which aims to change a few things about GNOME’s development philosophy that he feels are problematic and which he proposes to fix in Revolution.
His ideas regarding the way GNOME is right now boil down to pretty much two things:
GNOME has ossified; innovation is stifled by overzealous application of the Human Interface Guidelines.
The way GNOME is structured, community input plays little or no role in the way GNOME evolves.The goal of Revolution is to build a third-party project which fixes these problems by having a heavier focus on the community’s desires, having a more receptive attitude towards innovation in the field of user interface implementation and design, and work at building an interface using actual usability studies to see what works best for people.
Right now, all we’re doing is brainstorming, getting the word out and seeing who’s interested. I’m here to do those last two. Now that I’ve got the word out about Revolution, here’s my next piece:
Can you be a wee bit more specific? I’d be interested to read about him.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if it was attempted before. I’m not saying anything about the viability of the project- just that I think it’s a cool one and someone else here might also be similarly interested.
GNOME has ossified; innovation is stifled by overzealous application of the Human Interface Guidelines.
KDE has kruftified; Usability is stifled by overzealous application of gazillions of widgets in KDE/QT.
GNOME is bad, KDE is worse and this is why Linux isn’t going anywhere. More power to anyone who wants to strike a good balance. Now, where’s my lil biatch alltaken to back me up.
I’ve run a few test instals of Linux and tried the odd Live-Cd version. But as of now I’m strictly one of those people who would like to switch to Linux “soon” purely because of a lot of the Open Source stuff that works best there.
Read through the Revolution thread, and I get the point. Seems like a good idea as long as it picks up enough steam and interested developers. What I’m wondering is, if “GNOME is bad, KDE is worse”, is there anyone who’s got it right yet? (This is for all the Linux afficionados out there)
From my limited knowledge and curious browsing, it seems to me like there are almost as many Window Managers in the wild as there are distros. It would seem probable that even by sheer chance there must be one or a few small and lesser-know projects out there that are getting the whole GUI experience right. True?
In my limited dabbling, I didn’t really find too much to complain about either GNOME or KDE. They were both as intimidating or understandable as say when I first booted into Windows 95. I’m assuming the issues crop up as you become more familiar with them and need to use them at a deeper level. (?)
Now if only Commodore hadn’t gone belly up, I would be still surrounded by the magic of Workbench (which IMHO had the best geek:fool usability ratio in history), and all these questions would be completely unnecessary. Aah … ‘Guru Meditation’.
It isn’t so much a matter of getting it right or wrong as it is finding what works for you. Personally, I think that many people take sides on GNOME or KDE because there isn’t a middle ground in terms of development philosophy- you have either the prohibitively conservative GNOME developers, unwilling to implement a new feature unless it’s stable and in compliance with the HIG, or the promiscuously liberal KDE developers, throwing in features left and right, stability and usability be damned. For a lot of people, neither side works best. There needs to be a middle ground- a desktop environment that’s open to innovative and new ways of interacting with the user, but also being aware that there are limits as to how far that openness should go, in terms of implementing new features.
From my limited knowledge and curious browsing, it seems to me like there are almost as many Window Managers in the wild as there are distros. It would seem probable that even by sheer chance there must be one or a few small and lesser-know projects out there that are getting the whole GUI experience right. True?
You know, it’s the darndest thing. I can’t find an alternative to either KDE or GNOME (Leaving out XFCE) that’s really any better in terms of usability. They’re either built out of obsolete and unusable interfaces (Read: NextSTEP), or they use ridiculously weird and unusable interfaces (Read: Ratpoison).
In my limited dabbling, I didn’t really find too much to complain about either GNOME or KDE. They were both as intimidating or understandable as say when I first booted into Windows 95. I’m assuming the issues crop up as you become more familiar with them and need to use them at a deeper level. (?)
You’re on the money there. For me, one issue with KDE is it’s integrated, “all-in-one” browser design for Konqueror and its cluttered interface. For GNOME, one issue is the inability to make the panels completely hide.
Now if only Commodore hadn’t gone belly up, I would be still surrounded by the magic of Workbench (which IMHO had the best geek:fool usability ratio in history), and all these questions would be completely unnecessary. Aah … ‘Guru Meditation’.
Samir
lol.
Perhaps Alltaken, Planperson, and cekuhnen have something constructive to add to the conversation ;)?
After years of using KDE, I still laugh when I read what Gnome people have to say about it…
“I opened up my KDE desktop and there were all of these buttons and stuff. I was so confused”
Ya, but you give up a ton of functionality with Gnome. I think Gnome is great, but there isn’t a lot you can do with it, besides run applications, and change your desktop background.
I think it’s kinda silly to post this here since (1) blender has nothing to do with Gnome (or KDE) and (2) Of the few developers who post here, I doubt any of them have any such interest.
So shall we all simply reformat our hard-drives and switch back to the One GUI That Rules Them All?
Seriously… if you get a half-dozen developers together you’ll have a half-dozen not-quite-identical versions of, well, just about anything. Each one will strive, for as long as you let him, to implement things just the way he supposes they should be, and/or to argue how his rationale is, obviously, “the best.”
And it is, imho, a tremendous waste of time … because end-users will happily adapt to just about anything. They get used to it, and they use it, and they go about their business… which is all they really wanted to do all along.
The beauty of Linux is that it gives you a choice. Pick a system that you like; don’t like it pick another one; end of story. Your choice, and it’s a real choice.
