Published by justwally on 13 Jan 2009
Gnome takes a licking and still delivers a solid performance
I hate Gnome. I have always hated Gnome. I shall always hate Gnome. But, I will grudgingly use Gnome. Yes, yes, flame me all you like…I’m just being honest upfront.
Oh, and I’m on pain-killers and both of my tonsils have been flame-throwered from my throat, so this will meander, I reckon…
I also hate MacOsX for most of the same reasons I hate Gnome… However, the **buntus were worthy of my absolute loathing (K or U, didn’t matter). I hated them in ways that I can never hate Windows, because they were traitors (and any other hyperbolic, emotion-riddled term you want to apply to a new kid on the block phenomena in the computer world). So, it isn’t that I “hate” or “dislike” Windows — I don’t even care about Windows — it is that the **buntus are a bunch of clones on my home turf, and I detest them (but I like Shuttleworth and his mission). Anyway, just a few vestigial emotions to shed like so many useless limbs in my journey out of the OS sea. It is not all as serious (searious) as that, but I would never, ever use hyperbole, so there it is.
Oh, I RESPECT the two, but they are the systems I would get for someone else, a newbie, my mom, you get it. I got my sister and her family a Mac some time ago, and it turned out to be the best purchase I’ve ever made for someone. My real motive was to purchase them a computer that they could sit down and use without the kids destroying it instantly (system.ini anyone?), and that I also wouldn’t have to support over the phone. My sister lives “back home” in Montana, and I live in West Seattle (Washington State), and through several jobs (as well as personal experiences) I have come to loathe phone support (giving, or receiving).
So, the last time I really, really used Gnome was around the 1.0 release when I was checking out the newest offerings (at the same time) from Caldera’s Open Linux. I’d just banished the core dump spewing monster that was Redhat to /dev/null, and I wasn’t in a good mood to begin with (I guess?). Gnome sucked, and it was like some color scheme conceived by depressed goth kids, and they wouldn’t let me configure anything! It was infuriating, and I swore-off Gnome, and swore at Gnome. I went back to fvwm on MINIX and the joys of tcsh…on my Atari TT030 desktop computer.
So, when I did try out KDE it seemed to be the cat’s meow for quite a while, and I was (mostly) pleased. It wasn’t very elegant, and it took a bit of tweaking here and there, but some parts (konqueror, kterm, kate) were truly inspired. Still, it was a bit heavy with some resources at times, and I was wasting quite a bit of time after every testing session putting things back “just so.” I had perfected my backup and restore routine when I finally decided upon a standard file/folder heirarchy, so everything else was just drivers, settings, and window dressings. But, in reality, I was totally happy with KDE 3.5.8 (except that kmail was no longer sufficient, and another list of gripes).
Then we took a trip south for a short vacation, and I had a conversation with one of those Linux users who just happens to also be a kernel deity. He was explaining how he just goes with the stock-standard install and theme and settings, and he doesn’t have time for all the fluff. He lives in a few terminal windows, and just wants the window manager to do what it does without getting in the way. As usual, after our friendly banter and my jeep mechanic mentality came out, I was off to see the sights (and the sites, and one or two cites), but I still had to think about what he said. At every opportunity to get some packages installed on my laptop, the first thing I did was DIVE into the preferences minutiae, and I started NOTICING it at every turn. My productivity was suffering, time was being wasted, and it was really getting silly.
A few months later finds me having a shoutbox discussion with a fellow last.fm person, and I am (again) reminded about simplicity. TWO times this discussion has found me, so I performed a backup, wiped all my drives and I installed (that very night)… Not Mepis. Not Debian (except for a server). I installed Ubuntu Intrepid Illiac Crest 8.10. I was going to live with it for six months and then see how things were going. Well, a week later I find myself having some free time, so here I am. I hate Gnome because everything I tried to do had an easier answer in Gnome. Wireless? The bastards went and made it easy. I already thought my way was the easy way…I was wrong. nVidia drivers? Easier in Gnomebuntu. Samba and NFS? Easier in Gnomautilusbuntu. The list is tedious already, at only a week.
I just finished importing my large (more than 20k of files) music collection in Banshee 1.2.1 (yeah, I just updated to 1.4.?) from my 500Gb NAS (using NFS) while I was simultaneously setting the preferences for Banshee plugins, downloading and installing 135 packages (in that silly add/removebuntu jobber), and running a VNC connection to another computer. All with no big slow-downs or boggish moments, and to top it off, after I selected “Download cover art” Banshee was importing music and downloading cover art at the same time. Oh, and I had it playing during all of that. Not very subjective, but something I could not have done on KDE with Amarok (Amarok uses the tediously-slow sqlite database engine).
So, yeah, I’m totally angry with Ubuntu and Gnome, but only for having shown me up. Cripes, what if I just USED my computer? I’ve been doing this since 1978, and I’m hardly an OS zealot (but I like to play one on TV and the Intertubes if it riles the self-righteous).
I don’t mind that the path of Gnome is controlled by alleged “interface Nazis.” Apple has made a killing being worse (software and hardware), and I really, really don’t want a Mac. By having a narrowly-focused path and a very clear definition of their visual language protocols (yes, an OS is a visual “language”) the Gnome developers are well on their way to creating an excellent desktop that lives comfortably between MacOSX and Linux/Xwindows/KDE. Frequently, KDE is a window manager in search of itself, and it seems that there are no hard-and-fast GUI rules that can’t be broken (Konqueror to Dolphin, of all the sillybackwardassedtimewarped steps back). I can see the reason why so many people swear by Gnome (and swear at KDE). I still like KDE, but managing all of that flash isn’t something I intended to sign up for (somehow, I strayed from the true path in search of settings and preferences and fluff!). Hopefully, everyone else will find something like this in their own computer journeys…this was a great move toward simplicity in computing, and I’m glad to have met that Andre guy.
My system is: Ubuntu 8.10, Gnome 2.24.1, Kernel 2.6.27-9-generic, P4 2.66GHz, 512Mb RAM, 200ish MB HDD, and some nVidia GeForce4 MX440 with AGP 8x.
P.S. What this all means is that I pretty much like Ubuntu 8.10 pretty much. 
