Re: Underlying DE for the Fedora Workstation product



It's 2014 and not 1999.

That clumsy bag of parts is the reason why the Linux desktop failed.
We're in a brave new Linux world where Red Hat now makes over a billion
dollars a year, powers the New York Stock Exchange and Google has two
Linux products Chrome OS and Android. Requirements have changed and we
have Wayland and systemd now as guiding examples of the way forward.
Linux projects that fail to consolidate their efforts and collaborate in
an organized way are now obstacles to progress slowing everyone down.

GNOME desperately needs a new better way of doing things or they risk
becoming irrelevant in the technology industry and community.


On Wed, 2014-02-05 at 14:36 -0500, Jasper St. Pierre wrote:
Traditionally, GNOME shipped itself as a bag of parts that
distributors would rearrange into whatever they wanted, and we were
happy with this. You'd take a dash of gnome-panel, mix it with
metacity or sawfish or i3wm, and then slap on some nautilus or
gnome-commander.

That's not how we can build a well-integrated, compelling OS. Mixing
and matching components means that it's hard to test, and hard to
define: all GNOME 2 was just some tarballs and some code.


Projects like Cinnamon and MATE are happy to use our code (it's free
software, after all), along with our infrastructure for building their
own OS, so they don't have to re-translate the same strings and keep
track of the same bugs, but those teams are focusing on building their
own OS, not GNOME.

The GNOME we're trying to build has its own vision, and it's trying to
become its own well-defined product: The number-one free software
operating system.



On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 2:26 PM, Alexander GS <alxgrtnstrngl gmail com>
wrote:
        On Tue, 2014-02-04 at 13:09 +0000, Allan Day wrote:
        
        > Hi Alex,
        >
        > Thanks for reaching out with your ideas. I'm afraid that
        you're
        > catching us at a bad time - we are really close to UI freeze
        and a lot
        > of us are working flat out on that. I personally don't have
        much time
        > to spare on mailing lists right now. :)
        >
        > Can you explain what the GNOME 2 sub-project would actually
        look like?
        > It's hard to respond without knowing details about how it
        would
        > actually work. I understand that you are proposing to
        utilise some
        > GNOME 3 modules, but how would it differ? Would it have a
        3.x
        > gnome-control-center? Would it have a shell? If not, which
        pieces
        > would you use instead? Would you expect the GNOME project to
        make
        > regular GNOME 2 releases alongside GNOME ones? Would we work
        to ensure
        > we produce quality GNOME 2 releases as well as GNOME 3
        releases? How
        > would we market these two experiences? What would we
        recommend to
        > distributions?
        >
        > Thanks,
        >
        > Allan
        
        
        After some deep reflection and considerations I finally got
        the root of
        my frustration with the GNOME project.  In reality I don't
        have anything
        against GNOME 3.  It's that GNOME has been slow to adapt to
        the changes
        in the GNOME ecosystem.  The central problem is the idea of
        having a
        single dedicated desktop product.
        
        That's why I propose the GNOME Meta-Desktop. Posted below is
        the Problem
        statement of this proposal as a preview.  I've posted the full
        proposal
        to the wiki.gnome.org so you can comment on points directly.
        
        -----------------------
        
        GNOME Meta-Desktop
        
        Problem
        
        For some time now, Linux has been evolving beyond the idea of
        the
        "single" desktop platform. This is not Windows where each
        platform is
        bolted down to a single desktop interface design.
        Unfortunately projects
        like GNOME have been slow to adapt. GNOME's focus on a single
        dedicated
        desktop interface design has caused the Linux desktop space to
        fragment
        causing divisions and frictions between the various
        communities. This
        has also deprived commercial Linux platforms the ability to
        shape
        desktops that fit strict requirements demanded by their target
        markets.
        
        Currently and unofficially GNOME is evolving into a
        meta-desktop with
        GNOME Shell, Cinnamon and MATE the resultant outputs of this
        evolution.
        This brings along with it several problems such as
        fragmentation and
        redundancies. The GNOME meta-desktop needs to be standardized,
        needs
        community collaboration and needs GNOME in-house desktop
        products to
        drive it forward.
        
        ------------------------
        
        https://wiki.gnome.org/AlexGS/GnomeMetaDesktop
        
        Thank you for your time and attention.
        
        _______________________________________________
        desktop-devel-list mailing list
        desktop-devel-list gnome org
        https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
        



-- 
  Jasper





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