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94 Comments
- Philluminati, on 10/11/2007, -9/+51This is a ***** list. uninstall on your start menu ??? That's horrible, system administrative process that should open happen once in a blue moon. You shouldn't need a quick way to uninstall software - you probably have no idea what your installing.
- Gadren, on 10/11/2007, -2/+29There's one big improvement he forgot to mention: stop ripping out features just because you think that "regular users" don't want them. Put them in an "Advanced..." menu or something, but don't just get rid of them, like you did with gnome-screensaver.
- POPULATIONPASTE, on 10/11/2007, -2/+28Well... my first and only suggestion would be to work on the next generation gtk. KDE 4 has moved on to QT 4, which ultimately gives kde much more flexibility and potential.
- Philluminati, on 10/11/2007, -2/+24Man if you want to change running apps as your environment changes why not use runlevels. that's what they are there for.
As for screen recording mate. Don't build it in. I don't want that stuck to my desktop. You should one seperate application that does one specific job and does it well. I couldn't agree less with what your saying. Plus when you open istanbull it becomes an icon in your systray while you work. Why not just have it go there on boot and wham thats your integration.
A real gnome improvement is like "different wallpapers on different workspaces". Who's with me? - kazamx, on 10/11/2007, -1/+161/ Not a big deal. I guess you want it to be called Gnome not GNOME?
2/ Nice idea. I would like it to highlight new aps until I open it for the first time
3/ reduce effects when on battery is such a simple good idea I am amazed its not been done before.
4/ Didn't understand that one.
5/ Er... I kinda see where your going with this, but I don't think its a good idea.
6/ Nice, I wouldn't use it, but I can see people liking animated desktops as a Gnome option.
7/ Not really needed, just seems like bloat to me. If I need to record my desktop I will. If not I don't want it on my comp.
8/ I don't have a PDA so don't understand about this
9/ Sounds fun, Skull Kaboom
10/ Yea I would like that
To my eyes the best two ideas are to reduce special effects on laptops running on battery and the highlight new apps. Both simple and bothe very handy - atmka, on 10/11/2007, -0/+14That xkill thing is cool. Much better than using the System Monitor.
Now my father will stop calling me every time Firefox freezes because of that crappy flash player. - greyfade, on 10/11/2007, -10/+22I'll give my top suggestions:
1. Scrap Gnome 2. It has done nothing but go downhill since 2.6, and I have identified where exactly it went wrong: Gnome 1.8. When Gnome 1 was shelved, a lot of very good ideas and a lot of very nice desktop utilities got shelved, too. Everything that made Gnome great was scrapped because it "confuses users." *****. Half of what people demand *now* was already in Gnome 1.6.
2. DROP THE ***** UI POLICY. It's a bad idea because it's being enforced too strictly. Gnome 2 is simple now, yes. But it's suffering tremendously because of those stupid, stupid, stupid UI policies, and the users lose out because of it. It's making Gnome a pain in the ass to use and pushing more and more people to use KDE or XFCE just to be able to make mind-numbingly simple changes.
3. Listen to Linus. He's right.
4. New GTK. GTK looked bad in version 1, but IMO, it looks worse now. All of those widgets seriously need a major overhaul. *ESPECIALLY* the sourceedit widget. It's an embarassment.
5. Dump Metacity or rewrite it. Enlightenment DR16 worked perfectly fine, and dropping it and other WMs in favor of the joke that Metacity has become was a BAD IDEA.
As for the ideas from the blog:
3. This is long overdue, ever since the ACPI support was finally stabilized: it's easy to do, so why has no one done it? It'll confuse the poor users? (Disclosure: I don't use Gnome for a lot of reasons, so I'm extremely disinclined to try to fix it.)
6. This was in Gnome 1.8. Hell, it was in Gnome 1.4. BRING IT BACK.
8. Gnome-pilot is crap anyway. Scrap it and bring Jpilot into the fold.
9. This can be done by the end-user trivially... in any other DE. Why is a keypress mapping utility such a bad thing? Surely Gnome users aren't *THAT* easy to - ptFoe, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1211.The ability to have different wallpapers on the workspaces.
11.b. Option to stop Nautilius from drawing the desktop wallpaper, because this prevents Compiz fuzion from using its feature for different wallpapers for different workspaces. - handsoffme, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10you know, gtk issss themeable...
- bryantaylor, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10If you'd like to bind xkill (or anything else) to a keyboard shortcut, you can already do that in Gnome.
1) Open the gconf editor.
2) Navigate to apps -> metacity -> keybinding_commands
3) Edit command_n to contain "xkill"
4) Navigate to apps -> metacity -> global_keybindings
5) Edit run_command_n (n should be the same as in step 3) to contain whatever keyboard shortcut you like.
For example:
apps -> metacity -> keybinding_commands -> command_1 = "nautilus"
apps -> metacity -> global_keybindings -> run_command_1 = "e"
So now I can press Windows Key + e and nautilus will open. Nifty, eh?
Yes, I agree that this process is too complicated, but at least you can do it. - crazybrit, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10Ubuntu's Add or Remove Programs (at least I think it's Ubuntu specific...) is pretty quick and user-friendly.
- tdurden, on 10/11/2007, -1/+10wtf.
- MrSketch, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8Except that xkill already has a keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-Alt-Escape.
- nailer, on 10/11/2007, -5/+13This isn't a personal wish list, but rather a bunch of ideas I think would improve Gnome for a wide variety of people (and in some cases, Windows and OSX too).
- Roger, on 10/11/2007, -3/+11Stop wasting desktop space with oversized widgets!
http://www.venturecake.com/images/multiple_users_and_groups_resized.png - KWhat, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8i believe you are thinking of beryl not gnome.
- cyberwiz01, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8Free (as in speech and beer) software?
- nailer, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8Per the article, not as an item in the menu, but available through the menu by right clicking.
Most desktop users don't have system administrators, and you'll find Linux people uninstall software more than once in a blue moon.
Many people are attracted to Linux precisely because they enjoy customizing their systems. This includes installing new software, and uninstalling it if they don't like it.
I might try using Avant, or Evolution rather than Thunderbird, and if I don't like one of the other I should be able to easily uninstall it without having to open synaptic, search for its package name, mark it to be uninstalled, and click apply. - Amablue, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6there are quite a few times that option would be useful I think. There are a lot of times where I *don't* know the best application for a given task, so I'll download everything that looks like it might do the trick, then get rid of what I don't need.
- Soapdish, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Setting up the ACPI scripts to change desktop effects settings is probably a better way to do it. Afterall, the scripts are responsible for changing between runlevels on ACPI changes.
- teadrinker, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5In Gnome, if you click the close button, and the window does not acknowledge in 5 seconds, it will offer you to kill it. Works for me.
xkill is still cool for those unmanaged windows that freeze up. - mymate, on 10/11/2007, -0/+51. Nautilis allows undo of copy/paste/moving file/s
2. Better draging/dropping support
Im happy then - aDJsavedmylife, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5If you can't see...you're not ready.
- Soapdish, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5If this is an issue for you, consider KDE.
- srg13, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Dude... There's a button right under the toolbar to the far left that turns that on. Or you can just do Ctrl+L
- DrSpud, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5I can't possibly agree more. In my mind, simplification is good ONLY when you don't eliminate *useful* feature and options! It's fine to hide advanced things away somewhere so they don't confuse newbs - in fact, it's really a good idea. But eliminating too many things I use often made me switch to KDE. Here's hoping they get this one right.
- fakeollie, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5I find the idea of having different wallpapers on the workspaces a bit too schizophrenic, but I agree the option should exist there on metacity (it's available on compiz/beryl/fusion). Let's see. How about having specific screensaver options back, for pete's sake?! It's stupid they removed the options button from the dialog. And where's drag and drop on file roller (archive manager) for extracting files from zips/arj/rar/tgz/etc.? Totally counter-intuitive. Oh, and don't get me started on the atrocious "Trash". What's the point of having a centralized Trash, if you don't have a restore option? Once you move things there from even a simple structure, if you realize you made a mistake, good lucking finding out what came from where. Gnome is a great environment and I wouldn't trade it for any other, but it still has a bunch of irritating nags.
- EricTheGrey, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Honestly, the whole highlighting thing was the biggest annoyance of XP. It highlighted everything that was just inatlled, including links to help files, and web links. The highlighting seemed to take forever to go away.
EtG - bruenig, on 10/11/2007, -1/+51. The full expansion of the name is considered obsolete already, see wikipedia page on GNOME.
2. This is the first of your package management absurdities. I suppose they could detect when a new .desktop file is placed in /usr/share/applications but that would be included for anything you drop in there and would get annoying for those who are big in menu customization to have every customization lead to highlighting.
3. First recognize gnome is a series of programs, gnome panel, whatever the desktop thing is, nautilus and all of that stuff. There is not some overarching gnome process that would handle something like this. For instance, I know some people who will use light window managers but also use gnome-panel because they like it or for some applet. Is it the panel that we are going to have constantly monitoring this? Also realize that the detection of your power cord is a kernel event not a gnome event. Nevertheless this is possible sort of. I have written a script to do it on my machine but you would need to know which processes to kill and which to start up and since there are so many possibilities like beryl and compiz and whatever else the new one is and on the start side such as the gnome window manager or if you are using your own custom window manager, it would be ridiculously hard to automate. It would require so much user input that you might as well just write a script to do it.
5. This is just stupid. Destkop environments don't handle package management. Each distro has its own package management. If I wanted to do this for arch, it would be pacman -R program. For debian dpkg -r package or apt-get remove package, and then you have different ways for rpm and gentoo and all of that. So what command is it supposed to execute. Also what about self compiled stuff. Also how does gnome know what app belongs to what .desktop and what files go to that particular application. Kind of absurd.
7. Apps already exist, their job is not to bundle apps especially for something as specialized as this. Distros bundles apps, when DE's start doing it, its called bloat. - KWhat, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6I will second that!
I cant tell you how difficult it is to get an address bar in the file manager (i think it was called nautilus). I like to type out locations 95% of the time because its faster than clicking and i know what i need. But gnome make things like that very difficult. I know you can just press ctrl+d and get something similar but its 1 more step and you still cant edit the path your currently at. Like /usr/local/folder1/scripts i cant just change folder1 to folder2 and continue. - MikeCerm, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4XP does the highlighting thing, and Vista gives you the option of reducing special effects (turn of transparency) while on battery. It'll just be a matter of time before similar features are adopted by Gnome (and KDE). Feel free to throw things.
- HAKdragon, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Alt+F2 brings up the Run Application dialog box on my Ubuntu box (7.04).
- LanEvo, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4nautilus --no-desktop ?
- trylleklovn, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5When i used Windows i hated that "NEW SOFTWARE INSTALLED - CLICK TO VIEW!!!" FFS. And it would never go away and never really worked.
Also, disabling effects while on battery? Why not disable them completely when apparently they have no use? - greganalytic, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5It's alt+F2 for Ubuntu with Gnome for me for the skull thing
- crazybrit, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Agree'd. Beryl's a little too slow on my setup, but boy is Metacity's minimizing animation fugly.
- greyfade, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6Exactly what I complained about above. Sure, you *CAN* do it, but no one knows it because it's poorly documented and there's no UI for it like there is in _every_other_DM_.
- sephiroth965, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3But WTF does any of that have to do with google?!
- bryantaylor, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3That didn't come out right in the last comment.
run_command_1 should equal "<Super>e" - reb42, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4I use GNOME now because it bothers me less than KDE... but KDE4 looks now (as much as anyone can tell from a few screencasts and some blog coverage) like it has resolved some of the issues that nagged me personally.
- EricTheGrey, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4KDE has, or at least had the ability to not only have a different background on each desktop, but was able to change them on a set interval. It was one of the things I liked best about KDE. I always knew what desktop I was on based on the background.
There are many things I agree with, especially the trash. I'd prefer it to go away altogether.
EtG - KWhat, on 10/11/2007, -27/+30Here is an improvement... use KDE
::ducks:: - seasleepy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Right-click on a gnome panel -> Add to Panel... Drag "Force Quit" onto panel. (On Ubuntu Feisty at least, it's under "Desktop & Windows")
Sadly it doesn't use the skull icon, but it does pretty much the same thing. - spartan777, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4gtfo.
well, kde is ok, but what I hate about it is that there are 20 ways to get anywhere (settings etc) right click, there's a paragraph of garbage u'll never click staring at you. probably the most irritating thing is that EVERY kde app has "about kde" right where the 'about program' is. I don't care about kde. there doesn't need to be 50 ways for me to find out about it. its just the redundancy. on a typical window of a program 1/3 of the buttons do something another 1/3 already does, and the other 1/3 you will never press. I would have thought that the most popular kde program, amarok would be an example of ease of use. It was the least intuitive program interface I've ever seen. I don't like putting my head sideways to read tabs. - sukimashita, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2See here how to make it work: http://forum.compiz.org/viewtopic.php?p=9002#9002
- SteveMax, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2What's easier? Telling people to "go to settings --> global shortcuts, click "create new shortcut", select the command and type in the shortcut you want? Or telling them to follow those five unintuitive steps above? Heck, a well-done shortcuts dialog won't even need help to begin with!
So much for usability... - DrBob, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4Let's see how long it takes for the KDE fanboys to take over this story and mod everything to their opinions.
Oh...wait...they're here already. >:-(
Let's keep things rooted in fact, rather than opinion and hyperbole, shall we? - Amackera, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4Absolutely. Also, how about getting rid of that atrocious window minimizing animation!?
- leszek, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2You can right-click on gnome-panel --> "Add to Panel" --> then add the "force quit" applet.
- MWeather, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2That will never happen. Nor will configurable mouse buttons.
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