GNOME: Seven Possible Recovery Strategies

[BBQdave]

Originally Posted by Gareth Jones

There is a big difference between GNOME Shell and its contemporaries (i.e. Cinnamon, Unity, Xfce, LXDE etc.), and GNOME as a project. There is a whole shed-load of software under the GNOME umbrella that is used by all the others, including GTK+ and even GLib (also used by KDE and various lower-level daemons etc. these days), and with the exception of Xfce and LXDE, the main applications (e.g. Nautilus) as well. If GNOME were dying, the "competing" projects would be in just as much trouble, unless they could find a way to collaborate and adopt the orphaned infrastructure.

I think all the projects are cruising along - developing too. The concern I view, with the shifting of users to other projects (the perceived growth of users in Xfce) - and if Gnome 3 loses significant users (smaller user base than other projects) - will that upset the development ecosystem and negatively affect all projects?

Gnome 3 shows no signs of changing course in the face of users shifting to other projects...

McCann optimistic

[solo2101]

I always thought that multitasking was the future...

[ElderSnake]

Originally Posted by Dan

• Try the opposite approach. Improve the smartphone interface to more resemble the usability of the desktop. Don't lower the standards of the software. Challenge the limitations of the hardware. Make it great, and they will come to you.

Completely agree with this. It should be designed first and foremost for true desktop usage with the flexibility to be perfectly used in a touchscreen situation, not the other way round.

As a primarily KDE user it doesn't honestly affect me too much and KDE has been going great guns lately, but I'd still like to see the Gnome guys shift their views and way of doing things a bit for the good of everyone in the Linux community.

Besides, the Gnome DE clearly has a load of potential, I've thought that ever since even the first Gnome-Shell surfaced. The problem is I feel they're not gonna take full advantage of that. But we shall see.

[stevea]

So what strategies are available for GNOME in the next few years?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Rw5MosKRm4

Originally Posted by Dan

Ask the community what they want ... and will use -- and follow their advice!

So you've never met the Gnomes is what you are saying. I don't know if their ghost town of a website & bugzilla is still there, but it was interesting to see that even their bugzilla had a fair number of cases of Gnome devs insulting and ridiculing users. "User hostile" is both a design philosophy and a way of life there. They've never wanted or taken any community input - unlikely they'll change.

I'm not impressed with Gareth's argument that Gnome is the source of so much 'goodstuff' it would be a substantial community loss. The good stuff - to the extent its open - can be salvaged and the vacuum would provide impetus to other desktop efforts.