Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop
On 12/08/14 15:44, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
>>> So that's my experience with Xfce and HiDPI displays; at least for
>>> this hacker, it was orders of magnitude less painful than dealing with
>>> GNOME. :-)
>>
>> I would appreciate if you went into a little detail on what pain you had
>> with GNOME for comparison purposes.
>
> It's the usual frustrations, that have been aired a million times
> before[1]. Struggling with the GNOME equivalent of the Windows Registry,
> wanting to use a 2D workspace, struggling as random GNOME extensions
> break when GNOME releases a new version, etc., etc., etc.
>
> [1] http://felipec.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/the-problem-with-gnome-3/
>
> Basically, I can be effective and efficient with Xfce. I can't say
> the same about GNOME, as a power user. Which is OK, since I'm clearly
> not the target audience for the GNOME project. Oh, well....
I can't agree more, with you and the blog post. I will go further.
Xfce does not break a paradigm, it uses less than half the RAM, which
allows me to do more things simultaneously and doesn't do unexpected
things. Xfce customizability is built in. Under GNOME I have to install
a tweaker to make it remotely do what I expect.
Over time, GNOME 3 increasingly consumes more RAM. The same happens with
X.org. Xfce behavior is definitely not as bad. I've been told this has
to do with heap fragmentation but I don't buy it. I don't have numbers
but I would think HF to cause 20% of the increasingly-consumed RAM behavior.
By default, GNOME 3 hides the notification area from view and only one
application button can be seen at a time. One of the most common and
important tasks, "application switching", is a two-step process now: 1)
open the 'Activities' view to see what windows do I have open. 2) Look
for it with the eyes and click. In the traditional desktop, the first
step is eliminated. That's possibly desirable in a tablet where screen
resources are invaluable, but not in a workstation where
user-to-computer "bandwidth" must be maximized and screen are not
touch-sensitive.
That's why I see GNOME 3 as a tablet environment. I'd love to use a
tablet with GNOME 3. But using it in a desktop just reduces the
communication between me and my computer. What is Debian?
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