On 16/09/11 04:06, fred wrote:
Le 15/09/2011 21:03, david a écrit :
My existing musicbox (running an older versin of
ArtistX) uses LXDE.
My server
(running Aptosid) uses XFCE. My personal laptop is still running
KDE3. I've
noticed that a number of KDE4 and GNOME3 have become quite hefty, and
music
distros seem to be dropping them.
Maybe, hum, Linux is a reflect of the society we are living in : more
and more
for the eye candy, less to peoples' needs ?
Some like their eye candy, and luckily for them some are willing to
provide it.
But Linux offers choices - XFCE and others are there for those of us who
prefer that way of working.
And it looks to me like GNOME is trying to cater for the touch-screen
side of things ... a phone or small tablet certainly needs an interface
that can be used efficiently without a keyboard, on a small screen and
with a finger as the only pointer. That would take a lot of customising,
and a lot of work by the user, in XFCE or any other keyboard-oriented
desktop environment.
That's true, but you see, phones and tablets aren't really meant for
creating text-based content. They're really meant for consuming content.
So it's quite appropriate to have a different UI designed for those
environments. Just like the Palm OS UI was designed and optimized for
use with a stylus, and GoCorp's old Penpoint OS was designed from the
ground up for use with a stylus.
I've never liked the GNOME desktop and particularly its apparent
philosophy of restricting user customizability and functionality. I've
firmly convinced that the first thing the GNOME design team asks itself
at every session is, "What can we take away from users next?" Jokingly,
I expect the GNOME desktop to eventually consist of a single button
labeled "Shutdown" ...
Ever seen Ubuntu's Unity interface on a netbook? It's an interesting
compromise between the needs of a small screen and the use of a keyboard
& integrated pointing device.
--
David
gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community