I think this is an interesting and informed article regarding the future of the Gnome desktop environment. I found item #7 of the possible "recovery strategies" to be the most telling. The very first step of any software development life cycle should be to determine the user requirements. This means consulting with the users to find out what their needs are and provide better solutions to meet those needs.

I don't know if it's arrogance or what, but it seems that more and more, and certainly in the case of Gnome and other open source development, the users are being left of out the development cycle until the testing phase. Developers seem to be developing for themselves, rather than for the end user. The attitude seems to be, "We know what you need better than you know what you need so here it is. Hope you like it". I guess the future will show whether this is the proper design philosophy but personally, I think not.

i came late to Gnome i liked much for the idea and the name but when i start using i was really deluded
so first i switched to KDE ...now i am trying Xfce

Anyway Unity for me was a even bigger delusion then last Gnome

This rather echos the bun-fight on the Gimp-Users mailing list about the change in 2.8 introducing the Save/Export behaviour. Although it seems to have annoyed some users, the GIMP developers at least have a publicly declared vision and have backed it up with research of their target customers.

That said, my impression is that the sample size of their research is tiny and non representative of the majority of GIMP's users, but I applaud them for taking a strong stance on the vision for the project. Software projects are not democracies and need strong leadership with a clear direction.

Now if the GMP developers could get a bit more organised and release their bug-fixes in a more timely manner, maybe I would actually switch to using 2.8.

Kevin

2.8.1 doesn't seems buggy ...well i didn't try yet with a graphic tablet there may be a serious bug, but for the rest i didn't saw critical or very annoying bugs

In my personal experience, I have nothing to say against OpenSource developers. Many times they have heard me and took my ideas. It's great as an end user be able to communicate with developers as equals, is one of the things that I like in the OpenSource.
I'm using KDE since forever. I think GNOME 3 and GNOME Shell are very new projects and we must give them time to progress. Generally users are reluctant to big changes. That's what happened with the release of KDE 4, many people complaining and unhappy. Now KDE 4 is very mature and many users satisfied. I think GNOME 3 is going to succeed.
By the way, KDE has a brainstorming site where users can vote the ideas of others. Does GNOME something similar?

Totally agree with you there PC. Have you looked at Linux-Mint with cinnamon?

Yes, and that's goodness. No revolution comes from user votes. Users think in terms of what they already know. I'm pretty sure that if you had asked the Americans in 1861 what could be done to improve communications, they would have voted en masse for better horses for the Pony Express. Revolution requires visionaries. If the idea is good and implemented well (which may not be the case with Gnome3) then it will have followers, but they have to see it first.

A portable telephone, with a tactile screen, an on-board photo/video camera, a positioning system, accelerometers, and in which you can load programs? Are you mad?

I will ,it is also time to update my linux partition ...or maybe start again with a clean install

I have been using mint 12 with gnome shell since the beginning of the year. Before that I was running ubuntu gnome shell remix. I have to say that I love it. I started with the idea that shell would be horrible. Yes, I read all the reviews about it. And had tried ubuntu with unity -- it was okay but missing the finesse -- before using the shell. So I figured same thing. But no. Gnome shell is pretty cool. I just don't understand the controversy. I use windows xp at work and find myself wishing for the shell all day, just about. Finding things on my comp at work is difficult. Changing anything is almost impossible.

Sure, there is room for improvement, room for growth. But that can be said for anything. ISO 9001 standard: continuous improvement.

And I like all the extensions available. I like the different themes. I like being able to modify how the shell looks and works on MY computer.

The prob is that people don't like change. They don't want anything different. Sure new features, but same familiar packaging. I'm sure Microsoft didn't consult with anyone concerning their "Metro" interface. But the difference between windows and linux distros using gnome shell is that we have options. We can change things. I don't have much programing experience but I have changed things to suite my tastes.

I've been a Linux user for only a couple years. But I have seen that Linux users have become complacent and lazy. "Why command line when there is a GUI?" "Why compile when we should be getting packages ready for install?" "Why isn't it out-of-box-ready?" "Why should I spend 30 mins configuring my wireless driver?" etc, etc, etc. What's up with that? I don't want to be preachy, but all those "Conveniences" are available with windows. As well as the little pecularities that come with the system. I set up friends on Linux systems and I love trying to figure out why something isn't working. Because then I can fix the problem -- albeit many times with the aid of the community. That's Linux.

I don't condemn Gnome for their move to the shell. They had a vision and went with it. Our job as Linux users is to take that vision and make it better. And I bet our Windows friends wished they had the freedom to do that.

When life gives you lemons, take a distro, modify it, change the UI, delete packages, change default programs, compile it, upload it, publicize why you think it's better than x, then see how the people like LemonLinuxOS.

And as for Gimp 2.8 save/export -- was different, but now it's a norm.

Be adaptable. Break into your shell.

Hahaha!

There are some good points made and interesting opinions offered in this thread, as well as some flawed analogies put forth.

The first thing a systems analyst is taught (or should be taught) is the software development life cycle. The first step is to determine user requirements. Yes, the user doesn't always know the best way to do things but the users know what they need, and they also know when new software makes their daily tasks less efficient. It also makes sense to take input from the end user and incorporate their ideas into the development process, unless the developers are so arrogant to think they know it all and the end user needs are meaningless. Smart developers cultivate their end users and make them an integral part of the development process. Give the end users what they need or they will abandon you.

In the case of Gnome3 / Gnome Shell, there isn't much there that I would consider innovative. Pretty much all of the openGL innovations had already been done in compiz and other compositing window managers for X. When compared to Gnome2, there are tons of inefficiencies though. Pretty much all of the tweaks, addons and shell extensions were designed to get back the functionality you already had in Gnome2. Without all of the tweaks and addons, Gnome3 is practically unusable.

A user who has never known the capabilities of Gnome2 + compiz might be OK with the out of the box generic Gnome shell. It would be like trying to explain to a one eyed person what it was like to have two eyes. Yes, they can be happy with one eye but they would never understand what it was like to have two eyes. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

In my opinion, the decision to add the export option for all formats other than xcf in Gimp 2.8 was a poor decision that was totally unnecessary. When I load in a png and make an edit, it makes more sense to simply save the edit, rather than export the file. Exporting implies changing of the original format, which is not the case in this example. In earlier versions of ms word, there was an export option to convert to pdf. In later versions, they choose to go with a dropdown in the save dialog, which is just the opposite approach taken by the Gimp developers. It's not about what one is used to, it's about what is best and most efficient.

That's my opinion. Yours may differ.

I must admit I preferred Gnome 2. I find that a lot of open source developers including Gimp developers have ideals that are too high and mighty for most people and are alienating a lot of their users. Linux for example will never be the most popular OS because it's not created for normal people, it's created for intellectuals. Admittedly it's more user friendly than it used to be but it's about time open source developers listened to their users instead of being absorbed in their own ideals. If this doesn't start to happen, Linux and other open source products will die. Why else do you think the terms open source and geek are considered synonymous?

Getting user requirements is possible for bespoke enterprise software, because you have a small group of persons to ask (and they are often no so representative of the rest..., but then they sign the bills ). For the rest you have to guess, and you have to invent new things to attract new users. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't care about your users, but that you should take their requirements with a huge grain of salt. Very often, their requirements are their answer to a problem... but you get a 2nd or 3rd level problem: the person had an original problem, dreamed up a solution for it, but encountered another problem in that solution, so invented a solution, which led to another problem, for which you get a requirement...


Not to me... so, open the PNG, edit it, save to PNG, and then I quit, and oops, where has that fancy text layer or nice path gone? Saving as PNG/JPG/GIF and saving as XCF are two different things. Putting the user in a position where he can forget to save as XCF is dangerous. Whatever the solution, Gimp needs to be very explicitly told, "No, I don't want to save the XCF", so people who don't want to save the XCF will find this annoying whatever the form it takes. The 2.8 form isn't the worst.

For Gnome, I don't care, I'm a KDE person.

What's the point of a product that nobody wants to use? The users are the important issue. Anything else is pure arrogance.

Good points -- agreed. Another highlight of Linux. Everyone has good points and interesting opinions. And from that great things arise. What's even better is the choice. There should not be one OS fits all. And that's Linux. Love it or hate it, you've got lots to choose from and try out.

And beside, a little debate keeps an old mind fresh.

What I'm saying is that the requirement from one user isn't a requirement for all users. If you implement verbatim all requirements, you end up with a mess without structure. People don't really express requirements, they express problems... you have to peel off the requirement to get back at the original problem because that's the one your have to solve. I'm very wary of requirements that are too well expressed (including in my professional life), usually they are a square peg to plug a round hole. Looking for the root problem is beneficial, you may have 50 different requirements, but eventually one single root problem to solve.

Little story:

Very early in my professional life, I was managing a mainframe IBM system running the VM/SP OS. A colleague (PhD in Computer Science!) enters my office (we had offices those days):
- Bertrand, we should change the operating system and run MVS/SP (another IBM OS, much harder to manage, and not very suited to our usage profile)
- Uh? Why so? (*)
- Because it has a very nice sort program
- Hmmm. All the sort programs in MVS have an equivalent in VM. It's usually mostly the same code. What do you have to sort?
- 10 lines in the middle of a text file
- Do you know you editor has a nice "sort" command? You can even enter "ss" over the line numbers to bracket the lines to sort and stroke Enter...
Out goes a very happy user...

So, this guy started with a 10-lines sort problem, and ended up thinking the solution was changing the OS...

This guy also looked beyond the requirement and asked the right questions.

(*) A couple of months later, in a management class, the instructor observed I always answered questions by other questions

I think we need to draw a line between trying to please everyone and listening to people in general and including their requirements in the product to the best of our ability. You might not see it yourself but from a users point of view, I am more and more frequently getting the idea that many open source developers simply don't give a damn about their users. They seem to be more concerned with competing with commercial rivals than creating a product that people want. If Gimp users say they want adjustment layers, then why not at least look into the idea to see if it makes sense. Developers might well know more about technical issues but if their product is unpopular then surely it's only wise to make changes. Gnome is not supposed to be an intellectual exercise it's supposed to be a useable product and it's users requirements are important.

I don't think that is the case with most FOSS devels, anymore so than with most commercial devels. I find that most FOSS devels are very attentive to their user base. However, it appears the current Gnome devels don't seem to be that concerned.

One thing we have to consider is that unlike commercial devels, most FOSS devels aren't compensated and are freely giving their time and efforts to a project, so end users really have no right to demand anything of them. We can certainly complain and if we don't like their efforts, we can demand our money back.

Seriously though, as Nixnine said, if we don't like the current version of a given FOSS package or DE, we can move on to another. In the Linux world, there are plenty of options, especially when it comes to Desktop Environments. Mate DE, which is seeking to continue a Gnome2 development fork, will be part of the official release of Fedora 18 in a few months. There is also Cinnamon and E17 DE's coming to a distro near you.


I still don't see the need for a separate export menu option. It's easy enough to remind the user that newly added paths or layers haven't been saved before an exit. It's just that some devels have chosen a design philosophy in which the app will only "save" in the native format and everything else will be an export. I wouldn't have changed Gimp to that paradigm but it's really not that big of a deal and I can get used to it. A feature I would find more helpful would be a tick box that allows me to save the xcf at the same time as I'm saving the the edited image in it's original format. That would be the kind of efficiency improvement I could get behind.


Well, the future of the Gnome desktop was supposed to be the topic of this thread.

I used KDE for a long time. When KDE4 came along, I walked away (about the same time Linus did) and haven't been back. I had the same issues with KDE as Linus did, bloated, clunky and released prematurely. Perhaps KDE 4.6 is worth another look but I was never a fan of the whole plasmoid concept. I'll probably stick with Gnome3 for now but will most likely move on to something else in a future Fedora release.

I hope I didn't come across as demanding Tux. I was merely questioning their wisdom and values. My observations about whether they care or not are clearly different to yours. On the subject of "rights" I have the "right" to walk past a starving person and ignore him - it is my money after all - that doesn't make it a good thing to do. Similarly, the open source teams have the "right" to do what they like with their products but I would question their generosity if I suspect they are creating these products to boost their egos. As a rule that isn't the case but I do think they are largely losing the plot. Still, as you said, it's their choice.

Well, this confirms what I said... "Adjustment layers" isn't a requirement, it is the user's (actually Adobe's) answer to the problem of non-destructive editing... Gimp's answer is GEGL node editing (yes, it's still in the works).

the recurring example of the new gimp separation between SAVE and EXPORT seems a good example of ignoring users needs and pretend to change use habits

Apparently does make a lot of sense and help to avoid silly problems (people complaining that a "saved" jpg has no more layers or transparency )

But in the real word most of the time the real user need is to do both Save the original and export a png or jpg for the web, if is possible simultaneusly because time is precious and should be not need to make 5/6 click when 1 would be more then sufficient

I mean why remark so much the difference between 2 operations if both are needed,(you do nothing with xcf in the web, and on the other hand you loose layers and whatelse saving only as png/jpg ) would be more rational to allow to achieve both within the same operation
s
So at the moment that somebody open the "Save" dialog would be nice see also couple boxes in that dialog as "also export as jpg" "also export as Png " "also export as "chose format""

For this i like much a script from RobA that allow exactly that, first save