On Mon, 19 Jun 2017 12:10:04 +0200
Didier Kryn <kryn@???> wrote:

> > On Sat, Jun 17, 2017 at 11:55:40PM -0700, Bruce Perens wrote:
> >
> > [cut]
> >
> >> I support getting GNOME to be available out-of-the-box Devuan. The
> >> counter-arguments were not compelling.
> >>

>      I'm allways surprised when people seem to find Gnome is
> compelling. I never found it compelling. A dozen years ago I moved to
> KDE, because Gnome was so ugly. Later I turned back to Gnome when KDE
> went crazy; then Gnome-3 went mental also and I switched to Gnome-2,
> and then Xfce4. My children told me recently the Linux we have at
> home seems much simpler than those of some of their friends. I'm not
> sure they consider this a compliment, but I'm happy with it because
> simplicity is a quality for me and the complexity of other DEs is
> neither usefull nor pleasant, just exasperating.

Above, Didier expresses his personal opinion on the compellingness of
Gnome. I agree 100% with his personal opinion.

What really amazes me is that, in this world of multiple excellent
GOSFUIs (http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/gosfui.htm), Gnome3 is
considered such a must-have that people discuss moving huge numbers of
programmer-hours from stuff an OS really needs to an ongoing undoing of
the systemdizing of Gnome3.

First, Gnome3 is bizarre in that it's one of those interfaces that
joins Unity and Windows 8 thru 10 in guessing what the user wants, and
if that first guess isn't productive, well, let the user look at
everything. Not productive for those with varied computer activities.

Then there's Suckless Tools' dmenu program, which provides a 25+ wpm
typist with the most productive imaginable program running interface.
Dmenu is trivial to integrate with almost any GOSFUI.

Then there's the wide variety of spectacular GOSFUIs that will suit
anyone. The person wanting the standard Win9x interface like KDE3 and
(basically) Gnome2 will love LXDE. The Unity lover will equally love
Window maker, with equally big program icons, but the ability to have
more of them. I don't know how long Xfce will remain systemd
independent, but as long as it does, it's a great replacment for Gnome2.

If low memory, lean and mean is your thing, use twm, jwm, Openbox,
IceWM, fvwm (which is as extensible as anyone could imaging),
Windowmaker, and probably 10 other GOSFUIs are suitable.

Tiled window managers aren't for everybody, but some tiled
practitioners make their tiled interfaces walk and talk. Watch someone
skilled in awesome, dwm, i3, Ratpoison, StumpWM, xmonad and the like,
and the productivity will knock your socks off.

With all these excellent GOSFUIs around, when someone speaks of paying
allegience to systemd, either by running it or by constantly
reengineering out Gnome3 dependencies to it, I just don't understand
the priorities.

SteveT

Steve Litt
June 2017 featured book: The Key to Everyday Excellence
http://www.troubleshooters.com/key