Direction of Fedora desktop manager Gnome, related to complaints in OT morons thread

[Tom H]

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 1:16 PM, stan <gryt2 at q.com> wrote:
>
> Just thought I would make an observation about the direction of Fedora
> after reading some of the comments in the OT morons thread, that has
> morphed into grumbling about Gnome 3.
>
> I was looking at the list archives
> http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/
> for another reason and I noticed a trend that might be relevant. Five
> years ago the gzipped text for a month of list traffic ran in the 4 to
> 5 MB range. Today it runs less than a MB.
>
> Now, there can be many reasons for that:
> - the traffic has been split to more specific lists
> - people are using other means to get help, such as forums and chat
> - Fedora has become so easy to use there aren't as many issues raised
> - people are voting with their feet and deserting Fedora
>
> If it is the last reason, that is troubling for the future. And it
> begs the question of *why* people might be deserting Fedora. Is it
> related to the sort of grumbling and dissatisfaction seen on the OT
> morons thread? I know there is some truth for me in that. It
> seems that the people doing the work want it to be trendy, in some
> cases just for trendiness' sake, while I care more about stability and
> functionality. That can also be viewed as making Fedora cutting
> edge, and it is hard to argue with that. Perhaps Fedora is shifting
> away from the sweet spot of my use, and I'll eventually have to look
> elsewhere. From another perspective, I suppose it means I'm not
> keeping up with Fedora. I can view that as an opportunity to change, I
> guess.

I don't think that you can blame GNOME 3 for that drop off; not yet
anyway. Ubuntu's had pretty much the same interface up to now.

Come F15, I'll be giving up on GNOME (not because I don't like it; I,
in fact, like the new look, etc but because I want to vote against the
developers' tone deafness) and giving XFCE and LXDE a try - on Fedora.

I think that we can blame Ubuntu/Mint for the drop-off (to what
extent, I have no idea). And apart from its good PR and cutesy name,
I'd put it down to the fact that it's easier to install proprietary
drivers and other non-free stuff.