Can't stand Gnome3, I think it's time for Fedora to move on

[Bill Davidsen]

Tim wrote:
> Allegedly, on or about 22 November 2013, Rahul Sundaram sent:
>> What I was trying to convey is that If I am as an user unaware of
>> other desktop environments, the defaults impact my experience a lot
>> more than if I already know of the choices and have picked something
>> that matches my preferences.  The moment I pick something else, I have
>> satisfied my need and the argument about defaults should really be
>> considered in a more objective way than just as an expression of my
>> preferences
>
> I'm of the opinion that the computer should work, as much as possible,
> out of the box.  It shouldn't require high end graphics cards, and
> special drivers that we don't have (whether because you need to get them
> from an external repo, or that they just don't exist).  The simpler
> windowing systems ought to be the defaults, and the more convoluted ones
> a deliberate choice for those who want to tart things up, and are
> prepared to go through the nightmares of trying to get 3D graphics
> acceleration to work.
>
This is a VERY good point which I had overlooked, the hardware requirements of 
GNOME are much higher that XFCE (and I believe MATE) and represent choice which 
is very likely to frustrate potential converts.

Let me make another point. MATE or XFCE are close enough to Windows < 8 that 
almost anyone can use them. And from what I've seen, a lot of Win8 users are 
running in a similar UI, indicating others don't like Win8. The point is that no 
matter what other computer you have used, GNOME3 is not like that. There is a 
big learning curve before you know to hover here, and use ALT there, and do all 
the other stuff which just has to be learned. That makes a good case in my mind 
for choosing a default which is likely to work and be somewhat familiar.

> And speaking of fancying things up beyond practicality.  Can we have a
> better bootloader than GRUB2?  GRUB 1 was always a small bit of a pain
> to configure, but far less worse than LILO.  GRUB 2 requires programming
> to customise, not just a slight tweak of one config file.  My current
> bugbear is that it always loads some old kernel, rather than the latest,
> because it sorts them in a peculiar order.  Top of the list isn't the
> latest, and picking number whatever as default isn't going to work after
> the next kernel update.  I'm going to have to hand re-organise the
> grub2.cfg file after each time a kernel is updated, to get it to work
> sensibly.
>
Why in hell is there no "default" line saying what you want, or is there 
somewhere and I haven't stumbled on it because a kernel update doesn't set that?

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot