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From: J G Miller on 8 Aug 2010 12:16
On Sun, 08 Aug 2010 11:16:46 -0400, Moshe Goldfarb wrote:
>
> I don't know, but my guess is that eye candy and first impressions sell

Undoubtedly the case.

Show anybody new to computing or a Windoze refugee a series of screenshots
of different GNU/Linux distributions in standard default mode, and whether
or not they actually go on to use it, most will tell you the one that looks
the "coolest" is, in their opinion, obviously the best one.

> and even though they are not technically selling anything, they are
> competing with gnome.

Which is where I think things have gone wrong -- neither GNOME, KDE, LXDE
or whatever should be competing on looks, but on the different philosophy
and approach to organising and presenting the desktop.

> What I find though is that over time, I end up turning most of it off
> however it is fun to play with.

Wobbly windows are fun and "cool" the first time you see them in action,
but nobody in their right mind would keep that effect turned in in
normal use of the desktop.

> Having the little icons in the taskbar showing the contents of the
> windows

Showing the actual contents of the windows is to me, just over the top.
How the desktop/window manager represents iconified windows eg as an
icon on the desktop, or in a window list task bar, or just in a popup
window list menu, should be a feature of the particular window manager
and part of how it sells its-self.

> I like being able to drag windows to the pager or different desktops
> under Linux.

Really there are only a few items to a desktop -- window decorations,
menus, a optional pager for multipage/multidesktop window managers,
an optional window list and an optional application launcher, the last
three of which can be combined in a single panel.

In fact, the real difference between window manager and desktops is
just how these elements are decorated and presented and the user
interacts with them either with the mouse of the keyboard (pre-defined
key strokes).

> They are relying on the user going into the pulse audio settings via the
> administration utilities to change things. IMHO it complicates things.

I think you are confusing audio systems here -- it is GNOME which uses
pulse audio not KDE which uses phonon. Configuration of pulse audio
can be made under /etc/pulseaudio but not the devices which it uses.
Configuration of phonon is almost a concealed black art.

> Dumbed down maybe, but it's productive and for me that's more important.

With GNOME it has previously been more a case of limiting the presentation
of configuration options, but with GDM 2.30 they have ripped out functionality.

Can anybody tell me how to run GDM 2.30 without starting a local X server,
as used to be possible under all previous versions?
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