A task-centric desktop...

[Liam Proven]

On 21 November 2011 14:10, Justin Gruenberg <justin.gruenberg at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 8:57 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Secondly, *why* did GNOME die? Well, in part, because Microsoft is
>> threatening it. You may not realise how much GNOME steals from the
>> Microsoft Windows desktop - as does KDE, as does Xfce, as does LXDE -
>> but it is a /lot./ Compared to the non-Windows-influenced desktops
>> (like ROX Desktop or GNUstep, which you may never have seen because no
>> distro uses them by default), *anything* with a taskbar and a
>> hierarchical launch menu is a *direct ripoff* of Windows and all that
>> design is patented. Microsoft has patents over the Windows desktop
>> design and GNOME & KDE infringes some 235 of those patents.
>>
>
> How much of that can you actually backup with citations versus how
> much of it is you spreading FUD?  Care to point out which Microsoft
> patents GNOME 2 was infringing?  And, it's not like Gnome is dead...
> Gnome 3 is out there, and Ubuntu still utilizes the majority of Gnome.

Depends what you want.

I can give you a detailed, point-by-point comparison of the
GNOME/KDE/XFCE/LXDE desktop and the ways in which it uses methods,
designs and techniques that were original Microsoft innovations from
the early 1990s, as opposed to and compared with existing prior art in
those fields.

If you want details of which MS patents, the company is not disclosing
this, intentionally. So no, there, I can't help you.

> I'm going to have to agree with a lot of the people with the
> Unity/Gnome 3 hate.  Neither of them work very well

Unity works just fine once you adjust to it. There is very little if
anything that you can't do that you could do before. The *functional*
differences are trivial.

It is, in other words, a liveware error. Problem exists between chair
and keyboard.

>  (although, Gnome 3
> does work somewhat better, IMHO).

I find the reverse, but whatever floats your boat.

> Actually, come to think of it, I've
> never read anything positive about the change... and a whole lot of
> negative.  I know the plural of anecdote is not data, but I think it
> says something.

Happy people don't complain.

-- 
Liam Proven • Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven
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