I use the compact view in my Videos and Music folders, and to be honest I wish I had more well designed folder view options like in Windows.

Why they removed Nautilus memorising which folder view to associate with which folder may be up to a person’s preference, but I also didn’t mind having it function that way, I hope it doesn’t slow me down from locating important files. Folder views become important when

1) Your folder contains between 50 – 5,000 items.

2) Your hard drive has 2 terabytes or 1,000,000 files and you set custom icons for each folder to organize and decrease the time it takes to get to your relevant files.

Let’s hope they get it right next time, otherwise they’ll be on a downward spyral and on their way to RM heaven.

I think that Gnome moved to a more mainstream environment in a manner to provide “simpler” functionality to people that aren’t much into computers, rather what you are calling a Slab Desktop. Gnome tries to support touch screen devices with a responsive design (not just visual, ie. right click still works), something that web-pages and web-services (which by the way are what a user does in ~90% of the time frond of the computer) trying also to succeed. You can add here also Unity, Windows 8, while latest Mac OSX shares lots of things with Gnome Shell (and Unity). Android can also run in a plethora of screen types.

I *personally* don’t find any issues there, other than the optimization for full screen Apps. Some other issues you can solve them with the use of extensions. Of course a straight development for a core Desktop would had brought better results, but the current implementation (that supports many types of screens and inputs), is an awesome work from Gnome.

> but considering the numbers that have moved to other projects as a result..

If you mean Ubuntu, I am not quite sure that Gnome 3 was the reason that they dropped Gnome. Unity was there before Gnome3, and was just a matter of time for them to use it (IMO).

> The desktop will not vanish in favor of the slab

Won’t? Keyboard and mouse will might stay for lots more years, but they are rapidly replaced, not as devices but as use. Get a tablet attach a keyboard and you have a desktop. Get a desktop, de-ttach the keyboard and you have a tablet. Get a tablet, attach it in a monitor, and you have a 30″ tablet. There are already some Netbooks that support touch.

> what it needs is a Foundation to link those pieces so they can evolve together

I think that forking and separating the projects, will always lead to better products. The best way to have a good idea, is to have many ideas, and similar, the best way to have a good product, is to have many projects.

But in the end of the day, as you said, thanks God there are many Desktops to choose from. Although I don’t know why you exclude KDE from them.

I think it was a mistake to abandon the desktop for the slab (and loudly proclaiming they did not, belies their actions). They should have added it to the Gnome family and grown the two environments in parallel and evolve synergistically (Gnome Desktop and Gnome Slab). Yes, available resources are an issue, but considering the numbers that have moved to other projects as a result, I think it could have worked. The Gnome project can still do this by embracing the other new Gnome forks in a spirit of cooperation. Perhaps what is needed is the creation of a Gnome Foundation to facilitate and promote cooperation and synergy among them with GTK the province of Gnome Root, Gnome Slab for the Shell and Unity, and Gnome Desk for Cinnamon and Mate. I think the greater Gnome family has reached that time in it’s life to grow from a project to a foundation.

I have watched over the decades in this industry new ideas emerge with the proponents proclaiming loudly that everything else will wither and vanish to be replaced by that new innovation. Invariably once all the dust has settled, the old and new stand side by side and move onward together. Thus it will be with the slab and desktop. The desktop will not vanish in favor of the slab, both the desk and the slab will evolve together creating an ecosystem greater than the sum of it’s parts. The pieces of the Gnome family is uniquely positioned to be at the center of that future, what it needs is a Foundation to link those pieces so they can evolve together.

From my early years of tinkering with the 8080A on the Altair Bus I have seen allot of changes, none more exciting and filled with promise as FOSS. So let me call for the forming of the Gnome Foundation. I will be the first in line to laugh at that image in the mirror to presume such hubris.

This puts the nail in for coffin of Gnome, it truly has jumped into the crapper and is yanking hard on the handle to flush. All I can say is, thank the gods that Mint and Ubuntu are NOT following the Gnome team. The project has gone careening so way off so that even Unity is starting to look good. It astonishes me that after so long of getting it right that they could get it all so wrong. The Gnome team is living in some self delusional bubble talking amongst themselves and dismissing any disagreement as blasphemous.

Thank goodness for FOSS so that even when something that had become such an important foundational component of the Linux desktop experience fails as badly and rapidly as Gnome has, there are plenty of bright and talented people to fill the vacuum (Mate, Cinnamon, Unity). You would never see this kind of response in the closed systems world. This is a glowing endorsement of the open source model.

I never said newbies wouldn’t like gnome or that the efforts to make it easy to use were a *total* failure, so I’m not sure where you are coming from. I’m just saying that it isn’t ideal for either experts or newbies and the vast majority of gnome users are computer experts, not newbies. You haven’t rebutted those points at all, just argued things I never made claims about.

So I guess I am very wrong by your logic, which is completely illogical and tangential to almost everything I said and only somewhat relevant to one point I made.

The “mainstream” users they are designing for actually don’t exist. It is a fantasy and they think if they make things dumber then this fictional userbase will just show up.

This is sad because gnome/unity “designers” (lol) aren’t very good and their efforts are undercut by the reality that development is understaffed so things feel cobbled together and linux is still too troublesome for most of these hypothetical users they wish to capture. So the design is unpolished in the details and things are buggy because of their constant f-ing and now the desktops suck for power users who *want* to use linux and “mainstream” (mainly windows) users wouldn’t touch linux with a 10-foot pole.

Please don’t try and tell me the usability is so great and that it isn’t troublesome or buggy. Linux userbase has failed to grow for the last 10 years while people tinker and break and tell themselves how awesome linux is.

WTF? I never ever realized this until I switched to OSX but the blatant blatant ripoffs are everywhere. In this case the resemblance of Files to Finder is so blatantly obvious. This isn’t even like a Samsung Galaxy being sort of like an iPhone to people who don’t know better, this is a total ripoff on close inspection by someone who knows both well.

Beyond finder the list goes on and on. NetworkManager is a clone. Layout for settings is a clone. Unity launcher is a clone. The replacement of the notification area is a clone. Even little short-lived details like having to do ctrl-del instead of just delete in Nautilus is a rip off.

Wow, just wow. I only switched two weeks ago and I’m still stunned.

And before people start listing all the differences, I know. I know. Gnome and Unity are different from OSX and they are different from each other but they also share *a lot* and both have ripped off *a lot*.

And the “users vanishing” is expected, since the Gnome changed a bit the focus / strategy.
However, also as expected, there are users coming from. So, there’s no need to worry. :)