Shawn Walker wrote: > Peter Tribble wrote: >> I would concur. Once you've got into GNOME it's not too bad. >> But am I the only one to think that's really not good enough? >> After all, I remember a SPARCstation 2, and that *was* zippy. >> I, for one, want that zip back. > The funny thing about light-weight environments is that as their > userbase increases, so does their feature set, and inevitably people > wish for the 'good old days'. > > Rather then abandoning GNOME, I think the right answer is to find ways > ways to improve it, as inevitably, when current 'light-weight' > solutions began adding the extensive accessibility, > internationalization, and other that GNOME has (and is required in > many cases) you will inevitably lose some of that 'zip'. > > And I say this as a user of GNOME since 1.4.x (or earlier; been too > long to remember)....
All good comments (and I say this as a Linux 0.9 user long before GNOME or CDE ever showed up :) ). However, we tried to push the "light" agenda at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit recently and the GNOME leaders just didn't seem particularly interested. Who knows, maybe some of it got through, only time will tell but it doesn't look promising at the moment. It's the "shiny object" syndrome - it affects developers too I'm afraid. It's a real problem in the FOS Community. It's always easier to get people to work on a shiny new feature instead of tightening up code or reducing memory consumption or network bandwidth. After all, hardware just keeps getting faster, so "why bother" is the usual argument. But IMO we seem to be able to out-pace increases in hardware speed with code bloat, and it doesn't serve the users (or the environment) when they keep having to chuck out their old hardware and buy new just to keep up. We're all so used to upgrading gear now we hardly think about it - it's just expected. It'd be fantastic to have an opportunity to reverse that trend a bit. -Bob
