[NCLUG] Fedora 17 Gnome 3

[Matt Taggart]

Hi Luke!

Luke Jones writes:
> I've picked up linux again after a long absence. In the meantime, the
> Desktop wars were fought and now every desktop is Taco Bell.

Demolition Man, what do I win?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFiDoOgRTpk

> it's Gnome, or KDE, or something else. So people are writing things like
> the above, and I'm sure it makes sense to most of you, but for a crusty old
> bearded Unix guy like me, it's all too much to take in.  For me, it was a
> huge step to move up from FVWM to WindowMaker. But I'm not just going to
> whine. I'll ask a useful question, albeit in a whiny voice.
> 
> Q: is there a good high-level discussion somewhere that sorts out Desktops
> and what they do beside managing windows. (Do desktops manage Windows, or
> is that something else?) I know how to work Google, and I can go to KDE.org
> or Gnome.org and read their marketing gibber, but I'd like to understand
> the problem better before I spend a lot of time reading about the solutions.

If you've been out of the game for while there are two things I'd recommend 
reading about, 1) Xfce 2) the concept of "tiled" window managers.

Most other changes in the gnome/kde/etc world have been about making them 
more task driven similar to phones. As a bearded UNIX type this is likely 
to just frustrate you...

-- 
Matt Taggart
matt at lackof.org