One thing that is somewhat depressing is willingness of some people to take words of celebrities and go around saying “But X says so! Obviously (s)he’s right because (s)he’s X!”. Some people just don’t get the hang of thinking for themselves.
This time it started with Linus trolling on GNOME 3. It was quite clear from the very beginning that both GNOME 3 and Unity are going to be love-or-hate desktops. So it was only a matter of time till Linus spoke his mind. But ZDnet’s Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols picked the story and wrapped it in a dozen of layers of bullshit.
What the story actually boils down to is that a Linux celebrity (well, THE celebrity, really) is trying to tell us that his truth is better than someone else’s (especially since not all of that is truth), and everyone who disagrees is insane.
I think we have a problem with our celebrities. Linus is a troll, RMS is a big annoying baby, and both have a huge following. You think that doesn’t shape evolution of free software and the way we are seen by the world? Oh, it does.
What Mr. Vaughan-Nichols is trying to tell us is that an opinion of one celebrity should suddenly put a stop to ongoing development of GNOME 3. Because Linus says so.
So the other problem is that people who should be writing for Vogue or Cosmopolitan happen to be columnists of leading IT websites due to a fluctuation in time and space.
Edit. I can see now why Steven adores Linus’s point of view. In an earlier article he writes: “First, did we really need a “completely new desktop?” I don’t think so. I quite liked GNOME the 2.x series. It worked well for me and I didn’t need to learn anything new to use it.” Note how he jumps between “we” and “I” as if it was same thing.
Let’s make it clear: I don’t think there is such a thing as a perfect desktop environment. I’ve tried pretty much everything there is to try and I’m sticking to a combination of GNOME 2.32 + Docky + GNOME Do at the moment. I was rather annoyed by Unity first, but after a while I can see some of the points and I’m sure I’ll try it again after release of 11.10. I like many aspects of GNOME 3 and it’s quite possible that I will make a switch to it after release of v.3.2.
Both desktops are reportedly appealing to newly arrived users who don’t have particular habits and hence don’t have to go through mistakes and imperfections of early desktop metaphor implementations.
And yes, it’s entirely up to you whether you want to be a moron and dismiss both background and perspective of the story off-hand. Just as long as you understand that drawing conclusions has a prerequisite of studying facts instead of making things up.
, I went ahead and wrote a