I used Linux on the desktop from 2001-2007 or so. Switched to OS X until then. It's no contest: OS X is smoother, more consistent, and lower maintenance. Linux desktops seem to have peaked with GNOME 2.x. I'm not even sure what's going on with Unity.
I tend to agree. My development workstation runs Linux (and it's fine, but on that machine I only need Sublime, a terminal, Chrome, and IntelliJ--anything creative or entertaining I do on my laptop or in Windows respectively) literally only because I'm not buying a Mac Pro. It works, sort of, after spending a nontrivial time figuring out kludging together decent replacements for common functionality (xsel garbage for pbcopy/pbpaste, etc.); it probably helps that I already install the GNU coreutils on my Macs because I know the GNU tools better.
In retrospect, a Mac Pro would probably not be that much more expensive than the time I spent getting this fairly minimally demanding environment set up, though on the other hand I did re-learn a decent bit of stuff about Linux in the process. On the gripping hand, things related to X aren't particularly important to my life, so that's kind of a push.
I agree that GNOME and Unity have jumped the shark — I think that I started to notice when GNOME got rid of xscreensaver and replaced it with a screen-blanker, with an unfulfilled promise of adding screensavers back someday, c.f. https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell-list/2011-March/...).
Meanwhile everything went down the path of compositing and otherwise burning way too much CPU to do not a whole lot extra.
I switched over to a tiling WM years ago, and have been extremely happy since. It does exactly what I want; I can connect to a running instance with my editor and reconfigure it, as well rewrite it while it's running. It's pretty great.
Then I'd encourage you to try KDE. 4, not 5; 5 is still being developed.
I don't know what's going on with the Gnome guys, but KDE is flat-out the best desktop manager I've used, and I'm including Windows and OS X in the comparison. It's not without glitches, but the glitches are mostly of the "Google can't be bothered to make Chrome cooperate, and no-one has updated Emacs' DM support in the last ten years" sort.
As a long time Mac user I find KDE hard to enjoy. The UIs of KDE apps are almost universally overpacked, messy, or lopsided (one side of the window had its controls crammed while the other has awkward white space). It might sound like a silly gripe but it really bothers me. The design of apps from GTK+ desktop environments (GNOME, Cinnamon, Pantheon) generally feel much better, but they have their own problems.
Would you mind explaining what you mean by outrage? For productivity, Unity beats any Gnome 3 setup I've tried so far. And we're still not talking about the maintenance/security nightmare that is the Gnome 3 plugin system.
> By "outrage" I've meant canonical has developed it because they didn't like gnome shell(they like the innovation-thing).
After watching the "we're the only ones who know best, so shut up"-antics of the Gnome developers, I can understand that canonical got cold feet.
> Unity has problems with multiple monitors, consumes more RAM and CPU and is also hard to customize.
In my experience, setting up multiple monitors was much less of a hassle under Unity than under Gnome. I don't have any recent data on the resources use, but I wouldn't run either Unity or Gnome on a low memory setup. Firefox and Chrome dwarf any RAM use for compositing anyway.
>But we should talk about it if we're here...
Ok, gladly. In Gnome 3, a lot of functionality comes from extensions. Even changing the theme (from a black top panel) needs an extension. Installing extensions is done over the web using your browser (this works to a varying degree out of the box). I don't know of any recent changes, but about a year ago I had a look under the hood, because I wanted to make my own extensions, and was shocked by how they work.
First of all, there seems to be pretty much no integrity checks, signing, hashing to prevent malicious extensions. That's pretty much a no-go if you want to use Gnome in any kind of industrial setting (you will have to maintain them offline and manually on the file system level, sidestepping the supported way).
My second gripe is the stability of extensions. Since you're downloading from a website, the currently offered may not fully support your slightly outdated Gnome install. However, if you keep your Gnome up to date, expect random failures of your extensions.
From http://lwn.net/Articles/460037/ about the reasoning behind sidestepping distro packaging (emphasis mine):
"The second reason is that extensions are not working with a stable API, so have very specific version requirements that don't really fit into the normal assumptions packaging systems make. If a packaged extension says it works with GNOME Shell 3.2 only and not with GNOME Shell 3.4, then that will likely break the user's attempt to upgrade to the next version of their distribution. We'd rather just disable the extension and let the user find a new version when it becomes available."
So, you just updated your Gnome and your productivity extensions fail. Now you have to search replacements and, should you find them, configure them anew. Sometimes extensions just randomly fail. This was the main reason I finally gave up on using Gnome for work.
And speaking of stable APIs: another shock was to see that extensions don't operate against a plugin API but are basically Javascript code smudged into the existing running code. This makes gauging the effects one extension has on another pretty much impossible.
My final conclusion regarding Gnome 3 was that it is a wobbly work in progress, less configurable than Compiz (there just aren't that much extensions to choose from in the end), based on questionable design principles and taste. It's okay for hobby use, I guess. But I have yet to find a distro that provides an as polished DE setup with Gnome as Ubuntu does with Unity.
Don't get me wrong, I want Gnome to be great, since many distros use it as default DE and I want an alternative if Canonical mucks up Unity with their Mir transition and their focus on smart phones. There's also Cinnamon wich I kind of like, but it has the same problems regarding extensions as Gnome. I will give KDE a closer look in the future.
> After watching the "we're the only ones who know best, so shut up"-antics of the Gnome developers, I can understand that canonical got cold feet.
If only we could exile the GNOME devs, Canonical & the systemd devs to a desert island, the state of the Linux desktop would be … well, probably not as good but at least it'd be a much more collegial community.
To get back to the original topic: the attitudes of the GNOME devs, Canonical & the systemd devs reminds me of that of the OpenBSD devs, with the exception that the OpenBSD guys are generally right, just socially inept in how they convey their message.
> If only we could exile the GNOME devs, Canonical & the systemd devs to a desert island, the state of the Linux desktop would be … well, probably not as good but at least it'd be a much more collegial community.
I wouldn't judge them that harshly, but the kerfuffles had the effect of splitting the Linux community into those who embrace progress and those who shun it. Sadly, most of the experienced went the latter way because the progressive path was full of cranks.
> To get back to the original topic: the attitudes of the GNOME devs, Canonical & the systemd devs reminds me of that of the OpenBSD devs, with the exception that the OpenBSD guys are generally right, just socially inept in how they convey their message.
Most of this, in my experience, comes from sticking to a very strong opinion that is heavily based on ideals. The further apart from the real and existing world these ideals are, the more caution should be taken when implementing them. Otherwise you will be placing a huge turd on someone's desk. During work hours. On a deadline.
I think this is the main problem with the attitude that the Gnome and systemd devs have. The Canonical devs took their ideals at least closer from a working model (OS X) and they were (I assume) motivated by pragmatism.
The OpenBSD devs base their ideals probably closer to their own experience. That makes it more likely to be right.
