Responses below:
On 09/22/2014 09:23 AM, Dimitar Zhekov wrote:
After 15 years of using Linux desktop, 3 of which as maintainer of a source-based distribution? :)
I'm glad (if you want to call it that) to hear that it sounds like only a recent trend to abandon the users. I hope they figure things out, because it's been a painful few years because of the recent trends. I'm surprised at how much grief some of these projects have caused to linux users as a whole, but it's like they are ignoring their constituents. Linux. I fight for the users ;-) (tron reference)
But you are right that systemd is not the only reason. KDE 4, GNOME 3, FF[1], the list goes on, and recently even gtk+ 2.24.23+ (IIRC the revision) is slightly broken. Guess I finally lost faith in the Linux as desktop. I hope, for all of you, that Xfce 5 will be just fine.
I'm also happy to hear someone reiterate my disgruntlement with GNOME 3. One small glimmer of hope is that Ubuntu Mate https://ubuntu-mate.org/ is emerging to fill that nostalgic gap. Unfortunately, I don't know if they are doing anything with systemd, as it will still be based on Ubuntu, but at least I get my sane interfaces back without having to switch to Xfce :-/ They are even packaging compiz, which much of linux practically abandoning it has been another sore spot for me, although that could be blamed on GNOME 3 partly as well for going to Mutter. Now if only I could convince them to package Emerald window decorator. I miss 2007 linux ;-)
I especially like these points in Ubuntu Mate's mission:
* *Restore the halcyon days of Ubuntu* before Unity https://unity.ubuntu.com/ (I would add GNOME 3 here) was introduced. * Provide a *refuge* for Linux users who prefer a traditional desktop metaphor.
Anyway, I hope the team doesn't mind my sharing about this recent distro.
Steve