I've been using GNOME for awhile in potato--my first encounter with it. It just doesn't seem ready. I know potato is pre-release, and we may not have the latest GNOME in it, and the GNOME folks are working hard.
So I thought I'd gripe, check if this matches others experience, and then maybe file some bug reports if I haven't made some configuration goof. I also have no idea if the problem is GNOME or the debian integration of GNOME. I'm running on i386, mostly with sawmill window manager. gdm runs the show. Stability: Balsa crashes very frequently. The GNOME wrapper for gv crashed so much I could barely look at a page (the file started as .pdf.gz). Features: Session management is not there. All my windows come back in the first pane of the desktop. There seems to be no way to get rid of things once they are in there. I tried closing them and resaving the session. I tried deleting them from the session configuration tool (whose help button, by the way, does nothing). The net result of this is that I now have about 6 xman's running when I start up. The features in most places are pretty thin--for example, balsa is not very capable even when it is running. Aesthetics: I think the default enlightenment theme--in fact most of the themes for most of the window managers--are just ugly. The default theme makes it look as if you have a rusting scrap heap on your desk. Only the NextStep derivatives have a decent look, to my eye. Internal Design: I think GNOME's facilities and interfaces should have been done in object oriented fashion. Instead, it's got this clunky C interface that reminds me of MS Windows. I understand KDE went the other route. Yes, I know it can all be packaged in CORBA someday, but why do the How to program for GNOME docs say (it has been awhile since I looked) that the C interface is the native one? Everybody's got to flame every now and then.
