For the past while, Trish’s GNOME desktop has been freezing after a dozen or so windows are opened or closed. The problem is an obscure one, and elusive when I try to track it down. I know it is peculiar to her account, since I don’t suffer from it, but more concrete information is slow to come by. Changing every configuration option that might even remotely connected doesn’t help. Ditto running her key files in another account. Removing the GNOME configuration files so that new default ones are created does nothing. Nor does upgrading GNOME or any of the software I suspect of being involved with the problem. I suspect that either Firefox or Thunderbird are complicit, and my investigations continue, but, meanwhile, Trish is left with a major annoyance every time she logs into her account.
If we were running Windows or OS X, she would have no choice except to endure while I troubleshoot. However, because we’re on GNU/Linux, I switched her over to KDE instead. After about ten minutes of customization, her new desktop looks about 90% the same as her old one, so the transition was minimal, so she can carry on with reading her email and browsing the web while I track down the problem.
Had KDE not removed the problem, I could have set up Xfce. Had Xfce not solved the problem, I could turned to IceWM, Blackbox, Fluxbox, Afterstep or any of a couple of dozen other desktops or window manager..
Diversity may be messy, but, sometimes, messiness is better.
Amen! That philosophy is too similar to the GNOME philosophy of removing features to not confuse the poor, stupid user. It’s crippling, debilitating, and seriously annoying.
i agree with you!
No, no, ice cream would be more popular if it only came in one flavor.
> But, under GNU/Linux, I had an immediate choice of workarounds
But apparently (still) no solution.
Yup. And it’s not just desktops, it’s *every* software module in the pile ‘o stuff we call “Linux”.
I had problems with Network Manager in Ubuntu dealing with WiFi. Swapped it out for WicD which turns out to be a lot better in many ways.
About the only parts that can’t be swapped easily are the file system interface and Xorg’s core. For even video cards there’s usually multiple driver options…