In neither of these cases am I particularly wedded to the tools, and I've tried a few other terminals (the xfce4 terminal app also seems pretty sane). I actually like most of the ideas behind KDE, I just can't stand the implementation of the desktop, but it doesn't go out of its way to piss the hell out of me. I find its PIM, Kontact, is hands down the best such tool I've encountered in any environment (though for straight email, mutt still wins).
No, the problem is that perfectly serviceable applications get utterly buggered by the brain-death of the underlying toolkit. By changing functionality as fundamental as middle-click mouse behavior. And it's reached the point that being a GNOME application is a liability: I'm going to look at it cross-eyed and search out an alternative if at all possible.
As another poster noted, his use of a venerable old window manager, in his case, Enlightenment DR16, means he isn't subject to an entire class of insults: "creeping featurism/bloat slowing down or interfering with overall responsiveness, or this recent distressing trend to remove well-established features and behaviors."
The simple fact is that the basics of a GUI desktop were established 40 years ago[1], and most of the changes since have involved price, performance, graphics rendering quality, and a very small number of behavioral modifications.
Technology offers diminishing returns to scale, and there's only so much benefit any graphical environment can offer by changing. And in doing so it loses its key benefit: familiarity. NO graphical environment is fully intuitive, it's all learned. Tossing out that learning on a regular basis is an anti-feature.
And so pdkl95 uses the decade-old E16, I use WindowMaker, clone of a 1989 desktop. A highly skilled hacker and repeat entrepreneur I know uses twm -- a very heavily hacked configuration, but twm all the same. It BLAZES on modern hardware. First released in 1987.
Even Apple has made relatively few modifications to its OS X interface, Aqua (and most were met with much gnashing of teeth). Microsoft's UI changes are a large part of the negative response to its recent Windows and Office offerings. Really, the improvements simply aren't worth the cost.
No, the problem is that perfectly serviceable applications get utterly buggered by the brain-death of the underlying toolkit. By changing functionality as fundamental as middle-click mouse behavior. And it's reached the point that being a GNOME application is a liability: I'm going to look at it cross-eyed and search out an alternative if at all possible.
As another poster noted, his use of a venerable old window manager, in his case, Enlightenment DR16, means he isn't subject to an entire class of insults: "creeping featurism/bloat slowing down or interfering with overall responsiveness, or this recent distressing trend to remove well-established features and behaviors."
The simple fact is that the basics of a GUI desktop were established 40 years ago[1], and most of the changes since have involved price, performance, graphics rendering quality, and a very small number of behavioral modifications.
Technology offers diminishing returns to scale, and there's only so much benefit any graphical environment can offer by changing. And in doing so it loses its key benefit: familiarity. NO graphical environment is fully intuitive, it's all learned. Tossing out that learning on a regular basis is an anti-feature.
And so pdkl95 uses the decade-old E16, I use WindowMaker, clone of a 1989 desktop. A highly skilled hacker and repeat entrepreneur I know uses twm -- a very heavily hacked configuration, but twm all the same. It BLAZES on modern hardware. First released in 1987.
Even Apple has made relatively few modifications to its OS X interface, Aqua (and most were met with much gnashing of teeth). Microsoft's UI changes are a large part of the negative response to its recent Windows and Office offerings. Really, the improvements simply aren't worth the cost.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto