Vincent Untz

The talk will clarify how the GNOME community works, and answer several hot questions (GNOME OS, dependency on systemd, fallback mode, etc.) from the perspective of someone involved in the project for more than ten years.

In the last year, GNOME has been a hot topic for many. The move to GNOME 3 comes with a different user experience, and the reaction to this new direction has been a mix of love and hate. If anything, such reactions show that people still care about the desktop!

Still, the future of GNOME raises several questions, and a lot of (often mis-informed) comments are the source of many theories. These questions are, of course, based on valid concerns: What is GNOME OS? Does GNOME target tablets instead of traditional computers nowadays? Is GNOME becoming less portable? Will GNOME depend on systemd? Can GNOME still run on non-3d-accelerated hardware? Does GNOME care about its user base or does it pursue a blue sky dream? What about the new GNOME-derived projects? etc.

This talk aims to restore an understanding of (and maybe trust in?) how the GNOME community works and what it intends to achieve. The talk will also answer, in a honest, sometimes blunt way, as many of those questions as possible from the perspective of someone involved in the project for more than ten years.

One part of the integration of upstream software in a distribution is to correctly deal with changes that have a wide impact, either because they affect a lot of other software, or because the changes will be highly visible to the users. And it is easy to feel that such changes are always going wrong: some applications stop working, many users complain about the change they feel was uncalled for, nearly nobody shares a thank you note. Such wide-impact changes always come with controversies, and being the bridge between users and upstreams, distributions are the place where all the rage is going on, with a social aspect that is usually at least as important as the technical side of things. The recent years have not been exempt of controversies, and we will share our experiences with user-visible changes such as the move to KDE 4, GNOME 3 and systemd. This talk will be co-presented by the SUSE Gang: Frédéric Crozat, Will Stephenson, Vincent Untz.

Other people: Frédéric Crozat Will Stephenson