I’m going to do this in installments, I’ve decided, because there are a lot of little things and they sort of just come to me.

So this is episode 1:

Today we’re picking on Gnome. Gnome is of course the default desktop in Ubuntu and as such is the desktop environment most readibly recognized by newbies as “Linux,” and the first thing that they will experience. Gnome is pleasant to look at and easy to use. And that’s it.

What if you want to customize things beyond the (very limited) customization tools available?

You have to delve into the gconf-editor:

It's like the devs said "You know, I miss the Windows Registry"

It's like the devs said "You know, I miss the Windows Registry"

The gconf-editor is a clusterfuck of incomprehenisble options with very few descriptions and the only way anyone discovers anything new in the gconf-editor is through trial and error.

Things you have to do in the gconf-editor:

  1. Advanced keyboard shortcuts
  2. Deciding if the “Home,” “Trash,” and that sort of icons are displayed on your desktop
  3. God only knows what else because the program is horrid!

One of the worst “features” of Windows is the Registry, and the gconf-editor resembles it too much for my comfort. It’s here because the Gnome devs think users are too stupid to deal with having lots of settings, and that “power users” will be right at home in a piece of shit editor.

Great. So if I want to set a keyboard shortcut to do something uncommon, I have to find this?! What gives?!

So here’s the list so far of what has to go for Linux to overtake Windows:

  1. The gconf-editor in Gnome