GTK3 in CentOS 7
On or about August 13 I updated my CentOS 7 virtual machine (VM). The updates included the Geany text editor and plugins.
Cool!
Until I actually used Geany. Then I discovered the update included building the apps with GTK3.
The GTK file picker dialog, well, um, sucks even worse than the GTK2 file picker dialog. With GTK3 there is no permanent Location Bar. Pressing Ctrl+L invokes the bar, but the user must do this every time. Invoking the bar replaces the bread crumbs.
Worse, the file picker dialog in Geany always opens offset from the center of the screen. I have never seen this irritating behavior before in any app.
That’s why we do backups. I restored Geany 1.29 and excluded the app and the plugins from further updates.
I now am considering moving to Ubuntu MATE or Debian for my VM. I could move to Slackware, my preferred distro, but I want the VM to be a system used at work.
Many people choose a long term support (LTS) distro like CentOS because they expect software to change little and to be updated only with security patches and bug fixes. Software updates in an LTS system are not supposed to be disruptive. Users do not expect disruptive changes in interfaces.
This kind of thing happens often with free/libre software. Just another example why free/libre software is not wildly popular on the desktop. When will developers learn that software is not their personal playground?
Posted: Category: Usability Tagged: CentOS
Next: Not Embracing Technology
Previous: Free/Libre Tablet and Phone