In the past I have been complaining about GNOME's lack of innovation; and now I stumbled over a project called GNOME Shell...
So, this is the moment: this is when I have to revise my world view; when I have to apologize and praise the GNOME folks for their innovative ideas...
Nah, just kidding :-) But I have to admit that I was surprised -- and this is the incredible part -- in a positive way for a change.
Most of it is still rather vague (i.e. remarkably like my own ideas...); and the ideas presented there are not exactly revolutionary -- but one thing is clear: For the first(?) time GNOME folks indeed seem to be thinking outside the Windows (TM)... err... I mean outside the box ;-) ; for the first time they really try to come up with something new, rather than just doing cosmetics to well-known (stupid) approaches...
Do you hear this noise?... It's me applauding.
One thing that caught my attention in particular are some ideas regarding Activities: remarkably similar in some regards to my own ideas regarding session management...
This confirms an observation I'm recently making again and again: Slowly, very slowly, most things in the free software world tend to be moving in the right direction. Maybe in just another 20 years or so we will have a sane desktop environment! ;-)
