I was also there and jdub is correct. This retelling of history is nonsense. Especially this part:
> SUSE, Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, even Sun Solaris used GNOME 2. Everyone liked GNOME 2.
The default DE on SUSE was KDE. If you wanted GNOME you had to request it explicitly at install time. But more importantly, GNOME 2 was enormously controversial. It split the Linux and GNOME communities, it was the systemd flamewars of its day. The developers had to constantly justify themselves and received endless flames and hate mail about it. In fact it went OK because, just like with systemd, it turned out that there was a silent majority who did like the new direction of GNOME and become enthusiastic adopters, but the idea that everyone liked it is just absurd.
Also, GNOME 2 didn't have a Win95 style interface. GNOME 1 was Windows 95 inspired, GNOME 2 was clearly a reaction to macOS although it managed to establish a unique art style and personality as well.
The drivers of the new direction for GNOME 2 were Havoc Pennington and Calum Benson at Sun (who did a usability study on GNOME 1). Pennington spent a lot of time explaining to Linux hackers that more options and preferences wasn't always better. For example in this essay:
Both GNOME1 and KDE were basically direct mappings of the Linux CLI experience to widgets; it was common to have checkboxes in apps with labels like "Use Xrender", no further explanation provided. Pennington revolutionized the Linux DE space by arguing that the GUI should reflect what tasks people wanted to do, should try to automatically configure itself and that adding settings had a cost as well as a benefit. Some people saw this new direction as undermining the reason they liked Linux in the first place, as something endlessly tinkerable and tweakable for technical people. They didn't particularly want Linux to be approachable by non-hackers.
"The default DE on SUSE was KDE. If you wanted GNOME you had to request it explicitly at install time."
Depends on the time frame and which SUSE you refer to, to be clear. When Novell bought Ximian it made GNOME the default for SLED and KDE continued to be the default for openSUSE.
> SUSE, Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, even Sun Solaris used GNOME 2. Everyone liked GNOME 2.
The default DE on SUSE was KDE. If you wanted GNOME you had to request it explicitly at install time. But more importantly, GNOME 2 was enormously controversial. It split the Linux and GNOME communities, it was the systemd flamewars of its day. The developers had to constantly justify themselves and received endless flames and hate mail about it. In fact it went OK because, just like with systemd, it turned out that there was a silent majority who did like the new direction of GNOME and become enthusiastic adopters, but the idea that everyone liked it is just absurd.
Also, GNOME 2 didn't have a Win95 style interface. GNOME 1 was Windows 95 inspired, GNOME 2 was clearly a reaction to macOS although it managed to establish a unique art style and personality as well.
The drivers of the new direction for GNOME 2 were Havoc Pennington and Calum Benson at Sun (who did a usability study on GNOME 1). Pennington spent a lot of time explaining to Linux hackers that more options and preferences wasn't always better. For example in this essay:
https://ometer.com/preferences.html
Both GNOME1 and KDE were basically direct mappings of the Linux CLI experience to widgets; it was common to have checkboxes in apps with labels like "Use Xrender", no further explanation provided. Pennington revolutionized the Linux DE space by arguing that the GUI should reflect what tasks people wanted to do, should try to automatically configure itself and that adding settings had a cost as well as a benefit. Some people saw this new direction as undermining the reason they liked Linux in the first place, as something endlessly tinkerable and tweakable for technical people. They didn't particularly want Linux to be approachable by non-hackers.