I open the “movies” directory and double-click on the video I just downloaded. I also have the srt subtitles with the same name as the movie, so that Totem loads them automatically when playing. Oops, the subtitles are too small. I go to the Edit/Preferences menu to change the size. I quickly realize there’s no option to increase their size, and I say quickly because there are so few available options!

I run GNOME Terminal, the terminal emulator. I open several tabs, since I need them for work. After a while, when I finish what I had to do, I try to close gnome-terminal and…

… the truth is it’s a bit annoying that it asks me that every time I try to close it. When I try to configure it so it doesn’t ask me that question anymore… again, there’s no available option.

I honestly don’t like that the desktop shows icons for volumes (other partitions), like “PERSONAL” or “WinXP”. After searching around, I think maybe the option is in Nautilus preferences. “List columns”, “Preview”, “Ask before deleting files”… nothing about desktop icons.

All these options I’m mentioning are basic. I’m going to try to be more demanding:

1. I want that when I right-click on a file, instead of showing the options “Move to trash” and “Delete”, only the first one appears, since I think the user who’s going to interact with the PC might not have much of a clue, and might accidentally delete something important…
2. I’m tired of directories being listed first in Nautilus.
3. I want metacity (GNOME’s window manager) instead of showing the top part of windows like this:… to do it this other way: on the left side the maximize and close buttons, and on the right the menu and minimize button.
4. Instead of when listing files and directories the icon appears above the element’s name, have the name appear to its right.
5. Instead of file/directory icons being ordered in icon view (not details), I want to give them a specific location, and have that location remembered for each directory.
6. When I burn a CD (with Nautilus), I want to be able to burn beyond what the physical medium allows (overburn) and also have it throw debugging information.
7. I have a button in the lower left corner of my desktop, on the bottom panel, that when pressed minimizes all programs and shows me the desktop (Show Desktop… a typical function). Well, I don’t like the icon, and I don’t like the tooltip either.
8. I don’t like that the “Run an application” dialog box autocompletes what I’m typing.
9. I hate that launchers (the little icons in panels to launch applications) get highlighted when I move the mouse over them.
10. I can lock the launchers… but I want to lock the entire panel (and all its configuration) so it’s not modifiable at all.
11. When I save a file with Gedit, I want it to remember where the cursor was before I close it.
12. That the user can’t print. Or that they can, but don’t have access to configure the printer. And this in all applications.
13. I hate that in all text boxes (or anywhere I have to insert text) the cursor blinks. I’d like it not to, or else to blink every 5 seconds.
14. That all menus (File, Edit, Help, etc) of all applications can be detached. So I can move them wherever I want.
15. Let’s see… thumbnails (the miniatures of documents, like pdf, avi, etc). I want to see PDFs, but not video files. Although yes… video files yes, but not those in MPEG format or those using the Matroska container… the others yes. Actually the application that handles generating thumbnails for pdf files (evince-thumbnailer) is very slow and I want to change it for some other one.
16. URL handling (http, sip, mailto, etc): I want firefox to handle “http” urls, but epiphany to handle “https” ones. Because Ekiga has a security error (lie) in H.323 protocol handling, for the moment I want GnomeMeeting (Ekiga’s old version) to handle it, since it doesn’t have that bug. However, have Ekiga continue handling “sip” urls.
17. I want to set what command will be executed for the following actions carried out in the system: when I connect a mouse to the system, a Palm, my PocketPC or a digital camera; when I insert a DVD or VCD; when I connect a printer (for example, I want gnome-cups-add to run to automatically add the printer).
18. I want Totem, that simple and very humble multimedia player, to let me set different execution priorities to different decoders, like theora, ffmpeg, mpeg2, etc.
19. When playing a video, it sometimes shows with two black borders on the top and bottom. Well, I want the top border in Totem to be thinner (and therefore the bottom one thicker). This is equivalent to modifying the vertical position of the image.

If you’ve made it this far reading, you’ll have realized that everything I just mentioned, from the beginning until here, can indeed be done in GNOME. How? If the options aren’t in Totem, Nautilus, etc No, they’re not there. They’re found in the gconf database, GNOME’s configuration manager. Run “gconf-editor” and you’ll see.

Maybe despite all this being doable, you’ll say: But in [insert your desktop manager here] I can do the same thing. Well, the idea for the post came to me after reading an article in Linux Journal, titled A fifteenth chance for GNOME. I get the feeling that it’s very underestimated regarding its customization capability… or overestimated for its simplicity.

For GNOME developers, usability and ease are very important. For this reason, design decisions sometimes focus on simplifying everything. However, advanced options are still there.

This is a summary of my experience with GNOME: things I used to want absolute control over (CD burning for example), I now do much more simply, with the same (or almost the same) results. It’s enough that it simply works. Of course there are many things still missing, or not very well polished. An example is GnomePrint.