In today's open source roundup: Gnome 3.14 might be bringing users back from other desktops. Plus: Why are command line interfaces still popular? And a preview of the gaming distro Play Linux The Gnome desktop has had a rough last few years. The transition from Gnome 2 to Gnome 3 left a bad taste in the mouths of many Gnome users, and some abandoned Gnome for other desktops. But PC World thinks that Gnome 3.14 could be just what the doctor ordered to bring some of those users back to the Gnome desktop. According to PC World: Linux distributions started to bail. Ubuntu thought they could do better, so they made their own Unity desktop. In 2013, Debian switched to their more traditional Xfce desktop as their default, partly because it was a more familiar experience for Gnome 2 users. It wasn’t just Linux distributions, either—many Linux users at the time had negative reactions and looked for other desktop environments. Well, if you haven’t tried it in a while, Gnome 3 has improved. Performance is now good. Debian just switched back to Gnome as their default desktop, partly because its accessibility and systemd integration was better than Xfce’s, but the interface has improved enough to make those considerations possible. More at PC World I used to be a huge fan of Gnome, and then I too moved away from it when it changed to Gnome 3. But I’m very glad to see that it has recovered and improved, it was sad seeing it go into decline by losing so many users. It’s far too important a project to dwindle away into obscurity, and I hope PC World is right that Gnome 3.14 will begin to regrow Gnome’s user base. You can download a live image from the Gnome site to get a taste of whats in Gnome 3.14, and you can read the release notes for a list of new features. eWeek also has a slideshow of Gnome 3.14 features. Why are command line interfaces still popular? A redditor asks why command line interfaces remain so popular among Linux users. According to Reddit: I understand that for things like programming it is more powerful than a GUI, but from what I’ve seen it is a lot more popular than that! I didn’t know it could be more useful for things like checking email and IRC chats. Is there a particular reason for this? Or is it just one of those things that just ‘happened’? More at Reddit Here are two excellent answers from the thread that sum up why some Linux users prefer the command line to graphical user interfaces: Flippeh: For many advanced users, keyboard driven control is orders of magnitude faster and more precise than mouse driven input. If I need something changed, I can just type the command that does it, I don’t have to take my hand from the keyboard to grab the mouse, locate the mouse cursor and move it to where it needs to go and click through a dozen windows to change a setting. You can do that with GUI applications, but navigating them with shortcuts if more often than not a pain. CLI applications were made for it. The learning curve is higher of course, but so is the productivity. Additionally, and sometimes more importantly, it’s extremely easy and natural to use a CLI application over SSH, which just isn’t possible at all with GUI applications, or very cumbersome and slow with X-Forwarding. And: Qedem: Once you get used to using the terminal, the learning curve for learning other CLI applications is negligibly small. Meanwhile, every time you learn a new GUI, you need to spend a good amount of time figuring out where everything is. I hope that id clear: CLI applications are typically more standardized than GUI ones (in my opinion). A preview of Play Linux Everyday Linux User takes a look at the alpha version of Play Linux and wishes it had more to set it apart from other distributions. According to Everyday Linux User: Play Linux’s website states that there aren’t any decent distributions for gamers. Providing Steam, PlayOnLinux and a point and click installer for Minecraft helps on that score but I was hoping for more. I would have expected there to be some default games included such as Frets On Fire and I would perhaps have expected some games emulators to be installed and configured by default. For gaming Play Linux could perhaps include joystick calibration, one click installs for setting up WII remotes, XBOX controllers and OUYA controllers. So my main conclusion is that the current alpha release of Play Linux is a good start but before moving to Beta perhaps it can include a little bit more. More at Everyday Linux User I’m not as much of a gamer as I used to be back in the day, but I like the idea of a distribution geared toward gamers. I hope that the Play Linux developers can buff it up before final release so it offers enough to sway gamers off of other distributions. You can get more information about Play Linux on its site, wiki, and blog. And you can download it in 32-bit or 64-bit versions from the Play Linux download page. What’s your take on all this? Tell me in the comments below. The opinions expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the views of ITworld. Software DevelopmentOpen Source