[lloydde]

I don’t doubt it, but the post does not lay out the timeline. Those events likely aligned the business interests to what the designers were already wanting to make happen. From what I recall, by 2004, Linux on Desktop designers were already looking to move on from mimic and displace Windows to win on their own terms. There seemed to be a lot of energy do something new and different by 2005. It seemed like there was a lot of wireframes and prototypes in both GNOME and KDE camps. Also around 2005, touchscreen tablets were also having a moment. I think I remember a popular Nokia model. 2006 had Sugar UI for interactive learning on OLPC XO.

[dvhh]

I remember gnome 3 being a lot more touchscreen friendly.

One big turnoff was that it wasn't compatible with my favorite gnome 2 theme.

In the end, I switched to XFCE.

[lproven]

[Article author here]

I provided citations for my claims.

Can we see some for yours, please?

[lloydde]

I am going from memory. I can anchor the memories as September 2005 till early 2006 as it was a memorable time for me. I spent that time working out of a Palo Alto garage working on a "web 2.0" web browser, Flock, with a small group of people that included a few who had previously been at Eazel and were still passionate GNOME participants.

Thinking further on it now, unrelated to that work, Jeff Waugh @jdub would be person I'd go to for receipts.

If I was searching the web, I'd be looking for references to Gnome ToPaZ with topaz being a play on ThreePointZero:

"When the prospect of GNOME 3 was first discussed by developers in 2005, the concept took on a life of its own among the users who imagined that it would be an audacious reinvention of the desktop with completely new interaction paradigms and a new kind of user interface. This pie-in-the-sky vision was referred to as ToPaZ, word play on the phrase three-point-zero. " https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2008/07/gnome...