There is a brouhaha stirring on Planet Gnome, the aggregator web site for the blogs of Gnome developers.

First of all, I’d like to say, I am not a programmer, I am only a user, and I choose to use Gnome as my desktop.

I will save for another post why I choose to use Gnome on Linux, but suffice to say, I’ve been using Linux and Gnome on and off for almost 8 years, and this last year or two, almost exclusively on my personal desktop, and longer than that on the my productivity box for email, IRC, IM and storage.

A little background: Edd Dumbill kicked off the conversation a few weeks ago when he said his Gnome hacking had slowed because of lack of fun, and lack of direction of what language to code in within Gnome.

Everyone, including the big names like Havoc and Miguel have weighed in, and there have been some really good points made about the different development languages (mostly Java vs Python vs Mono/C#).

Alex summed up what the major vendors will do:

• Novell will continue to ship Mono because it has a vested interest in its perpetuation.
• RedHat will continue to not ship it for the foreseeable future, because they have a vested interest in not being sued.
• Ubuntu and everyone else will eventually include Mono because users want the apps. And no matter what, the handful of apps I’ve half-started writing are all in C#.

And Paul Drain summed it up the best:

but in the end:

• the end-user will eventually demand quality applications written in both of these languages on the desktop. And that’s the key for me. I’m just as freaked out about the Microsoft patent issue in Mono / C# that could raise it’s ugly head some day. With that said, most of the coolest and innovative applications that are being written right now for the Gnome Desktop are in Mono / C#. From Tomboy for notes taking (and let me tell you: keeping track via Tomboy as I rip my CD collection with one note on missing discs, another note on scratched discs has been a lifesaver) to Muine for listening to music (It blows Rhythmbox away in my opinion) to F-Spot for managing and tagging photos. All of these applications are applications I use daily, and just work. (Thank you Ubuntu Universe repository). I look forward to using Beagle in the future for desktop searching. In fact it was Beagle & Dashboard a few years ago when Nat was first brainstorming around Beagle that really grabbed me and sucked me back in to Linux.

I want innovation in the desktop, and applications that just work. Those, combined with Gnome’s remote desktop features, (and my passion for free software development) keep me using Gnome every day.