Changing backgrounds [LWN.net]

Changing backgrounds

Posted Apr 23, 2008 17:24 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)
In reply to: Changing backgrounds by corbet
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor encounters the Hardy Heron

Presumably because it tells Nautilus to set the background, and your Nautilus is long dead.

Is that outcome a bug? Yes, perhaps. But it's going to be on the priority scale somewhere
between "GNOME does not show correct free disk space on my 20 Petabyte USB RAID array" and
"GNOME world map is wrong for my planet, Neptune". My guess would be that if you don't write a
really good patch of your own, any bug would be "fixed" by just greying out that entire panel
when Nautilus is disabled.

(Log in to post comments)

Changing backgrounds

Posted Apr 23, 2008 18:25 UTC (Wed) by mightyduck (subscriber, #23760) [Link]

This is a pretty rude response. You GNOME people really hate your users!

Disclaimer: I'm using KDE.

Changing backgrounds

Posted Apr 23, 2008 19:36 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

I think we are LWN subscribers here in the first place, not "GNOME people" or anyone writing in any official capacity. It's not an interview with a GNOME developer or something like that.

Changing backgrounds

Posted Apr 24, 2008 0:57 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

I don't see this has a huge problem.

Just use gconf-editor

I find using that a lot easier then navigating KDE's option menus. 


Seriously. It's not that bad.

For example for blinking cursors you go:

ctrl-f
checkmark "search also key names"
type 'blink'
hit 'enter'

First two finds are:
/desktop/gnome/interface/cursor_blink_time
/desktop/gnome/interface/cursor_blink

The first one tells me:
"Length of the cursor blink cycle, in milliseconds"
Soo.. no that's not it.

The second one tells me:
"Whether the cursor should blink"

I uncheck it. 

The change is immediate.


That's not that bad. It's a obscure setting that few people want. Why clutter up everything
with a billion options?

I can understand getting irritated that previously options that are set get unset, of course. 

But we don't need a 1001 GUIs or windows with a billion icons on them representing every
single obscure option imaginable. It's just not worth it.


Seriously. People who are a serious Gnome users need to use gconf-editor.

There are descriptions for most options that are not blindingly obvious.

For example; clicking through metacity's options I found how to enable it's compositing mode
and to enable low-resource mode.  For nautilus I found how to change the 'my computer' name.
All sorts of other stuff.

Changing backgrounds

Posted Apr 24, 2008 8:17 UTC (Thu) by lab (subscriber, #51153) [Link]

Sorry, but I cannot begin to describe how wrong I think you are, and thank you for putting it
very concisely. You exactly hit one of the nerves that made me go "fed up" with Gnome a while
back, and switch to KDE. I've been a happier person for it.

Changing backgrounds

Posted Apr 25, 2008 4:53 UTC (Fri) by vapier (subscriber, #15768) [Link]

as much as i hate the karma system, i have to +1 this comment.  so spot on, it's like you copy
& pasted my brain.

Changing backgrounds

Posted Apr 26, 2008 0:22 UTC (Sat) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]

Or you can go to System -> Preferences -> Keyboard -> Cursor Blinking ...