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GNOME 3.4 released

From:  Matthias Clasen <mclasen-AT-redhat.com>
To:  gnome-announce-list-AT-gnome.org, devel-announce-list-AT-gnome.org
Subject:  GNOME 3.4 released
Date:  Wed, 28 Mar 2012 10:20:59 -0400
Message-ID:  <1332944459.28950.2.camel@localhost>
Archive‑link:  Article

                    GNOME 3.4 Released
                   ====================

Today, the GNOME Project celebrates the release of GNOME 3.4, the latest
version of the popular, multi-platform free desktop and of its developer
platform. This timely release marks the first birthday of GNOME 3.

GNOME 3.4 is the second major update of GNOME 3. It builds on the
foundations that we have laid with 3.0 and 3.2 and offers a greatly
enhanced experience. The exciting new features and improvements in this
release include a new virtual machine and remote access application, a
completely revamped web browsing user experience, integrated document
search, first-class web applications, better graphics tablet support,
application menus, and many more.

For more information about the major changes in GNOME 3.4, please visit
our release notes:

 http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.4/

GNOME 3.4 will be available shortly in many distributions. Live images
of GNOME 3.4 are currently being prepared and will appear soon at:

 http://www.gnome.org/getting-gnome/

This six months effort wouldn't have been possible without the whole
GNOME community, made of contributors and friends from all around the
world: developers, designers, documentors, usability and accessibility
specialists, translators, maintainers, sysadmins, companies, artists,
users and testers. GNOME would not exist without all those people.
Thanks very much to every one of them!

Our next release, GNOME 3.6, is planned for September 2012.

Until then, enjoy GNOME 3.4 !

The GNOME Release Team


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to post comments

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 15:50 UTC (Wed) by avtechmjc (guest, #50477) [Link] (67 responses)

Can we power off the computer from the gnome-shell menu yet, without non-discoverable tricks, or is that still an advanced feature requiring an extension?

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 16:01 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (4 responses)

It never required a extension. It's a config change to enable it to be on by default.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 16:35 UTC (Wed) by avtechmjc (guest, #50477) [Link] (3 responses)

Eh? Most people who want a "power off" menu item have to install the "Alternative Status Menu" extension (https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/5/alternative-stat...).

What configuration option are you referring to?

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 18:02 UTC (Wed) by jimreynold2nd (guest, #75341) [Link] (2 responses)

You never knew that you can just hold Alt, and "Suspend" will become "Power off"?

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 18:14 UTC (Wed) by avtechmjc (guest, #50477) [Link]

That is the "non-discoverable trick" I was referring too.

I knew about it, but my less-computer-savvy users don't - unless I tell them. Which is silly.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 20:54 UTC (Wed) by AndreE (guest, #60148) [Link]

How could someone know this a priori?

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 16:17 UTC (Wed) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link] (33 responses)

Ctrl-alt-delete opens the shutdown dialog now.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 16:48 UTC (Wed) by drdabbles (guest, #48755) [Link] (32 responses)

This is perhaps one of the most foolish things to ever be implemented. CTRL+ALT+DEL is synonymous with a badly behaving computer, and in my mind at least for cultural reasons should be avoided.

Making Gnome easier to use is a fantastic goal, but obscuring certain things like shutdown or reboot behind a key combination, the requirement of an extension, or the changing of a setting is a _really_ bad idea. It's been discussed at least a thousand times, so I'll leave it there.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 17:51 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (5 responses)

CTRL+ALT+DEL is synonymous with a badly behaving computer

Synonymous for you, anyway. The cultural connotations of symbols are neither time-invariant nor space-invariant, and the symbol "Ctrl-Alt-Delete" has had an assortment of connotations over the course of the more than 25 years I've been aware of it.

Cultural connotations

Posted Mar 28, 2012 21:04 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (3 responses)

Any of those connotations were positive? For me (and my blissful ignorance of CTRL+ALT+DEL for many years, at least in practice, until I entered the corporate world) all of them are negative-to-pure-evil-incarnate.

Cultural connotations

Posted Mar 29, 2012 2:04 UTC (Thu) by drdabbles (guest, #48755) [Link] (1 responses)

I understand the historical and current purpose and meaning of CTRL+ALT+DEL. I, too, have been in the industry for a while. But the fact remains that the general feeling of CTRL+ALT+DEL is a combination to be used when something has gone wrong.

To attach that stigma and historical baggage to something used to simply signal your UI shell that you want to reboot, logout, or shut down is unintuitive to uses moving from the windows world to the Linux desktop. You and I perfectly understand, because we're advanced users. My girlfriend simply wouldn't get it.

Cultural connotations

Posted Mar 29, 2012 9:52 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

I understand the historical and current purpose and meaning of CTRL+ALT+DEL.

It does not looks this way from this side. Have you actually tried to see just what you get in Windows Vista or Windows 7 when you press ALT+CTRL+DEL? Take a look on bottom right corner.

To attach that stigma and historical baggage to something used to simply signal your UI shell that you want to reboot, logout, or shut down is unintuitive to uses moving from the windows world to the Linux desktop.

What? Why? Why is it fine in Windows world, but not in Linux world? Do you mean they can only find red “power” button in bottom right corner and can not find it when it's closer to the center of the screen?

Cultural connotations

Posted Mar 29, 2012 10:28 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

For me, the strongest connotations Ctrl-Alt-Delete has had are:

  • Rebooting a home MS-DOS system after I'd been playing a video game, which was an improvement on my past experiences - after all, our C64 had to be powercycled under equivalent circumstances.
  • Rebooting my personal Linux system after upgrading the kernel, which is a firmly positive connotation. (Three-finger salute was faster than typing "reboot".)
  • Logging into, locking, and unlocking my work PC, which is just, y'know, a thing.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Apr 3, 2012 14:31 UTC (Tue) by sorpigal (guest, #36106) [Link]

The only connotation it has for me is "Something the user is not likely to type by mistake." When you want to be sure it was a deliberate action it *may* be because it does something drastic. Linux's magic sysrq behavior serves exactly the same purpose.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 21:09 UTC (Wed) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] (25 responses)

To people who last used a Windows computer in the Win9x days, perhaps.

On the modern incarnations of that OS, Ctrl-Alt-Delete is the "System Menu" command. It is that command specifically because the OS specially catches that key combination and does not pass it on to any application, nor allow any application to alter the behavior of the command (short of modifying system DLLs and such, of course).

One of the uses for it is on the login screen. Pressing ctrl-alt-delete there is a safety feature. Since no application can catch/override it, you can guarantee that if you press the key combination, you will either see the real login screen (not some malware pretending to be the login screen) or the system menu (if you were in fact not at the real login screen).

This is one of the several ways in which modern Windows incarnations are actually more secure than Linux. On Linux, there's basically no way to be sure that the screen you're looking at is really your desktop or admin panel or whatever and not some other malware that injected itself via the a hole in the non-sandboxed Firefox processes Linux users are still primarily using as their Web browsers.

XACE and SELinux were supposed to fix this for Linux years ago, but they're still unused and in most WMs completely unimplemented. And to implement them properly, the kernel itself really does need to take control of ctrl-alt-del and ensure that only very select applications can respond to it (the login screen or a fixed system control panel).

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 21:32 UTC (Wed) by Pawlerson (guest, #74136) [Link] (11 responses)

I didn't know the system with the holes being open since a dos era can be more secure. I also don't get it how the system that doesn't get updates to security holes in hours, but months can be more secure. I also don't understand how it is possible 100 holes can make you more secure than 10? Rather than spreading FUD would you be so nice and enlighten me?

http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Study-analyses...

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 7:26 UTC (Thu) by imgx64 (guest, #78590) [Link] (10 responses)

This sort of condescending attitude isn't very productive, is it? Just because Windows is less secure than Linux overall, doesn't mean we can't learn a lesson or two from it.

So, is there a way, when I sit on a computer, to know that I'm entering my password in XDM and not in some other program a malicious user ran?

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 15:43 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]

alt+prtsc+k, I believe. But it's only suitable for logging in, and not for unlocking your session, because when you press it it kills everything in the current virtual console, and relies on init (or some other daemon) restarting a trusted instance of the login/?dm.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 15:52 UTC (Thu) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (4 responses)

> So, is there a way, when I sit on a computer, to know that I'm entering my password in XDM and not in some other program a malicious user ran?

Well, let's go bit by bit.

1. Ctrl-Alt-Del is only a relatively safe. The code that handles it is secure only because it belongs to the Windows kernel, but it resides in a file on the filesystem, and in memory addressable by code running in ring-0. So any exploit that gives you write permissions for that file, or ability to run ring-0 code (install a driver) can allow you to subvert it. Unfortunately there's a TON of such exploits, so I guess this only serves to prevent wannabe hackers and pranksters.

2. Is your login the only password you type on your computer? I bet not. What about all those? Depending on the software you use and web sites you vist it can be a considerable number of passwords entered. And probably those include the ones a malicious program would really be interested in, actually.

3. And yes, there is: configure your XDM so that it looks different from the default. Don't forget to mark the configuration files to be only readable by root.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 16:48 UTC (Thu) by abo (subscriber, #77288) [Link] (2 responses)

None of which is a valid argument against implementing similar functionality in GNU/Linux/X/GNOME, preferrably using the same key combination. It makes a whole lot of sense.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 21:46 UTC (Thu) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link] (1 responses)

Eh, I'm not so sure. If malware can inject itself like that, it can already have its way with your data and run whatever code it wants. Would it really need to escalate to root?

I hate having to press Ctrl+Alt+Del to log in. It's an awkward, two-handed chord, and Windows uses it as a crutch because of its inferior security model. Sure, if Linux had such a system from the kernel up through X, it'd be a tiny bit more secure--but with the fundamentally more secure model, and by using trusted binary repositories, I don't think it's necessary. Besides, what are you going to do, press Ctrl+Alt+Del every time you have to type your password? Ugh!

BTW, SELinux on Ubuntu works quite well with Firefox. I can't vouch for how well it stops exploits, but it's there, and is kept up-to-date by Ubuntu.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Apr 7, 2012 6:09 UTC (Sat) by abo (subscriber, #77288) [Link]

I agree with all of that, but it's still useful in cases where you let untrusted run with full screen access (webapp/flash, remote desktop etc) and with multi-user machines (you trust the admin but not all the other users).

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 30, 2012 1:49 UTC (Fri) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]

In a Windows setting where you use Ctrl+Alt+Delete (workstation joined to a Windows domain), the only password that matters _is_ the user's password. In this setup, this password gets you access to everything via Windows Integrated Authentication (basically kerberos).

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 16:31 UTC (Thu) by Pawlerson (guest, #74136) [Link] (2 responses)

This sort of condescending attitude isn't very productive, is it? Just because Windows is less secure than Linux overall, doesn't mean we can't learn a lesson or two from it.
Yes, you are right, but I know the person I was replying to. The problem is every argument falls on deaf ears in this case and the FUD is being spread. ;)

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Apr 5, 2012 12:21 UTC (Thu) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] (1 responses)

> Yes, you are right, but I know the person I was replying to. The problem is every argument falls on deaf ears in this case and the FUD is being spread. ;)

You absolutely do not know me, in the least. You have never met me, never had a conversation with me, and couldn't guess my motivations or beliefs to save your life.

That said, there's no FUD here. Windows is more secure in that it offers user-facing security features that Linux never has. There's absolutely no argument here. Sure, maybe Windows -- offering tons of features and subsystems that the Linux desktop does not -- has more lines of code and hence more places for mistakes to be made is truth, but that's entirely different than the _design_ of Windows being one focusing on desktop security, where as Linux focuses on ancient POSIX-compatible time-shared system security.

On the desktop, security is not "user A cannot negatively affect user B." On the desktop, security is "user A accessed something that could find a hole in random application he's using, but that still shouldn't negatively affect user A."

Linux has almost no solution here, besides adding SELinux (only even used on one major-ish distro) and some weak sand-boxing. Windows has numerous features that help to ensure that even if the sand-boxing mechanisms (which, according to more than a few places, are more complete and secure on Windows than on Linux) are broken, the conscientious user still has means to do a basic sanity test of the screen he's staring at.

Yes, the Windows mechanisms can be hacked by modifying Windows, but then the same can be said about Linux. I've seen root-kit'd Linux systems. They're a thing. Maybe you're not aware.

But hey, claim you know me, say that basic facts are "FUD," and then try to discredit me. That's the kind of response reasonable people expect out of folks who make emotional -- rather than logical -- attachments to technology, and isn't doing "your side" (which I'd say I'm on; I don't post here just to make fun of people, but rather to point out the dumb things that the Linux community could be doing better with) any favors. :(

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Apr 5, 2012 16:33 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

That said, there's no FUD here.

Oh, but there is. Right here:

Windows is more secure in that it offers user-facing security features that Linux never has.

Security can not be measured by counting features. In fact often additional features make security worse, not better. Windows ACL model is quite powerful and convenient, but I'm not sure it offers better security. It's complexity is it's worst enemy. When I try to remove SYSTEM-owned file in FAR from Administrator account it explains to me that it can not be done. Unless I'll give permission agree to “try harder” - then it repeats with DEBUG permissions and file is gone. That's not security, that's snake oil.

That's entirely different than the _design_ of Windows being one focusing on desktop security.

Windows is designed for convenience, not for security. Sure, Windows NT was designed with some good security ideas in mind, but when it become obvious that they hurt performance and usability most of them were abandoned and subverted.

Only after huge outcry when totally insecure design of Windows XP (let's not even talk about Windows 9X, ok) created plethora of malware Microsoft started adding features which can provide real security on desktop. Some of them are genuinely useful, some are more of snake oil.

Linux has almost no solution here, besides adding SELinux (only even used on one major-ish distro) and some weak sand-boxing.

Actually seccomp sandboxing can be quite robust, but hard to use. There are interesting development in this direction under Linux which makes it more useful.

But hey, claim you know me, say that basic facts are "FUD," and then try to discredit me.

FUD education 101:
Basic fact: in Windows you can do X, Y and Z, in Linux it's impossible.
FUD: Windows is super-hyper (according to more than a few places), Linux is meh (according to more than a few places).

Where are your facts?

Here is an example of your “fact”:

On Linux, there's basically no way to be sure that the screen you're looking at is really your desktop or admin panel or whatever and not some other malware that injected itself via the a hole in the non-sandboxed Firefox processes Linux users are still primarily using as their Web browsers.

First of all it mixes the issues (Chrome uses pretty robust sandbox on Linux), then it includes true statement (yes, Windows's Ctrl-Alt-Del is pretty robust protection against some kinds of attacks) but omits an important detail (in Windows Vista and above you don't need to press Ctrl-Alt-Del before you'll be asked to enter Admin's password).

The sad truth is that Ctrl-Alt-Del was useful security feature in Windows NT 3.1, but over time Microsoft worked long and hard to make it less and less useful. Today Microsoft have trained users to enter password after screen “flash” instead of doing it after Ctrl-Alt-Del. Which turned Ctrl-Alt-Del from genuine protection to snake oil security.

This “fact” is FUD, plain and simple. Good, high-quality FUD (it includes genuinely true statements and lies mostly by omission), yes, but it does not make it less FUDish.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Apr 3, 2012 7:35 UTC (Tue) by lindi (subscriber, #53135) [Link]

Very good question. I've been searching for a solution for quite some time.

If you just want to login securely then the best solution is to bind some key to just restart your display manager. My own prototype for this is

http://lindi.iki.fi/lindi/git/xsakd.git

but the idea is simple: it is just a daemon that reads /dev/input/by-path/platform-i8042-serio-0-event-kbd so there is no way to inject a fake key press programmatically. I wrote this to test how to make a variant of sudo that would not expose my password to all X clients:

http://lindi.iki.fi/lindi/git/sido.git/

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 21:40 UTC (Wed) by Pawlerson (guest, #74136) [Link] (1 responses)

And about the part about sandboxing... I would like to know how sandboxing is helpful on Windows?

http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Pwn2Own-ends-w...

"Mozilla Firefox fell to the team of Willem Pinckaers and Vincenzo Iozzo, who together took second place overall in Pwn2Own. Their single zero day vulnerability in Firefox involved a use-after-free problem which evaded DEP and ASLR protections in Windows 7."

I wouldn't ever trust Windows. I'm sure my system is far more secure with Apparmor profiles rather than Windows' sandboxing.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 1:34 UTC (Thu) by Fowl (subscriber, #65667) [Link]

Firefox isn't currently sandboxed on any platform.

IE and Chrome, which are, have had vulnerabilities mitigated by sandboxing in the past. It's not perfect of course, but now you have to find an elevation of privilege vulnerability to get your remote code execution vulnerability to take over the system.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 23:19 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (10 responses)

One of the uses for it is on the login screen. Pressing ctrl-alt-delete there is a safety feature. Since no application can catch/override it, you can guarantee that if you press the key combination, you will either see the real login screen (not some malware pretending to be the login screen) or the system menu (if you were in fact not at the real login screen).

This feature actually has a name and satisfies some "secure computing" criteria, but from vague memory I thought that Ctrl-Alt-Delete in a Windows session brings up the task manager, or perhaps asks you if you want the task manager. Is that the "system menu"? And out of interest, how can no application be able to trap that combination? Surely these are all normal keys.

Nevertheless, Ctrl-Alt-Delete still has negative connotations. Maybe all our systems should have a BBC Micro-style Break key or a Torch Triple-X-style "soft" power button for situations like this.

Secure Attention Key

Posted Mar 29, 2012 1:14 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (7 responses)

The phrase you're groping for is 'Secure Attention Key' (in some older systems it was literally one key press). Linux has some rudimentary low-level support for this capability but it never seems to have ascended into an end user feature of any consequence. No application can trap the SAK combination because long before any code runs that lets userspace applications fiddle with the key presses, the kernel has noticed that the SAK has been pressed and short-circuited to a path that just handles this special case.

In Windows when you press the SAK it forcibly summons a separate desktop, which you can think of as being kind of like a separate X server process. This desktop is "owned" by the System user, roughly equivalent to Unix root, so anyone with permission to tamper with it could just have replaced the entire OS kernel or whatever they wanted.

On the system desktop lives the login dialog (when nobody is logged in), the lock dialog (when somebody is logged in, but their password is needed to resume their session) and that dialog which offers you choices like changing who is logged in or starting a task manager. Because they live in a separate desktop, ordinary programs can't tamper with them and are only just barely aware they exist.

Within a single desktop (or indeed an X session) ordinary programs can snoop all keypresses, silently take pictures of other windows, send fake keypress or mouse click events, initiate phony drag-and-drop operations, impersonate other programs (e.g. popping up a SSH passphrase dialog) and other nasty tricks. They cannot, however, prevent the SAK from summoning its secure desktop.

Secure Attention Key

Posted Mar 29, 2012 15:45 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] (6 responses)

To be fair, it's probably pretty trivial to bypass the SAK. Simply present the user with a notice that they must press Ctrl+Alt+Insert to unlock and/or log on to their computer. Most will just follow the instructions without a second thought!

Secure Attention Key

Posted Mar 29, 2012 17:31 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (5 responses)

But Windows would intercept it. If the user is already logged, in they get that menu that can start the task manager (I forget what else is there). The rogue application doesn't have a choice as to what Windows does with the combo (short of locking the session or logging out which would likely be fairly blatent behavior). It certainly can't snoop the keypresses on that alternate desktop (I would sincerely hope). So, since the rogue application never gets the password, I don't see how it's being bypassed.

Secure Attention Key

Posted Mar 29, 2012 17:47 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (4 responses)

You've just proved cortana's point. Note how he suggested to write Ctrl+Alt+Insert instead of Ctrl+Alt+Delete - and you've missed it. Sure, a lot of peoples will miss it, too, but since it's possible to detect Ctrl+Alt+Delete (VMWare does that), program should just close that window and wait for the next opportunity. Eventually user will actually read the text, will press the Ctrl+Alt+Insert and will give the password program is seeking.

Secure Attention Key

Posted Mar 30, 2012 1:13 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (3 responses)

Mmm. Maybe. I think Microsoft's intention, and it has been somewhat successful, is to inculcate the Ctrl+Alt+Delete muscle memory into the wider user population beyond the group where it's actually in any way relevant to security (on a home machine where the main user and operator is also the only administrator, tricking the user with such a dialog is almost besides the points)

So you may find that in practice the story goes

User 1: "Oh, a message..." (doesn't read properly) Ctrl+Alt+Delete
User 2: "Oh, a message..." (doesn't read properly) Ctrl+Alt+Delete
User 3: Ctrl+Alt+Delete "Wait did that say... whatever, it worked"
User 4: "Oh, a message..." (doesn't read properly) Ctrl+Alt+Delete
User 5: "Ctrl+Alt+Insert? What's this? Hey, you, IT guy, why does this say Ctrl+Alt+Insert, don't you get tired of changing things for no reason?"
Administrator: "Mmm, infected PC. Wipe it and re-install"
[ Malware is no longer installed ]

Someone would have to do an experiment to check, but this wouldn't be the first time it turned out users are (in a sense) too dumb to fall for a clever trick.

Secure Attention Key

Posted Mar 30, 2012 1:41 UTC (Fri) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] (1 responses)

I think there will be ten users who fall for it for every one that raises a ticket with IT. I was less of a pessimist in this regard before I saw this video: http://www.thoughtcrime.org/software/sslstrip/. It's not directly related to the use of secure attention keys, but if users who care enough about their privacy to use tor don't notice that their URL bars say 'http' instead of 'https' then what hope does the average corporate user who just wants to log into their damn computer with a minimum of hassle to do their job?

Secure Attention Key

Posted Apr 15, 2012 16:12 UTC (Sun) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

I'm familiar with the fact that users are oblivious to the URL scheme (other things real users don't pay any attention to, in a test where they're entering their own, real banking credentials include: those images that confirm the remote site knows who you are by acting as a shared secret, a warning icon in the URL bar, and a dialog saying that the connection is insecure)

I wasn't relying on users to notice that something is wrong so much as for them not to notice that anything has changed. The users I deal with don't _seem_ to read that message about pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del and you can't stop it working, so it seemed to me that if people just press it by reflex everything works out OK. Judging from the other reply though, I was wrong.

Secure Attention Key

Posted Mar 30, 2012 5:50 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Someone would have to do an experiment to check, but this wouldn't be the first time it turned out users are (in a sense) too dumb to fall for a clever trick.

Experiment showed resounding success. Only instead of “press Ctrl+Alt+Insert” they used trojans with some nonsensical premise in text and “send SMS to XXX-XXX-XXXX” (paid number, obviously) ending. Apparently this business scheme is quite profitable.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 9:59 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

From vague memory I thought that Ctrl-Alt-Delete in a Windows session brings up the task manager, or perhaps asks you if you want the task manager.

Your memory is not incorrect, just obsolete. Nowadays (starting from Windows Vista) it brings up menu which includes things like “Lock this computer”, “Switch user”, “Log of”, “Change a password”, and, yes, “Reboot” and “Shutdown”. “Start Task Manager” is also there, but it's the last item in the list and is probably there for historical reasons.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 21:38 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

As I noted, I think it gave a choice of things: this was with Windows XP and 2000. Still, it's like the panic key combination.

Yes, while the pundits have been racking up the hits deliberating on the issue of Linux being ready for the desktop or not for the past n years, I've been actually using it, meaning that even in work environments I've not had to worry about what Microsoft have changed with which dialogue in whichever version of Windows that is being rolled out with widespread user re-training (which of course comes at no cost whatsoever because "it's still Windows" whilst any Linux deployment can't be done even if it looks like the current version of Windows because "it would cost too much to re-train everyone").

I'd like my memory of Windows key combinations to fade further into obsolescence!

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 17:51 UTC (Wed) by tx (guest, #81224) [Link] (23 responses)

You can always just hold down ALT, but perhaps http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet is what you meant by non-discoverable?

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 17:57 UTC (Wed) by avtechmjc (guest, #50477) [Link] (22 responses)

If you have to be told how to turn off the computer, that's "non-discoverable". Most corporate users will not be interested in reading the cheat sheet... instead, they'll ask me, the sysadmin, how to turn off the computer.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 18:16 UTC (Wed) by kalev (guest, #58246) [Link] (21 responses)

The reply would be:
"Click on your name on the right hand corner and select Suspend."

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 18:35 UTC (Wed) by avtechmjc (guest, #50477) [Link]

Why would I tell them to suspend the computer, when it should be powered off?

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 18:39 UTC (Wed) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link] (19 responses)

> The reply would be:
> "Click on your name on the right hand corner and select Suspend."

my box uses 25 watts when suspended, but boots in 40 secs when I turn it on from real off. Why should I necessarily want to suspend?

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 19:07 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (18 responses)

So you don't have to go back and manually rebuild your session back to what you were working on before you shutdown.

It's instantaneous and it's like you never left.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 19:20 UTC (Wed) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link] (4 responses)

> So you don't have to go back and manually rebuild your session back to what you were working on before you left..

That "convenience" costs me around 25watt*14h*365*0.3€/kWh ~ 40€/year, nah I`ll pass :-) .
Actually, I prefer to start a new day with a clean desk and not have that old accumulated cruft around. But I installed an extension and am happy with that, no need to argue...

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 21:14 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (3 responses)

Come on, €40/year is not much. Now, those 127 kwh become 67 kg of CO2 a year. If GNOME shell became really popular and was used by, say, 200 million users with your same habits, that would be about 25 GWh/year, or 13 million metric tons of CO2 delivered to the atmosphere. I have not got to converting that to degrees of global heating but it does not look good.

News flash! GNOME shell does not scale!

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 16:14 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] (2 responses)

Assuming we are on the IPCC's A1F scenario (which seems easy day terrifyingly more like an idealistic of what could have been rather than a doomsday scenario), then the global mean temperature anomaly in 2300 is increased by much less than 1 * 10^-5 degrees C (the margin of error of my model). So we can fortunately let GNOME 3 off the hook for any noticeable damage to the planet. :)

Source: the climate model used in Fate of the World, adapted from work performed by Dr. Myles Allen [Allen, M. R. et al (2009) Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne, Nature, 458:1163-1166]

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 20:26 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

Thanks for the detailed computations.

News flash! GNOME shell is not dangerous to the planet, after all! New data confirms that computer suspend is harmless to the planet (but might be relevant to your pocket), page 5.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 21:44 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

Sure, you can always say that the atmosphere or climate won't change, but that won't magic up the power generation capacity to let everyone have their computers on suspend because the shutdown option is non-discoverable. Of course, when the battery runs out during one of the frequent black-outs, the computer will shut down the natural way, so maybe there is method to the madness after all.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 19:46 UTC (Wed) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link] (7 responses)

that is what session management is for.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 20:02 UTC (Wed) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

Now if they can just get fix all the programs so they pay attention to system management, we'll be somewhere. Evolution is the one that bugs me; I don't want to have to restart it manually every time I log on because it isn't smart enough to restart itself.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 6:19 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (5 responses)

> that is what session management is for.

No it isn't and it never worked on any OS. Suspend is fair superior.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 9:22 UTC (Thu) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link] (4 responses)

Just because it doesn't work in the apps you use does not mean it is not useful. To me it seems a weird attitude: "it doesn't work in my favorite applications so it's probably not an useful feature"

It IS a very useful feature. I suspend my laptop most of the time, but when I have to reboot (say after an update) I don't have to start my apps and open my documents again. Nice. On my desktop it is even better - I don't use suspend (it boots up fast enough) so I like to not have to open my 20 apps again. Hell, I wouldn't use a web browser without session support, would you?

On my media center it's even worse as suspend there kills the HDMI output so I have to shut it down to save the trees. Session management means I continue where I left off...

The fact that you prefer to spend time with things others rather have their computer do for them doesn't mean it's an useless feature. I've got work to do, you know...

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 10:35 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

> Just because it doesn't work in the apps you use does not mean it is not useful. To me it seems a weird attitude: "it doesn't work in my favorite applications so it's probably not an useful feature"

It seems weird that you think that I said it wasn't useful when I never said anything of the sort. I am just saying it's fundamentally broken.

The fact that a few programs implement something like it in a fairly useful manner is besides the point entirely.

> Hell, I wouldn't use a web browser without session support, would you?

Despite all your assumptions and attempts to change the subject I wouldn't even notice or care, personally. Other people seem to find it useful, but that's besides the point, again.

> The fact that you prefer to spend time with things others rather have their computer do for them doesn't mean it's an useless feature. I've got work to do, you know...

Why would I spend time struggling with a feature that never worked and is never going to work for most of the applications I use when I have something that is much faster and actually works for all of them?

If I run into bugged out hardware or actually find myself caring about the minuscule amount of power it takes to maintain my ram state in my laptop then I can always just change the default to 'suspend to swap'.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 31, 2012 14:33 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

I don't get it. There are just a few broken applications where this doesn't work - Novell's GroupWise, Inkscape and Gimp are the only three I can think off right now on my system. Actually, I believe this used to work in Gimp, they just broke it at some point. So you saying that it doesn't work is just silly.

So the few app maintainers which have been incapable of implementing this just need a gentle push - or a patch. At that point, we can save trees and make the reboot experience nicer - you don't have to loose all your state anymore.

Much more important, the session capabilities are put to use in a far more innovative way: Activities. Being able to save the state of a group of your applications and stopping/starting them based on what you're working on, and even more cool, moving it all to another device, is something really new and useful.

Imagine - you're at work, and are working on a task but don't want to miss the train. Transfer your work (not just the files but the whole session) to another device (say laptop, or tablet, if your desktop is smart enough to adapt to such a device) and keep working in the train!

You might think it's not possible. Maybe start using less obsolete software? Because it is - and millions of users on Linux are using it already as it was introduced on the Linux desktop years ago... This is from September 2010:
https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/358560:kde-45-deskt...

And may 2011:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/opensource/how-to-use-kd...

(granted, the moving of activities from one system to the next isn't possible yet, but managing and using them on one system works just fine)

I think it's time to look at a calendar: yes, it is 2012 and your computer can do more than you think. Trowing around workarounds like suspend are imho just a bad excuse for unwillingness to adopt new, good, useful technologies. The idea that shutting down the computer means loosing everything you were working on is DOS era stuff. Does the fact that MS and Apple can't get their act together mean we have to be similarly restricted?

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 15:57 UTC (Thu) by davide.del.vento (guest, #59196) [Link] (1 responses)

+1 (have to add the parentheses since LWN comment system force me to write a longer comment)

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 21:51 UTC (Thu) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]

Maybe the system is trying to tell you something... ;)

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 20:57 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (4 responses)

The GNOME Overlords have DECREED that thou shalt NOT power your computer off.

The GNOME Overlords further DECREE that all BLASPHEMERS who express such SICK and TWISTED desires shall choose between banishment to Extension-Land and carpal-tunnel syndrome from sixty-two mouse-clicks while holding down Ctrl-Alt-Shift-Meta-Windows to satisfy their BLASPHEMY.

(It's a joke... don't get upset! :))

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 22:51 UTC (Wed) by hadess (subscriber, #24252) [Link] (3 responses)

> (It's a joke... don't get upset! :))

When you need to say that it's a joke, then it's usually not that good a joke.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 12:57 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (2 responses)

It wasn't a very good joke, but had I not made the disclaimer, there'd have been a thread sixty messages deep from touchy GNOME developers.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 13:01 UTC (Thu) by hadess (subscriber, #24252) [Link] (1 responses)

> It wasn't a very good joke, but had I not made the disclaimer, there'd have been a thread
> sixty messages deep from touchy GNOME developers.

Those touchy GNOME developers that think this joke isn't funny.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 13:10 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

If you say so.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 16:19 UTC (Thu) by mgedmin (subscriber, #34497) [Link]

The most obvious (to me) way to turn off my computer is to push the Power button. When I do that, I get a system menu in the middle of the screen that shows a 60 second timer for powering off, with buttons to cancel, reboot, or power off right now.

This is on Ubuntu 11.10 with GNOME 3.2 in a GNOME Shell session.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 16:52 UTC (Thu) by whitemice (guest, #3748) [Link] (2 responses)

Maybe... the power button?

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 16:59 UTC (Thu) by avtechmjc (guest, #50477) [Link] (1 responses)

Pressing the power button doesn't shut off my Fedora 16 systems.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 30, 2012 1:52 UTC (Fri) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]

Does it do anything at all? It really should. But I've no idea how the signal gets from the kernel to gnome-power-manager these days... the intervening layers seem to change every few months and nothing is documented. :(

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 21:44 UTC (Wed) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link]

screenshots look great! awesome work

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 28, 2012 22:20 UTC (Wed) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] (40 responses)

I hate jumping on the moaning bandwagon but... the 'launch terminal' keyboard shortcut has been removed. So I can no longer press ctrl+alt+t to quickly get a terminal. Headdesk.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 3:30 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (39 responses)

The dedicated "start terminal" keyboard shortcut went away in favor of the general mechanism that lets you assign a keyboard shortcut to *anything*.

That said, backward compatibility would suggest migrating this setting automatically.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 9:57 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] (37 responses)

Sadly there's a bug in this feature that causes the spawned processes be launched without most of the user's environment. And a shell without correctly set GPG and SSH agent environment variables is useless to me.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 10:29 UTC (Thu) by hadess (subscriber, #24252) [Link] (36 responses)

> Sadly there's a bug in this feature that causes the spawned processes be launched without
> most of the user's environment. And a shell without correctly set GPG and SSH agent
> environment variables is useless to me.

Where's your bug report?

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 10:50 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] (33 responses)

As usual, filed many months ago and totally ignored.

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=661642

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 10:54 UTC (Thu) by hadess (subscriber, #24252) [Link] (32 responses)

> As usual, filed many months ago and totally ignored.

That certainly makes me want to fix it...

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 11:06 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] (15 responses)

And vital features being removed hardly makes me want to continue to use GNOME 3. I don't mind making do with workarounds or replacements for removed features, but features shouldn't be removed until the workarounds/replacements are up to a similar level of functionality.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 11:19 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (14 responses)

We always release with loads of unfixed bugs. Loads of bugs don't get fixed asap (whatever the idea of asap is.. minutes/days/weeks/.../years).

If things are done better, great. But that takes real work. I think the bug you mentioned is still being thought what the best design is. So it is taking a while. Not done on purpose, not nice, but it happens.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 11:33 UTC (Thu) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link] (8 responses)

Why don't you guys, just, you know, write down a list of essential functionality like this, next time you decide to start with a clean slate..

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 11:39 UTC (Thu) by hadess (subscriber, #24252) [Link]

> Why don't you guys, just, you know, write down a list of essential functionality like this,
> next time you decide to start with a clean slate..

Essential functionality like what? This particular bit of functionality has never worked correctly, and it was sheer luck that it didn't break anything else until now. See also:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=582436

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 15:32 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (6 responses)

As said already: There are bugs in every version. Usually every report is important for the reporter and people affected by it.

We do time based releases so you get the bugfixes every 6 months. We tried feature based releases and that had loads of drawbacks.

Loads of other projects switched to doing time based releases.

We've concluded that not every bug can be fixed.

Note that gnome-session and so on didn't change much, so your clean slate remark is incorrect. Furthermore, GNOME doesn't consist of guys solely.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 22:05 UTC (Thu) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link] (5 responses)

Loads of drawbacks--yet frustrating users by breaking existing functionality is not one of them.

The bottom line is that there are two choices: doing what's best for users or what's most fun for developers. Volunteers, they may be, but "with great power comes great responsibility"--they ought to be more considerate of existing, loyal users. Oh well, there's always MATE and Cinnamon.

Please, lose the political correctness. Hey, I don't typically call girls "guys" either, but many people do, and you know what he meant, so don't go picking a fight.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 30, 2012 7:34 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (4 responses)

I see that you don't go into what I said regarding the way of releasing software. Suggest to try and release something the size of GNOME yourself and do that a few years.

Saying that this isn't best for users: I totally disagree and I explained the reasoning why 2 times in different ways.

Going from bugreports to "breaking functionality" (rather vague): terribly vague. I don't see how this relates to the way bugs are fixed or GNOME is released.

As hadess mentioned, that this worked reliability was by sheer luck. So I guess timing related. Meaning: The bug was always there, just never triggered.

If you want an answer from me, address what I say a bit more concretely please and don't bring up vague stuff.

PS: Why focus so much on a remark I placed at the end? And I do mean it, but it is not to start a fight, nor to be politically correct. I find it terribly odd you interpret it as such. GNOME has started various projects to get women involved. Yet you still see posts by women who say that they feel harassed or just excluded.
Don't go telling me what that I should just accept that ("guys" remark, not last sentence).

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 30, 2012 18:02 UTC (Fri) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link] (3 responses)

Perhaps it's a cultural difference. The reality is that many people refer to mixed groups of people as "guys". It's become almost a generic term for people, like "folks." I don't like it, but that's the way it is. So it's rather absurd to take offense at it.

What if I said that I take offense at anyone's taking offense at it? That makes about as much sense. ;)

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 30, 2012 23:57 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Quite. We should be using 'guy' to mean specifically male Catholic would-be revolutionaries who failed at the last moment, were captured and executed, and get burned symbolically on an annual basis. Or perhaps their mannequins. (That is, after all, where the term comes from.)

It has already expanded wildly in meaning since those days (even in the UK, where that expansion is relatively recent): I don't see any problem with its expanding a little more.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 31, 2012 13:37 UTC (Sat) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (1 responses)

I know it happens often. I just think it is wrong. You never had women object to this? Where I work I have 10+ nationalities and used to be way more btw.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 31, 2012 20:26 UTC (Sat) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]

In my experience, I've "objected" to it more than any females have.

Why do you suddenly change gears from sex to nationality? Bait and switch? ;)

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 11:50 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] (4 responses)

And this is fair enough, but you have to understand how frustrating it is for users when functionality that they rely on for productivity is yanked away from them.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 15:36 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (3 responses)

I do, that is what I meant with "not nice".

Stuff is released with known bugs. We make a list of blocker bugs, but it is more of a "what must and can be fixed before x.x.0". There are just too many bugs.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 19:12 UTC (Thu) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link] (2 responses)

To be fair, we are pretty bad at fixing bugs or stability in GNOME 3.

Granted, that is on purpose, because we are iterating a lot faster than in the late GNOME 2 series, but it's worth pointing out nonetheless.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 19:46 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

Personally, I've been quite impressed with the speed at which GNOME has fixed bugs---as long as they don't get immediately closed with something equivalent to "that's a feature".

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 30, 2012 7:49 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

I really have no clue on this. There are some terribly annoying bugs, but they either get fixed quickly, or are left because the fix is hard or unknown (e.g. extensions not working on various distributions except Fedora: wtf. no clue if common packaging bug or upstream).

I'm terrible at QA: Always run the latest tarballs, but usually don't even trigger the most obvious crashers. I just rely on following Bugzilla for that (GNOME and Mageia).

I'm aiming at allowing people to follow GNOME more closely. More people tracking GNOME means hopefully more contributors (testers, triagers, and maybe eventually developers).

I do know that new applications take at least a cycle to get better. But we're releasing them early as well (which IMO is good). E.g. Boxes.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 11:20 UTC (Thu) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link] (15 responses)

That certainly incites people to file bug reports.

Come on,people, let's not be so abrasive (also directed at me, actually).

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 12:49 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] (14 responses)

And me too. I don't mean to come off as a grumpy old git, but the presumption that all users should have filed a bug report before they complain about features being removed, etc., really wrankles me. I file bugs with pretty much every piece of free software that I use but I realise that most users wouldn't have a clue about how to go about doing so, and furthermore, they find out that their pet feature has been removed when the software in question is pushed to them by their distro. I often find that by the time I file a bug, upstream has moved on and just asks me to re-test with the latest version (that I won't see for 6-9 months)...

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 12:57 UTC (Thu) by hadess (subscriber, #24252) [Link] (13 responses)

> but I realise that most users wouldn't have a clue about how to go about doing so,

Right. But I'm not talking about most users, I'm talking about people who complain on LWN's comments thread. Anyway, dead horse is flogged now.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 16:31 UTC (Thu) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (12 responses)

Was that a complaint? And in a LWN thread no less!!! Aren't you ashamed of yourself?

I suggest that, as an act of contrition, go and file a bug in the gnome-users bug tracker. Something like this:

Bug#1 Users complain about things they don't like
Assigned to: nobody
Status: closed (INVALID)
Description: Users tend to complain, usually in public forums, about things
 they don't like. Also, they tend to give grumpy replies when told to file
 bugs on the bug tracking system, although the worst responses are gotten
 when they are told that they are wrong in disliking said things, and that
 it's all for their own good.
Reproducible: always
Steps to reproduce:
 1. remove some feature users rely on, or change it in incompatible ways,
 preferably without prior warning.
 2. release the modified version with much fanfare.
 3. lurk in the said public forums and wait a bit.
Comments:
 #1 by deity:
  This works as intended, users where designed to operate that way.
  Closing as invalid.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 16:47 UTC (Thu) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link]

I think I wasn't understood. Please look at which comment I responded to, and read my answer again.
Actually I don't care, I just meant one doesn't really need to be aggressve towards people that report bugs neither when they file a bug in a tracker nor when they don't.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 22:07 UTC (Thu) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]

Genius. Classic.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 30, 2012 8:00 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (9 responses)

I know it is a joke but still want to say this.

In GNOME Bugzilla we use stock answers. Blaming and/or angry (as well as pointless messages) are not appreciated; either be friendly, or (preferably) use a stock answer (this because the stock answer has been refined over various years to explain everything).

For angry/pointless/blaming messages: You do get some leeway based on your contributions, but I don't care if a developer sends a bad message or a reporter. I don't like either.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 30, 2012 8:26 UTC (Fri) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (8 responses)

Some of the stock answers get a bit insulting as well. For instance, the message that effectively says "we don't know if this bug is fixed or not, but it's old and we've released a new version, so we're closing it anyway". Followed immediately by a bug reporter going "still a bug, reopening it".

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 30, 2012 9:44 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (7 responses)

Eh.. I don't see that as insulting (I mean: at all)?

Sometimes you just don't know and have to rely on the reporter. Maybe some triagers are overactive in using it. E.g. closing just because of a new GNOME version isn't right. But if the bug is old and/or lots of new development happened in between, then it can be ok to ask if it still applies. But it is up to the triager/developer to make a judgement call.

Bugsquad decides entirely on how it is done in general for triagers. They used to ask the reporter and wait a while (e.g. 6 weeks, 3 months). But they noticed that often there was no feedback at all. So instead of leaving it open ("NEEDINFO"), they're closing it more quickly.

The reporter has the ability to reopen, so don't see anything wrong with this? It should say to please reopen, no?

Anyway, if you have suggestions on the stock answer, could you please email gnome-bugsquad@gnome.org (I tend to ignore LWN articles after a few days; hard to track if not a subscriber)? Or followup now and I'll mention it to them. Entire process change is better if you discuss directly (I'd just be a postman).

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 30, 2012 10:11 UTC (Fri) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (3 responses)

I was talking specifically about the practice of mass-closing bugs due to the release of a new GNOME version, without any particular reason to believe that the specific bug has gone away.

I don't see anything wrong with requesting more information on a specific bug and closing it if the reporter doesn't provide that information. I just object to having to babysit a pile of bugs and mechanically reopen them each time someone mechanically closes them.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 30, 2012 11:29 UTC (Fri) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link]

It is a tiring tactic. It is done to ensure that user base approaches 0 as time tends to infinity.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 31, 2012 13:34 UTC (Sat) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (1 responses)

That's happening? It shouldn't be done like that. Care to give pointers?

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 31, 2012 19:30 UTC (Sat) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

Sure. I did a quick search for bugs closed with the OBSOLETE resolution, sorted from newest to oldest, and found several recent examples.

This one demonstrates particular rudeness: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=671744

These just use the stock template I mentioned:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=672014
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=671962
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=671894
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=671856
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=671316
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=671099

Valid reasons to close a bug: "can't reproduce that in the current version", or "the entire subsystem you reported the bug against doesn't exist anymore in the current version, and its replacement doesn't have that problem". Invalid reasons to close a bug: "there's a new version and we don't care about the old one anymore", without actually testing that the new version doesn't have the problem, especially when it turns out that it *does*.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 30, 2012 14:10 UTC (Fri) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link] (2 responses)

It's fine to close it if it's been triaged, if there's some actual reason to believe it may no longer apply, such as big changes having happened in the subcomponent with the bug after the filing of the bug.

That's not the behaviour I've been seeing though. Instead what I've seen are mechanical mass-closings of the "This is 9 months old, and we're released a new version, so it's being closed", even in cases where the bug was narrowed down to specific functions that hasn't had a single change in those 9 months.

If they instead put it at "NEED INFO" and didn't get any, in a reasonable amount of time, then okay, fine, close the sucker. But I've never once seen that happen. Instead the bug goes straight from "CONFIRMED" to "CLOSED" with no questions posed.

The routine should be to *either* investigate slightly to see if there's any actual reason to think the bug is probably gone, or else, to atleast ask the submitter "Has anyone tested this with a current release ? Is it still relevant?" *then* close it if 3 weeks later there's been no response.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 31, 2012 13:35 UTC (Sat) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (1 responses)

That shouldn't happen. Please give me the bug numbers or any pointers.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 31, 2012 15:34 UTC (Sat) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link]

I'll see if I can dig up the bug-ids, but at the moment I'm in vacation until april 10th, will look at it when I come home.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 22:00 UTC (Thu) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link] (1 responses)

Where's your (or GNOME's) wisdom? Where's discretion? Where's judgment? Where's sense?

Any software project that requires its users to constantly file, "Hey, you broke this" bug reports is a failure, in my opinion. It's a double failure when the project ignores its users pleas to, "Hey, quit breaking stuff!"

The solution is so simple: don't replace working code with broken code. "But we need people to test it!" you say. People will still test it if it's called alpha or beta. It will take longer to reach parity and maturity--but so what?!

I wish desktop devs had a mindset more like Linus's: "Don't break userspace, EVER!" How about, "Don't break existing functionality, EVER!" (i.e. don't release it until it's working and equivalent).

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 30, 2012 7:18 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

Every release cycle includes alpha + beta releases as well as release candidates.

See http://www.gnome.org/start/unstable.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Apr 26, 2012 19:46 UTC (Thu) by mgedmin (subscriber, #34497) [Link]

The old built-in terminal launch feature in GNOME 3.2 allowed me to use Super + T as a shortcut. I cannot do that any more in GNOME 3.4 due to
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=659899

:(

Congratulations to the GNOME team

Posted Mar 29, 2012 1:32 UTC (Thu) by aryonoco (guest, #55563) [Link] (2 responses)

Since hate mongering is running rampant here (as always when discussing anything about Gnome 3), let me be at least the lone voice in congratulating the Gnome team on this solid release. I look forward to using Gnome 3.4 in the coming months. It looks like a release in the right direction, fixing some issues and adding a bit more flexibility in the areas that were lacking.

As a former KDE3 user, who gave up on KDE with KDE4 and used various different WMs in the meantime (anything from XFCE to E17 to Unity), I finally found my home in Gnome 3. Gnome 3 has been like a breadth of fresh air in computing for me, fitting in with exactly the way I like my desktop to behave. It's brought a noticeable increase in productivity on my desktop, as well as the added bonus of being very pleasant to use.

Congratulations to the GNOME team

Posted Mar 29, 2012 9:27 UTC (Thu) by avtechmjc (guest, #50477) [Link] (1 responses)

Actually, I think Gnome 3 is great, so don't interpret my annoyance over details like the power-off non-feature as hating...

Congratulations to the GNOME team

Posted Mar 30, 2012 0:10 UTC (Fri) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

For a project that has put so much effort into accessibility and ease of use, such miss-features are of paramount importance. Or should be, IMHO.

And calling a spade a spade is not hating.

GNOME 3.4 released

Posted Mar 29, 2012 16:56 UTC (Thu) by slashdot (guest, #22014) [Link] (1 responses)

No features removed?

I am disappoint.

Please

Posted Mar 29, 2012 17:32 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Could we maybe put an end to this sort of comment? We've heard this kind of stuff already; nothing good will come from repeating it. To post something like this now is really just trolling.

Please?

OT: Accessibility problem with GNOME 3.2

Posted Mar 29, 2012 17:03 UTC (Thu) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link] (6 responses)

It seems like GNOME 3.4 still uses white text on black background for the top panel and the side panel by default.

My vision is not too bad, but unfortunately — maybe because of my age — it is stressful to me to look at white on black.

On Debian wheezy I could not find an obvious way to change the top panel to black on white.

There are some hints on the web that involve either editing CSS files or downloading extensions outside Debian, but I will not try such things.

Does GNOME 3.4 allow me to easily switch to black on white?

(Btw: GNOME 2 and XFCE 4 both feature black text on white background, which is also in line with most books and newspapers.)

OT: Accessibility problem with GNOME 3.2

Posted Mar 30, 2012 1:55 UTC (Fri) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] (5 responses)

gnome-tweak-tool should let you change your theme to HighContrastInverse. I don't know if that effects the Shell itself though.

OT: Accessibility problem with GNOME 3.2

Posted Mar 30, 2012 5:58 UTC (Fri) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link] (4 responses)

No, it does not. At least in 3.0 and 3.2. The high contrast would be too much for me, anyway.

(Btw. In the default theme, the look-and-feel of GNOME 3 seems to be less uniform/consistent than GNOME 2. Some windows/dialogs look completely different than most. But maybe these things are fixed in 3.4, which I will try as soon as it is in Debian.)

OT: Accessibility problem with GNOME 3.2

Posted Mar 30, 2012 7:17 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (3 responses)

File an accessibility bug please.

OT: Accessibility problem with GNOME 3.2

Posted Mar 30, 2012 13:41 UTC (Fri) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link] (2 responses)

A bug (#603867) has been opened on 2009-12-05 and closed without code change on 2010-10-16. It is not marked as a11y related, however.

OT: Accessibility problem with GNOME 3.2

Posted Mar 31, 2012 13:32 UTC (Sat) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (1 responses)

Just file a new one and cc me please (bugzilla-gnome@vitters.nl). Explain that you need it for accessibility reasons.

They don't want to limit the options, but if you explain the reasoning (need it for a11y), then it can be properly addressed.

E.g., option in a11y dialog maybe to do slight contract change (or background). Not the full back/white stuff.

OT: Accessibility problem with GNOME 3.2

Posted Apr 3, 2012 9:54 UTC (Tue) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link]

Bug 673417 has been added to the database.

Thanks in advance!


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