Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users [LWN.net]

Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users

Posted Nov 12, 2012 15:02 UTC (Mon) by davidescott (guest, #58580)
In reply to: Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users by bojan
Parent article: Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users

> Sure. When I want to start an app, all other elements contained in overview are just distractions. I never asked for expose. I never asked for dash. Never asked for (placed too far to be useful) workspace switcher.

Those are perfectly reasonable things for you to think for yourself, but those features are things that many others have come to expect from modern operating systems. To say that Gnome should not have expose on Alt-Tab makes it harder for everyone else who likes and expects expose, and doesn't want to have to hunt around for a menu option to enable it and set a hot-corner keystroke. Gnome3 "just works" for users like myself. Sure I was happy with gnome2 once I got the correct combination of gnome2+compiz+ccsm+awn+X+Y+Z but it took months to find the correct combination and hours to replicate on new systems. With Gnome3 I can sit down in front of a brand new install and just start working.

It seems to be me the compromise they made with a fixed set of commonly desired features + the ability to customize further with javascript is a good one. The biggest mistake they made was to start shipping 3.0 prior to getting a good stable infrastructure (extensions.gnome.org) in place. Had they been able to have both perhaps the frustration with the gui might have been directed at plugins to change the behavior instead of forking. That said its understandably hard to get a .0 release out the door and enable customization.

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Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users

Posted Nov 12, 2012 17:26 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

> if you want to start a new app, why should most of the screen first be taken over by your currently open apps and workspaces?

Wow, I never noticed. That's a really good question.

Especially on my Thinkpad X120e where it takes two seconds to show all that stuff that I don't need.

Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users

Posted Nov 13, 2012 15:42 UTC (Tue) by davidescott (guest, #58580) [Link]

> if you want to start a new app, why should most of the screen first
be taken over by your currently open apps and workspaces?

I understood his point. I'm saying its easier (and makes more sense) to put the expose in the start applications functionality over forcing the user to setup the hot corners.

I also think you are using some (unintentional) rhetorical devices to make your point. When I go to "start a new app" that doesn't literally mean "I want to start a new app" it means "I want to start an application AND SWITCH TO IT." You almost never seen anyone start a gui application and want it to be immediately backgrounded (exceptions being things like chat or file-sharing).

So its perfectly natural to show the application switching at the point of starting an application, because it IS application switching to start an application. I might have started the application I needed already; I might want to start the application on a new workspace, and having the switcher appear at that point means it appears at the exact moment I need it.

The moment you start typing in the name of an application, the overlay of other windows is replaced with the full screen display of relevant applications, because that indicates to the shell that you know you need to start a new application and not switch to a running one.

Compared to the GNOME2 model where:
1. You start applications in the (not a hot-corner) upper left (unless you move it)
2. Expose is not enabled until you configure it (and you cannot put it in the same place as starting application without risking overlaying a hot/non-hot corner)
3. If you start searching for an application and then remember its already running (or vice-versa) you have to start over from the beginning
4. If you want to start a new application on a different workspace you have to wait until it is running and then move it.

GNOME3 has all that functionality in a single hot-corner/hot-key, and there is no configuration step. It just works... so I'm extremely pleased with GNOME3 it finally makes sense.

Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users

Posted Nov 13, 2012 17:01 UTC (Tue) by Otus (guest, #67685) [Link]

> I'm saying its easier (and makes more sense) to put the expose in the
> start applications functionality over forcing the user to setup the hot
> corners.

What does "setup the hot corners" mean? In Unity I have one button for
launching apps (opening the dash) and one button for changing workspaces. *
I didn't need to do any hot corner setup.

I don't disagree that having better defaults than in Gnome 2 is a good
idea. However, you don't need to push all of them under one button.

> So its perfectly natural to show the application switching at the point
> of starting an application, because it IS application switching to start
> an application.

Sure, you can consider "opening the app" a common action regardless of
whether it's currently running. This is why I used to use a dock (dockbarx)
even with Gnome 2.

However, the expose shown seems IMHO counter to that point: You scan the
open windows and don't find what you were looking, so you use *another* way
to launch the app. It doesn't help you launch the app faster if you don't
know whether it is open, and can in fact introduce a delay.

> Compared to the GNOME2 model where:

Again, I don't think the Gnome 2 defaults were very good. However, I find
the Gnome 3 setup worse that my customized setup was - and worse than my
current non-customized Unity setup is.

* There isn't a button (only keyboard shortcut) for expose on all apps, but
clicking the active app in the launcher opens expose on its windows.

Mena-Quintero: A Friday rant on Gnome 3, journalists, and power users

Posted Nov 13, 2012 21:36 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> Compared to the GNOME2 model where:
> 1. You start applications in the (not a hot-corner) upper left (unless you move it)

Just because the corner is not hot is no justification for overview. In fact, compiz could do hot corners just fine.

> 2. Expose is not enabled until you configure it (and you cannot put it in the same place as starting application without risking overlaying a hot/non-hot corner)

Nobody asked for expose.

> 3. If you start searching for an application and then remember its already running (or vice-versa) you have to start over from the beginning

You don't have to remember anything. You can see the darn things in the workspace switcher or the taskbar. Or you can use expose directly, if you so desire (it used to be upper right hot corner in compiz).

> 4. If you want to start a new application on a different workspace you have to wait until it is running and then move it.

Rubbish. First, you can actually _see_ which workspaces are available and without lifting a finger. Then you can switch to one with just one click and without your screen being repainted and your mouse travelling all the way to the left, followed by all the way to the right. And you can start the app there. So, it takes _less_ actions to do this in Gnome 2 or Gnome3 fallback than it does in Gnome 3. In fact, I do this a hundred times a day.

Nobody is saying that improvements to the way applications are started in Gnome 2 or Gnome 3 fallback are not welcome. Of course they are. Search is very useful, menu could signal that the application is already started somewhere etc. But overview is unnecessary and really just another indirection.

Overview also causes the desktop to be managed half here and half there. Why can windows be moved in normal view? Isn't that a distraction and "difficult" (according to Gnome developers/designers)? Shouldn't that be done in overview? Etc.