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GNOME Shell to support a "classic" modeGNOME Shell to support a "classic" modePosted Nov 21, 2012 16:31 UTC (Wed) by Uraeus (subscriber, #33755)In reply to: GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode by dront78 Parent article: GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode
Well the classic version in this case is a set of GNOME Shell extensions, while Cinnamon is a GNOME Shell replacement. That said maybe these extensions address enough of peoples complaints to make MATE and Cinnamon mostly redundant.
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GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 16:35 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
The Gnome project giving people what they're asking for? That would be astonishing!
:)
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 17:04 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
IIUC MATE won't be redundant because it is still needed to run GNOME 2 programs because all the GNOME 2 infrastructure wasn't included in GNOME 3 and GNOME 3 wasn't designed to be parallel installable. Right?
It's probably too late now but it would have set a good tone if GNOME 3 had come with all the existing GNOME 2 infrastructure and so remained fully compatible with existing third party software.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 17:09 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
What do you mean with infrastructure? The entire point of increasing the major version was to finally get rid of all infrastructure most of which was deprecated for many years. Compatibility has been kept during the entire 2.x range. There is a reason things are marked deprecated.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 18:21 UTC (Wed) by mitr (subscriber, #31599) [Link]
Well, _somebody_ needs to do the porting work for applications that are not directly a part of GNOME away from the "old infrastructure"; this seems not to have been happening too much.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:11 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Please be specific. I don't get what you mean at all, I already asked what is meant with infrastructure.
E.g. maybe you mean bonobo, in which case I think there is nothing using that. Maybe you mean gtk+2.0, in which case I do see progress (e.g. Firefox, Gimp), it is just taking some time. Maybe you mean gconf, in which I also see progress (often done at the same time as a gtk+3 switch).
All these GNOME 2 applications have worked and are working totally fine. Suggest to ignore claims of sabotage in this regard :P
Regarding porting work, various GNOME developers have performed porting work in more than just "core GNOME" stuff. Just take a look at a few of the GNOME goals.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 8:58 UTC (Thu) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link]
there are people still porting gtk 1.x applications (we get emails on the gtk-* mailing lists every couple of months) 2 years after the gtk 3.0 release, and 11 years after the 2.0 release, so I would not be surprised to see applications still being ported to gtk 3 in the next 10 years. it's not an indication of anything, except that the world of ad hoc applications moves at a fairly different pace than the free and open source software.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 9:30 UTC (Thu) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
Well, astonishing as it may sound to you, there are people running proprietary applications that USE gnome 2 libraries and services. Those people usually cannot migrate to gnome 3, because of costs or simply code unavailability. What's more, their next project are probably going to be Windows based, because at least Microsoft does not have such a "casual" attitude versus backwards compatibility.
And KDE is not any better, by the way.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 10:15 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
No need for stupid sarcasm, thanks.
Already mentioned that XMMS, a gtk+1.x application should work fine in GNOME 3.
I think all distributions still have the GNOME 2 libraries. The only thing I am aware of that won't work is a gnome-panel applet. I doubt that the proprietary application is an applet.
In any case, please be more specific.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 13:50 UTC (Thu) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]
"No need for stupid sarcasm, thanks."
Please leave out personal insults from this site.
Rehdon
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 13:53 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
What you quoted is and was not a personal insult.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 14:07 UTC (Thu) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]
Those are your very words to someone noting how the person he was replying to had reading comprehension problems, so I'll leave you discussing about it with yourself ;)
Also, your English is puzzling O.o
Rehdon
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 14:21 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
I know it are my words. As said, I don't see any personal insult in there.
Suggest to read again, just because I mentioned "stupid" doesn't mean it was about a person.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 14:47 UTC (Thu) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]
As I said, since you replied with exactly those words to someone doing exactly what you did, it's up to you to understand what has happened. I can only suggest that something beginning with hypo- is going on here (hint: it's not about hypothermia! hmmm, does that qualify as "stupid sarcasm" too? ;)
Rehdon
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 14:54 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
To summarize:
- you think something is an personal insult, I say that it is not - you didn't respond to what I've said - you did suggest my English is not good - you did suggest my reading comprehension is not good - you are suggesting some goose chase because you do have some argument
In my view, you're mostly getting personal while ignoring any argument.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 15:06 UTC (Thu) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]
I think you have reading comprehension problems: there, go read these two comments and see if you get any enlightenment:
http://lwn.net/Articles/524448/
Hope you also make some progress on the hypo- quiz thingie.
And finally, I'm not "suggesting" your English is not good:
"What you quoted is and was not a personal insult." sounds like bad English to me.
"I know it are my words" is definitely bad English. Period.
Rehdon
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 21:04 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
In summary: No arguments, let's get personal with 'bkor'!
Complaining about someones English and all the other behaviour you've displayed here is pathetic while trying to complain about my behaviour. I've asked for details, instead you show this kind of behaviour.
Get lost, really.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 21:07 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Oh, alternatively: go to FOSDEM (GNOME stand). As alternative suggestion, suggest talking to me in person because at the moment I get the strong impression your current behaviour would not be the same.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 22:17 UTC (Thu) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]
What argument are you talking about? It should've been clear from the start that I wasn't arguing about the "classic" mode in Gnome 3 (too little too late, if you ask me), the only sensible thing you wrote is that my comment was personally directed to you: yes, I hoped you might notice how hypocritical of you was telling one guy "enough stupid sarcasm" after you took the high ground telling another one "please don't insult anyone" for exactly the same kind of remark (which didn't include the word "stupid", btw).
But of course that didn't happen: God forbid that you might admit being wrong! I guess you might be the kind of person who says "look where you're going!" when you bump into someone. No, I won't come pay a visit to you at FOSDEM: my attitude might be different indeed, but it's yours that it's at fault here.
I'm afraid the current problem with GNOME development it's not technical, and it's not political either: it's just that the wrong people are doing it. You're back at the starting point of the open source movement: you're scratching your personal itches, so to speak, only you're disguising that using words like "vision", "brand", and so on. The technical regressions in GNOME 3 are just a symptom of the psychological regression and detachment from the GNOME community by the current developers.
I almost felt sorry for you guys when reading the heavy trolling in this thread, but not anymore, you reap what you sow after all. I will be back to GNOME when you either grow up (in all senses), or a new generation of developers will take your place.
So long and thanks for GNOME 2.x (if you had any part in it).
Rehdon
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 22:32 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
First comment I noticed is this one:
https://lwn.net/Articles/526359/
Where you complain that I personally insulted someone. It was not a personal insult, nor meant as one.
I don't care at all about "brand" and all the other stuff you're adding to this. Seems you're getting very emotional and personal for no good reason.
So again:
Was NOT intended as a personal insult. It also is NOT a personal insult. If you read it as such, I did NOT mean it that way.
In any case, you continuous behaviour (condescending, getting personal, and psyco analysis of me as well as other GNOME developers): Rich to complain about me taking the high ground.
Noticed you never replied the times I stated I did NOT an personal insult. Also, you seem to have ignored my request to go to FOSDEM.
Trying to be constructive here and understand, but even if I was wrong somewhere, you're not making things any clearer for me with this kind of conversation style.
This is going nowhere, so this is the last I'm going to say.
perhaps my opportunity to be flamed ...but Posted Nov 25, 2012 9:12 UTC (Sun) by ds2horner (subscriber, #13438) [Link]
When I first read "No need for stupid sarcasm, thanks.", I considered it a personal attack, a criticism of the individual making the comment and not a constructive criticism of the comment.
I suspect you do not have a good appreciation for what the word sarcasm means nor the implicit derision the word conveys. A normal denotative meaning of sarcasm (according to New Lexicon Websters Dictionary 1990 edition) is "n. a cruel humorous statement or remark made with the intent of injuring the self-respect of the person to who it is addressed ...". So, by labeling the comment as sarcasm (not matter the intent of the "stupid" qualifier) you made a value judgment of the speakers intent and character; and that being a negative one. Thus it would usually be seen as a personal attack on the speaker. However, in my opinion, even the use of "stupid" in such discussions is sufficient to be offensive, especially as its secondary mean (from the same reference dictionary is "adj. ... resulting from lack of intelligence". And you appeared to understand this as you gave an excuse for your use of the adjective.
perhaps my opportunity to be flamed ...but Posted Nov 26, 2012 10:11 UTC (Mon) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
OK, I did not find bkor's response offensive. I understand that dealing with a community that is critic with something you care about can be tiresome and at times frustrating. That's OK, and I would like to encourage bkor to continue defending what he/she believes in.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 18:49 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
No, there are deprecated GNOME libraries that are no longer shipped and hard to build (at least via distro means), breaking apps. See my referencer comment.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 23:00 UTC (Thu) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link] No, there are deprecated GNOME libraries that are no longer shipped and hard to build (at least via distro means), breaking apps. seriously, if a distro ships an application without satisfying its dependencies, why are you complaining to GNOME and not to the distribution that is breaking its own packages? do you, perchance, think that GNOME is responsible for removing packages from distributions as well?
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 23, 2012 7:18 UTC (Fri) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] seriously, if a distro ships an application without satisfying its dependencies,This thread was explicitly about proprietary applications, which are usually not shipped by distributions.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 23, 2012 9:44 UTC (Fri) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link]
the libraries in question are still there. they didn't fell off the face of the earth, they are still in git, they still have tarballs, and they are still at the same level as they were before GNOME 3.0 was released.
GNOME didn't do anything, except say that nobody is working on those libraries any more, except for eventual security issues; patches coming from distributions have been folded back, whenever applicable, and releases have been made.
if you want to maintain old libraries, you're absolutely encouraged to do so: just ask for a Git account, or push clone on github/gitorious if you want to, and ask distributions to switch over to your tarballs.
if that's not to your satisfaction then I'm sorry: you have a profound issue with the whole "free software" thing.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 23, 2012 10:03 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Thank you for the condescension, just what I needed to brighten up my morning. I actually consider myself to be reasonably au fait with this whole free software thing. It paid my wages for quite a few years, and it might again in a few years time. Indeed, there's a small, but not insignificant, chance that you or your packets are a regular user of free software I have written / helped maintain. (And I am a regular, happy and grateful user of your software).
So thanks for that.
Note that I was *not* assigning blame anywhere, and I was not ranting. I was merely stating a fact: a good application disappeared from a common distro because of churn in libraries, and that the old libraries are difficult to build on that distro, at least using the packaging facilities of that distro. If stating quite objective facts on LWN about free software is akin to questioning and having profound issues with the whole basis for free software, then perhaps we're all on a quite shaky foundation.
As I've written here before, my view is the problem is a business one. In particular, the fact that it's impossible to pay the major employer of Linux desktop developers for support on the software I'd like to run on my desktop (i.e. software that isn't 5+ years old on average, but not sub-6-month old either). Further, even if they would take my money for that, that still leaves a good number of developers I depend on not owing me anything. I'd have to get support contracts with each of them.
Re fixing your problems yourself, it's not always possible to learn a codebase and figure out how to fix it within the space of the hours to a day you can afford to spend on fixing some random software problem. But I'll give the GNOME lib building another try and see what needs fixing.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 23, 2012 7:34 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Well, parent up a few comments to see my original comment on referencer.
I'm not blaming GNOME for distros not shipping libraries. GNOME deprecated those libraries, and then building those old libraries on modern distros became troublesome (likely for a variety of reasons). Because of that, those distros decided to stop shipping those libraries (or just couldn't), which, obviously, lead to that app no longer being shipped. Again, it's more than a case of an app no longer being shipped - which a user could easily fix themselves.
I don't know who's to blame, but my point was that - regardless of the work you say the library maintainers put in to maintain API and ABI compatibility - a very useful application disappeared from at least one distro because of library churn in GNOME/GTK+.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 23, 2012 10:09 UTC (Fri) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
It was not my intention being sarcastic. I don't find it funny in any possible way.
I'm sorry that I cannot provide you with specifics. The problem I have witnessed is this:
I work for an engineering company, developing custom automation products. It's very rare to find Linux based developments running there, all important automation packages run on Windows.
One of our clients, though, bought a system for classifying defects based on video cameras. The system was running in an very old Ubuntu (Dapper I believe) PC. When the time came to replace that computer they first tried with a recent Ubuntu. The application refused to run. They called to me and I had to explain what Unity is, and that they need to install Gnome, which they did. The application crashed. The only way they found to make it work was to install an old version of Ubuntu (10.4). I don't know what the concrete problem was, just that they could not fix it. After that, they have been regretting their decision of buying anything based on Linux.
What do you think they will do if I suggest to them to buy something based on Linux?
Backwards compatibility over features Posted Nov 23, 2012 16:10 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] That is a disgrace; your experience should be sent to all Free software developers. It is OK to stop adding features if you don't have the time; but it is not good to stop maintaining old stuff. I think we have it backwards most of the time.However, let us put things in perspective here. Dapper was released in June 2006 and it has been supported for five years. At the time of its introduction Vista had not yet been released (January 2007), so the most current version of Windows was XP (released in October 2001). If your story had read thus: The system was running in a very old Windows XP PC. When the time came to replace it they first tried with Windows 7; the application refused to run. They called me and I explained what Aero is, and that they needed to install Windows XP Mode, which they did. The application crashed. They had to install an old version of Vista. I don't know what the problem was, just that they could not fix it. After that they have been regretting their decision of buying anything based on Windows.who would you think that your client would have blamed, Microsoft or the original devs? There are two important differences: first that Microsoft is supporting XP with SP 3 until 2014, and each service pack is essentially a new version of the OS. Second that your client did not pay for Ubuntu, probably. If they had chosen Red Hat they would be happily running RHEL 4 on the new machine (supported until 2015). I think you could do worse than recommending anything based on Red Hat. (Note: I am a happy Debian user, and would be grateful to recommend Debian oldstable; but I also value what Red Hat gives to companies.)
Backwards compatibility over features Posted Nov 23, 2012 17:08 UTC (Fri) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
The other difference is that Linux is perceived as riskier. To succeed there must not be cases like this where people's suspicious appear to be confirmed; on compatibility the Linux desktop needs to set a *higher* standard than its proprietary counterparts, not a lower or even an equal one.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 23, 2012 22:16 UTC (Fri) by jjs (guest, #10315) [Link]
1. Try installing Debian - especially stable.
2. Related to that - did anyone do a scan to see what libraries the application used? Once that is determined, you can download the libraries as .deb files.
This is one of the standard problems with proprietary software -and I've seen it on Windows quite a bit. However, I can run my old WordPerfect for Linux (from mid-90's) on Linux, as long as I install the right user-space libraries.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 23, 2012 9:53 UTC (Fri) by jcm (subscriber, #18262) [Link]
I'll just say one thing to this: a big +1 from me. Proprietary software is a fact of life, and understanding how slowly the rest of the world moves is critical to success.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 17:12 UTC (Wed) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]
> remained fully compatible with existing third party software.
You can still run GNOME2 apps just fine on GNOME 3 ... sure you cannot run extensions to the old desktop (applets) but everything else just runs fine as it does in KDE or any other desktop.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 17:51 UTC (Wed) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link] GNOME 3 wasn't designed to be parallel installable. Right? continuing to repeat a meme won't make it become truth, you do realize that? GNOME's platform is, and has always been, parallel installable - that's an acquired skill, and we've been saying how to do it properly for the past 10 years. applications are not parallel installable (or, at least, they are not by default): there is no totem3 to be used alongside totem2, or nautilus3 to be used alongside nautilus2. that's perfectly fine, and it's up to the individual maintainers to decide that. you cannot run gnome-panel2 alongside with gnome-panel3 either, because (believe it or not) gnome-panel is an application; the applet library is parallel installable, though. I sincerely hope that people stop repeating crap propaganda spewed by people with far less than the required amount of clue and an axe to grind.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 18:13 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
By your description it seems that there are processes and not just libraries that GNOME2 applications can depend on, such as gnome-panel, that aren't parallel installable with GNOME3. I'm not familiar with the internals of GNOME but what about notifications or IPC or VFS plugins?
It seems that it would be good to make the same sort of platform API guarantees that the Linux kernel makes to userspace or that glibc makes so that third parties can expect their application binaries to continue to function for decades and that the system won't be deprecated out from underneath them.
Anyway the main point of the article is supporting a GNOME 2 style theming using extensions to GNOME Shell which seems like a good idea for users who prefer the old style workflow. Even Windows maintained a classic interface option when introducing changes XP and 8 and was more successful for doing so. This is a positive thing.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 18:43 UTC (Wed) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link]
Does Windows Classic work for applications more complex than Notepad, like say MS Office?
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 18:51 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Certainly. Even Windows 8 (desktop version) can run Win32 applications written in 1996.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:17 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
almost.
There are some APIs that many wind 95/98 apps depended on that are broken in recent versions of windows.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 0:40 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] Wrong. Not "were broken in recent versions of Windows", it is "are utterly broken since WinNT 4.0 at least." Been burned by it.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 22:23 UTC (Thu) by quotemstr (subscriber, #45331) [Link]
What APIs are broken? Appcompat issues are important.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 23, 2012 15:47 UTC (Fri) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
Anything WordPerfect relies on? My version - certified for W2K iirc, doesn't work very well on XP. And my old version, that runs fine on Win9x, is totally broken on XP :-( I don't think I can even install that newer version on 7.
A lot of my wife's programs - sold as "runs on everything Windows" in the Vista days, is now broken on 7. And because we've got the Home version, running it in XP-compat mode isn't an option :-(
Cheers,
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:29 UTC (Wed) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link]
Of course. Just like GNOME 3 happily runs XMMS.
I want to know if Office looks like an app written in 98 if you enable the Windows Classic Theme.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:37 UTC (Wed) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link]
Office is also funny example, given that it has its own toolkit as well. :-D
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:14 UTC (Wed) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link] I'm not familiar with the internals of GNOME but what about notifications or IPC or VFS plugins? IPC and VFS, and settings, are sitting at the GLib level, our lowest common denominator; GLib's API and ABI were not bumped. a lot of functionality that was in separate libraries was deprecated and moved into GTK+ 3.x and GLib; the symbols are different, and the libraries are still available for applications to use, so you can definitely run a GNOME 2 application in GNOME 3, should you choose to do so. obviously, it would be better to port to non deprecated tech, but it's not mandatory. let me give you a for instance: Banshee is a GTK+ 2.x (and GNOME 2.x) applications, given that only recently Mono has been updated to support GNOME 3 API; I can use it without an hitch under GNOME 3.4 and 3.6, and all its functionality remains untouched. true, some stuff works better when integrated in GNOME 2's panel - but to be fair, it's all inside extensions that can be removed, and I look forward to the point where Banshee will be a proper GNOME application again. the core applications in GNOME are tied pretty much with the rest of the environment, because they are designed to be that way; you can avoid using Nautilus, after all, but you cannot complain that Nautilus 3.6 does not work without the rest of its dependencies, because Nautilus is not meant to be a file manager that can work under every desktop environment under the sun - and it certainly isn't up to you to tell the Nautilus maintainers what they have to spend time on. the whole point of the "GNOME Classic" exercise is to provide a different workflow for some users without shipping a completely separate set of dependencies (which we cannot maintain, and that nobody stepped up to maintain in the past 3 years, even after repeated calls for it).
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:23 UTC (Wed) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
> true, some stuff works better when integrated in GNOME 2's panel
And what do we users gain from all this application breakage?
Less "API cruft" for the devs?
Wow sounds like a good reason for my music player to break. Thanks guys keep up the good work!
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:38 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Please be less vague, less accusing and less pointless sarcasm. That or don't complain when you get a response in kind.
As said elsewhere: XMMS still will run fine under GNOME 3. And I do mean the gtk+1.x compiled XMMS, though maybe your distribution doesn't ship it anymore.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:47 UTC (Wed) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
So XMMS with gtk+1.x is the official media player for GNOME3?
All the iTunes users will be jealous. This year will surely be the year of the linux desktop.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 20:02 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link] Ah, the stupid sarcasm again. Anyway, to quote yourself
And what do we users gain from all this application breakage? You said application breakage in some weird relation to the GNOME 2 panel. I responded to that. Now instead it is about some official GNOME 3 media player? Whatever.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 20:54 UTC (Wed) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
> You said application breakage in some weird relation to the GNOME 2 panel
Someone complained about parallel installs of GNOME2 and 3.
ebassi says that the gnome 2 libs are parallel installable so it's all good.
But then later admits that doesn't actually help that much since application functionality is often reduced/broken in GNOME3. HIS example was Banshee. But it's all the user/applications fault, not GNOME3.
I questioned the benefits of the changes that caused that breakage.
Your defense was that OMG! XMMS still works.
A true WTF. I'm not even sure why you would make the leap to XMMS.
XMMS has nothing to do with this conversation.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 18:01 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
The work done at the library level doesn't always help the end-user though. E.g. "Referencer" is a really nice GTK+ C++ BibTex management app. It used some APIs that moved from a GNOME library (gnomevfsmm? gnomeuimm? I forget which) to Glib (to do with URIs and VFS). Unfortunately, Fedora decided these were crufty old, deprecated libraries and stopped shipping them - and so stopped shipping referencer too.
I tried building the old srpms, but that leads to a huge number of dependencies, including old gnome stuff that conflicts - iirc. So that wasn't practical, is my vague memory.
I got maybe a quarter to a third of the way of converting Referencer over to the GLib equivalents before giving up, and deciding it was easier just to switch to using Zotero - which is a cross-platform web service + Mozilla XUL based app.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 19:37 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Great example. Referencer is the _only_ application so far that I've been beaten up about in my family technical support role in the transition from a gnome2 to gnome3 desktop experience on Fedora.
When it went missing I given a very specifically told to get that back on the desktop and laptop systems in use. So I resurrected the necessary bits from Fedora packaging git and rebuilt it and its "longer than I really felt comfortable with" set of dependencies for in-family packages. I'm sure as hell not going to offer to maintain this for anyone outside my household.
We are evaluating replacement applications. So far, the user in question hasn't really liked the other options available. If it were a C application, I could probably seriously take a look at porting it. But the fact that it uses c++ bindings, bindings which themselves are not being ported afaik, porting it is a not starter. I'm not going to put myself on the hook for maintaining low level c++ binding as prereq to port this application. It'd be easier to nuke it from orbit and rebuild it as C or vala using the maintained bindings.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 19:46 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
WTF? There are no C++ bindings for GTK3?
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 21:05 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
There are. The problem isn't the C++ bindings, it's that some GNOME library got deprecated. Similar, but different functionality, went into a GTK+ library (VFS kind of stuff). The deprecated old GNOME library became difficult to package because of dependencies it seems.
The porting is fairly trivial, but it's not mechanical. Referencer unfortunately uses things like the old URI thingy all over the place. By the 2nd day I got fed up and switched to Zotero.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 23, 2012 6:49 UTC (Fri) by kigurai (guest, #85475) [Link]
Being slightly off topic, but I would also recommend looking at Mendeley. Not FOSS, but totally awesome.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 20:42 UTC (Thu) by tuna (guest, #44480) [Link]
Gtkmm3 is available for gtk+3. I had no problems porting my little program (https://github.com/tuna74/TunaAudioExtracter) from gtkmm2.4.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 20:58 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
was that previously using the libgnomeuimm and libgnomevfsmm and other bindings before the gtk3 port?
If you can point me to any project that has made the jump successfully from using libgnomeuimm to using gtk3mm I'd love to look over their changes as a starting point.
-jef
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 18:18 UTC (Wed) by andresfreund (subscriber, #69562) [Link]
Given your own description of the existing parallel installation capabilities your tone doesn't seem warranted. Depending on what you want out of such a feature defining core applications as part of "GNOME 3" doesn't seem to be a complete reach.
I realize that it is frustrating to see something you put loads of work dragged through the mud, but accepting that level doesn't help. It also doesn't mean that everybody criticizing is one of the mud throwers.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 18:31 UTC (Wed) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
So which distro has GNOME2 (not MATE) and GNOME3?
None? So the distro maintainers are too stupid to be able to do it?
Not geniuses like GNOME developers I guess.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 18:45 UTC (Wed) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link]
So what distro has Firefox 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17?
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:10 UTC (Wed) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
So which version of Firefox removes great chunks of functionality making it essentially useless like GNOME3?
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:16 UTC (Wed) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link] So which version of Firefox removes great chunks of functionality making it essentially useless like GNOME3? you got a question and now you feel the need to move the goal posts in order to "prove" to others that you're right, and everybody else is wrong. you are a sad, sad person, and you have my pity.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:27 UTC (Wed) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
So you disagree that GNOME3 removed significant functionality?
And to prove your point you start calling names?
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:32 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
He didn't call you any name.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 20:00 UTC (Wed) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
> you are a sad, sad person
Ad hominem.
Seriously, GNOME3 dropped a lot of functionality (some of which it still hasn't gotten back) which is is understandable for .0 release.
Why deny that and call me sad?
What is so hard to understand about users wanting to continue to use GNOME2 until GNOME3 becomes viable?
Sure, I replied in kind to the Company post. So that makes me sad?
GNOME3 is above criticism? Defend GNOME3 at all costs?
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 20:12 UTC (Wed) by cry_regarder (subscriber, #50545) [Link]
You are being intentionally inane just to make people call you inane just so you can say "See! Ad Hominem Attack!"
Lame.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 20:13 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
I agree it was an ad hominem, I was nitpicking on being called a name.
In any case, you complain about "ad hominem", while continuously showing the similar behaviour (just directed at many people instead of 1). And not just this article. It seems similar to the "graffiti theory" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory#New_Yo...). If everyone responds nicely and rejects unnice behaviour, it'll likely be a nicer behaviour overall. To be clear: this is not directed at you. In this article alone you'll note that various people respond harshly towards each other. I noticed that corbet mentioned a while ago that he doesn't want moderation except in extreme cases. IMO this badly affects the comment quality.
You'll see that once the sarcasm stops, the chance of being heard vastly improves.
And criticism is very helpful. If everyone says yes, you only need 1 person.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 21:10 UTC (Wed) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
I don't really consider sarcasm a terrible case of not being nice.
Calling someone a sad person that you pity is more unnice.
But hey, criticism accepted, I will tone it down.
I think the real problem is that team GNOME considers anyone who says something they don't like or don't agree with, or says anything less that total praise for GNOME3 as a troll and not worth listening to.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 7:34 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Sarcasm is a difficult thing to master well without coming off as hostile.
You are coming off as hostile and perhaps a weebit passive aggressive.
Speaking from my own personal battle with the disorder...
Among many strategies I have tried over the years, the one I find most successful in written communication forums is to keep bulk of the sarcastic comments aimed directly at oneself. I believe the term is self-deprecation. You still might not master right off the bat, unless your British, I'm not so I'm still working on it, but it does help take the edge off a bit when others are reading what I write. Instead of coming off as hostile, when making sarcastic jibes at other people, you just come off as a bit odd, muttering about yourself. And maybe this strategy isn't for you. Maybe you need electroshock therapy. I can't tell you want will work for you. Experiment... maybe try that electroshock stuff a couple of times just to be sure its not the right treatment for you.
-jef
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 18:21 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Unfortunately there's no way I know of on LWN either to send private messages, or to look up a user's "Personal Info" (e.g. I have a link to personal details in http://lwn.net/MyAccount/paulj/PersonalInfo, but I don't think anyone else can see that - least, I get a "not allowed" message if I put other usernames in there). So I have to reply to you publically.
As someone who's been on the receiving end of your sarcasm elsewhere a few times, a good while ago, and not particularly enjoyed it: Bravo for recognising it and trying to address it. I hope I could do the same if/when needs be. ;)
Not sure about the electroshock treatment though. ;)
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 13:41 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
It really depends on the tone. There is a lot of feedback given in various ways. If someone people are very aggressive, it tends not to give a good impression.
I am on various mailing lists, mostly just to look for feedback and spot problems. Sometimes one person saying things is enough, sometimes only when many people say something.
Elsewhere the "faster horse" thing was mentioned. If someone gives feedback it can be various things:
All of that is useful to know, but there is not a one on one relation between this. E.g. a "don't drop fallback mode" criticism might be the result of something else, e.g. a hardware issue. Further, if someone doesn't like a nautilus 3.5.92 or even 3.6.0, it could be either a design issue, maybe not. Often what is expected that some suggestion must be implemented immediately. Not always possible... takes quite a bit of time to figure what the feedback really means. E.g. some stuff in gnome-shell 3.0.0 wasn't working nicely, but actually can be difficult to understand if feedback is in the form of "what are you doing?", "idiots", etc.
That's just interpreting feedback, after that knowing what to do, etc.
Not saying things couldn't/shouldn't be improved, just that the expectations are a bit high.
Note that recently I saw a few designers commenting on usability testing, saying that big usability tests (like Sun did) would be very welcome and is a bit lacking atm.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 20:58 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Forgot to say: Thanks
I was too aggressive, not only to you. Sorry for that.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:40 UTC (Wed) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link]
3: fucked up autocoplete with "awesome bar"
4: messed up UI 6: fucked up the location bar by making stuff gray 7: broke copy/paste from location bar 8: needs manual fudging for add-ons 9: messed up UI again 10: removed forward arrow 13: added the horrendous "home tab" 15: suddenly auto-updates without asking
... and that was just a quick look.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:58 UTC (Wed) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
>3: fucked up autocoplete with "awesome bar"
Never had a problem with autocomplete not working.
> 4: messed up UI
Wow, detailed and scathing criticism there.
Maybe I will use that gem on the next GNOME release.
> 6: fucked up the location bar by making stuff gray
Yep, surely that is on par with GNOME3 removing the ability to change the font size, or minimize windows or getting rid of the task bar.
Or the hideous and unchangeable and largely useless black bar across the top of the screen.
> 7: broke copy/paste from location bar
Sounds like a bug more than an intentional design change. Never experienced it here though.
> 8: needs manual fudging for add-ons
Sorry I forgot Gnome extensions are fully supported and always work perfectly.
> 9: messed up UI again
Wow once again, such constructive criticism.
> 10: removed forward arrow
Hmmm... I have a forward arrow here.
> 13: added the horrendous "home tab"
Easily disabled since you know, they actually support user preferences.
> 15: suddenly auto-updates without asking
Which is bad why?
But the GNOME3 defense is now - "Others make crappy software so we can too".
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 20:12 UTC (Wed) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link]
I get it. Firefox is exempt from having to be parallel-installable because you like it the way it is. GNOME isn't because the current version isn't to your liking.
Tip: Do your own distro, it can come with all your favorite versions of all your favorite software!
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 20:34 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Debian for a time had firefox3 and firefox2 (or "iceweasel", as they call it). Now distros just don't bother with this, but it surely was possible.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 20:17 UTC (Wed) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]
> Yep, surely that is on par with GNOME3 removing the ability to change the
font size, or minimize windows or getting rid of the task bar.
1) You can still change the font size
> Sounds like a bug more than an intentional design change. Never experienced it here though.
He probably means the hiding of the "http" and adding it to the pasted url even though it wasn't part of the copied url.
> Easily disabled ...
So now changing options is acceptable? (see the 3 points above).
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 20:40 UTC (Wed) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
> So now changing options is acceptable? (see the 3 points above).
Seriously? You had to (still do?) need to install a separate tool search through and hack the registry.
Not the same as opening a preferences dialog.
You guys just cannot concede anything. GNOME3.0 was perfect.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 23:55 UTC (Wed) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]
> Seriously?
Yes.
> You had to (still do?) need to install a separate tool
Yes.
> search through and hack the registry.
No you have to just to click on a few buttons in said tool ... not exactly rocket science.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:02 UTC (Wed) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link] So which distro has GNOME2 (not MATE) and GNOME3? that's an issue you will have to raise with distribution people - I am not one. the libraries are parallel installable; we took great care at bumping everything during the 2 -> 3 cycle. if something got lost in the process, it was a mistake, and I'll gladly take the blame by proxy - as well as accept patches. as I said above, applications do not have parallel installability - but that's something absolutely normal, unless you statically link everything. by the by, we're trying to solve the issue of installing applications in parallel, along with sandboxing and keeping ABI stability in the face of OS updates; it's a large swamp to drain, and something that takes time to implement, and usually gets lots of grief from people droning about the right to choose and the Linux distribution process.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:19 UTC (Wed) by Zizzle (guest, #67739) [Link]
> that's an issue you will have to raise with distribution people - I am not one.
Rubbish. You answered the question.
The "apps" (I would argue that nautilus and gnome-panel are not apps but are the desktop) are not parallel installable.
Which was a deliberate choice by you GNOME devs to force the transition to GNOME3. Which is why people are hating on you.
No one cares if the libs are - I want a the login manager to give me the choice of logging into GNOME2 or GNOME3.
I want to use your code! I just want the choice on which version. I don't want the latest buggy incomplete version. I want to chose when I make the transition.
But I know you guys can't understand how people don't think GNOME3 with no taskbar and no font size changing and no minimize button and 3d hw requirements and no themes and gaudy touch friendly widgets isn't the best thing since sliced bread that everyone should immediately want to switch to.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 21, 2012 19:31 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link] The "apps" (I would argue that nautilus and gnome-panel are not apps but are the desktop) are not parallel installable. Jhbuild parallel installs an entire GNOME in your existing distribution. This includes Nautilus and gnome-panel and so on.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 14:38 UTC (Thu) by Thanatopsis (guest, #14019) [Link]
How is this done? I see nothing in the documentation explaining this.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 17:31 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 19:26 UTC (Thu) by Thanatopsis (guest, #14019) [Link]
Yea, I found that. I don't see any docs on how to do parallel installs of GNOME.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 20:13 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
you configure jhbuild to install into a directory tree that is non standard. In the examples in the docs that is /opt/gnome/
jhbuild when used to run gnome-session sets up shell environment variables so gnome components use the files installed via the jhbuild process.
If you want to look at specific environment changes you run:
-jef
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 23, 2012 0:12 UTC (Fri) by Thanatopsis (guest, #14019) [Link]
DOH! How did I miss that? Thanks.
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 22, 2012 20:55 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Be warned that if you go the jhbuild route, it'll suck up loads of time before you actually get anything working. The "GNOME OS" bit is not to replace a distro, but to ensure that "GNOME" behaves like an OS.
Or in other words: ensure that you can easily join development. Be able to provide people with the latest GNOME release as a VM, including all the various system dependencies which are needed by GNOME. Be able to fully test the whole "OS" (meaning GNOME but also the system dependencies).
To answer your question:
What I forgot is that this will still share the "dot" files. We've put a lot of work into supporting the XDG directories (~/.config), which can be changed using environment variables. Quite envious of KDE here (they solved that years ago).
GNOME Shell to support a "classic" mode Posted Nov 23, 2012 0:39 UTC (Fri) by Thanatopsis (guest, #14019) [Link]
Ok. I've used a tool similar to this in the past when I needed newer GNOME libs so I could build the latest Anjuta on RHEL 4.5. Forget the name of the tool at the moment. I believe it is no longer maintained.
So what is keeping everyone who desires to, from running GNOME 2.x & 3.x side by side?
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