GNOME 3.8 released

[Posted March 27, 2013 by corbet]

From:		Matthias Clasen <matthias.clasen-AT-gmail.com>
To:		gnome-announce-list-AT-gnome.org, devel-announce-list-AT-gnome.org
Subject:		GNOME 3.8 released
Date:		Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:21:27 -0400
Message-ID:		<CAFwd_vBcEYpJz3F+RgmwFrsjKKS2t3UtUgJDtHK3y1ZxX2q0pQ__31431.9298639477$1364412358$gmane$org@mail.gmail.com>
Archive-link:		Article

                 GNOME 3.8 Released
                 ==================

Today, the GNOME Project celebrates the release of GNOME 3.8, the
latest version of the popular free desktop, as well as the GNOME
developer platform.

GNOME 3.8 is the fourth major update of GNOME 3. It builds on the
foundations that we have laid with the previous 3.x releases and
offers a greatly enhanced experience. The exciting new features and
improvements in this release include a integrated application search,
privacy and sharing settings, notification filtering, a new classic
mode, OwnCloud integration, previews of clocks, notes, photos and
weather applications, and many more.

For more information about the major changes in GNOME 3.8, please
visit our release notes:

 http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.8/

GNOME 3.8 will be available shortly in many distributions. Live images
of GNOME 3.8 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, documentation writers, usability and
accessibility specialists, translators, maintainers, system
administrators, companies, artists, testers and last, not least,
users. GNOME would not exist without all those people.

Thanks very much to every one of them!

Our next release, GNOME 3.10, is planned for September 2013.

Until then, enjoy GNOME 3.8 !

The GNOME Release Team
-- 
devel-announce-list mailing list
devel-announce-list@gnome.org
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/devel-announce-list

(Log in to post comments)

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 27, 2013 21:42 UTC (Wed) by heijo (guest, #88363) [Link]

"... new features..."

I'm very surprised to see this.

I thought it was decided by the enlightened Red Hat cabal that features were supposed to be stamped out?

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 27, 2013 21:50 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

Please troll somewhere else. I don't work for Red Hat.

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 27, 2013 22:00 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

I wonder what will happen if we put the "Red Hat is controlling all of GNOME" group with the "Red Hat is not contributing to the desktop at all" group in a single room.

To the topic at hand, If you compare only the previous release, it doesn't really stand out that much but the diff between 3.0 and 3.8 in terms of new features, preferences etc is quite nice and seems pretty much set on the 2.x trajectory. GNOME developers are also blogging more about the feature changes and roadmap these days and that is a welcome improvement.

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 27, 2013 22:26 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

To honor the new Fedora release name, if you hypothetically do that, can you also perhaps put a hypothetical vial of poison in the hypothetical room?

-jef

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 0:15 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Nice timing, post a quote of the week late on Wednesday. :)

Please

Posted Mar 27, 2013 22:06 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

This kind of thing is just totally unnecessary. No more, please?

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 27, 2013 22:32 UTC (Wed) by anatolik (subscriber, #73797) [Link]

Thanks for working on it. As of my taste Gnome Shell is much superior to other desktop managers. Arch+GShell=perfection!

Classic mode, cool!

Posted Mar 28, 2013 0:15 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

I am happy to see the references to "classic mode" in the release notes, and happier to see that it isn't being called "legacy". Thanks for listening. This isn't just something the old-school geeks have been asking for; my daughter was very unhappy about losing the window switcher, because when she's doing homework and researching things on the net, with Gnome 3 she loses track of her windows (when the mouse is moved to the corner to see tiny versions of all the windows they are often illegible, and if a window is minimized to get it temporarily out of the way, that's the only way to find it again).

Focusing on one task isn't always what the user wants or needs to do: there might be a couple of documents open in LibreOffice, many windows and tabs in the browser, and maybe a drawing program floating around as well. Or perhaps a writer is documenting the behavior of a program that opens multiple windows. The Gnome 2 window switcher was an effective way to manage this style of work, so thanks for bringing it back. Maybe the right thing to do is have a clean way of making it appear and disappear as needed.

Classic mode, cool!

Posted Mar 28, 2013 7:03 UTC (Thu) by Chousuke (subscriber, #54562) [Link]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "Window switcher" since it's been a while since I used GNOME 2, but are you aware that GNOME 3 has OS X -style app-specific window switching? Alt-tab switches between applications and alt-§ (on my Finnish layout. It's the button above tab) switches between windows of the same application.

I find it very convenient and rarely use the overview.

Classic mode, cool!

Posted Mar 28, 2013 10:01 UTC (Thu) by ssam (guest, #46587) [Link]

It is good to have a keyboard and a mouse method to do something. If my hands are on the keyboard then i can use that. If i have a coffee in one hand and the mouse in the other, then its nice to use the mouse.

depending on your work the distinction of applications is not very helpful. Suppose I have a couple of terminals of vim, one that I am compiling in, and one that i am looking at output in, some documentation in a webbrowser, some more documentation in a pdf, some plots in a pdf etc etc. Now i want to get from the documentation back to my editor.

Also I'd like a system monitor in the top panel. It was never there in the gnome 3 fallback. has it been revived in gnome3 classic?

Classic mode, cool!

Posted Mar 28, 2013 21:59 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/

The classic mode in GNOME 3.8 does this by default FYI

Classic mode, cool!

Posted Mar 28, 2013 10:07 UTC (Thu) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]

I suppose the the initial post refers to Windows-style task bar that enumerates currently opened windows at the bottom of screen using list of buttons with application icons.

Gnome Shell interface is just not compatible with a workflow when one uses a lot of opened windows and actively working on few of them from different or same applications.

In the overview mode the windows becoming tiny rectangles that one cannot recognize. This is not the case with the task bar that uses always recognizable icons and window titles allowing navigate with 20 or more opened windows even if they come from the same application.

Using Alt-Tab and Alt-KeyAboveTab puts extra cognitive load as one has to constantly remember if the window the person wants to access belongs to the same application as current one or different one. Just consider switching between 2 browser windows and an editor.

Classic mode, cool!

Posted Mar 28, 2013 21:44 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

Gnome changed alt-tab to switch between applications, rather than windows. This is a regression for those who have a number of terminal windows open (software developers) or a number of browser windows open (separate windows, not tabs, so they can use their large monitor effectively). The Gnome 3 approach seems optimized for a small screen.

Classic mode, cool!

Posted Mar 29, 2013 7:01 UTC (Fri) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]

For users with multiple open terminal, they can use Alt+` to view them which is convenient for some software developers. As a designer, I have no problem using Gnome Shell on a big screen.

Classic mode, cool!

Posted Mar 29, 2013 22:27 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Ditto,

With alt-tab and alt-` I can accurately and quickly choose between any number of application and application windows open, of which I typically have dozens.

Talk of 'oh it's optimized for small displays', or 'it is made for touch screens', or 'it is bad for multitasking' are all statements that do not hold up to actual experience on Gnome-shell.

Classic mode, cool!

Posted Mar 30, 2013 11:03 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]

Switching between apps instead of windows is a nice additional feature that a small minority of users might find useful - KWin has introduced this feature a long time ago, too, but I never used it.

What I don't understand is what rational argument there is for forcing people out of their entirely reasonable habit and pushing the extra cognitive load on them to bother about a detail ('this window happens to be part of that same application')?

I really wonder how a decision like this gets made - it is quite the epic failure. And then not deciding to revert this when it becomes clear that, for no reason, you switched shortcuts and destroyed the value of years of muscle memory - that makes it even more epic...

Classic mode, cool!

Posted Mar 31, 2013 13:16 UTC (Sun) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

Surely by this time you must be aware of:
1. Design team
2. Mac OS X
3. Resorting yet again to summarizing things as "forcing" and "epic failure" is not really respectful
4. Extension that changes this

For someone who is supposed to be understand communities this is really weird behaviour.

Classic mode, cool!

Posted Mar 31, 2013 15:06 UTC (Sun) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]

I'm asking because I understand communities and don't get how this decision could be made in a bottom-up, open community that cares for its end users.

None of your points explain that process.

Classic mode, cool!

Posted Mar 31, 2013 18:32 UTC (Sun) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

Pot calling the kettle black any much?

Calling things epic fail just does not help to create a discussion. Now you make all kinds of statements. E.g. KDE is the end all of usability. Look, I know you are a KDE fan. But there is something like Mac OS X. Your epic fail does not mean anything.

However, just making things emotional by suggesting that we would not care, or that things are an "epic fail". And the "understand communities", really nice behaviour that you're displaying towards the GNOME community, changing a "meh" into "epic fail".

Community manager means behaving like this?

Classic mode, cool!

Posted Apr 3, 2013 0:13 UTC (Wed) by daniel (guest, #3181) [Link]

3. Resorting yet again to summarizing things as "forcing" and "epic failure" is not really respectful

True, however you should keep in mind the difficulty of maintaining a really respectful demeanor after somebody has just done something really stupid and shows no contrition in spite of widely negative feedback. Just backing out the change and introducing the new idea as an extension would have been a way for Gnome developers to show respect for their users, but what was done instead seems to show more defiance than respect.

Classic mode, cool!

Posted Mar 28, 2013 8:44 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

The name of "classic" mode was discussed in the open various times. Once on marketing-list. The fear behind calling it classic mode is that it might cause confusion because various distributions used that name for the fallback mode. It is quite difficult to think up of a name which is clear while at the same time does not create confusion. With clear I mean that you do not want to overpromise things with a name (imply that it does more than it is intended to do).

Participation in these kind of discussions is welcome, just join the relevant list. Marketing team also holds meetings, only requirement is being able to connect and having a headphone + microphone.

Obviously it would be better if we could really get data behind every decision. E.g. like when a company is searching for a name and actually tests various names on their target audience.

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 1:27 UTC (Thu) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link]

At last the classic mode is the only feature , I like in this release. All in all it doesn't look like revamp of all the features but just a small increment of 3.6. If this classic mode was introduced a long time back in 3.0, gnome would not have had all the flak it was receiving for the last 2 years.

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 2:25 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

Totally disagree with you on this. Classic mode doesn't address objective usability regressions that Gnome 3 introduced. About the attitude of developers, you can read here:

http://www.gnome.org/news/2013/03/gnome-3-8-jon-mccann-ta...

Search for the word "nostalgia" in the text. Essentially, when Gnome developers are faced with criticism of their UI, they resort to name calling.

For instance, right now I am using Gnome 3.6 both on my laptop and in a remote session (not fallback - shell). I can tell you that the remote session is borderline unusable (sometimes I need to wait 5 - 10 seconds for things to happen). It doesn't work with 16-bit colour under xrdp/vnc, so this wastes bytes on the wire. It also constantly wants to repaint the whole screen (multiple times - that is the animation artefact), which is even worse on the wire. And to top it all of, CPU is eaten by the shell like there is no tomorrow (software rendering with llvmpipe). Pure molasses. In comparison, fallback works reasonably well.

On the laptop side, of course, I can no longer see where my windows are on various workspaces without constantly animating. Anyone that read this:

http://www.nngroup.com/articles/windows-8-disappointing-u...

Would know that relying on short term memory instead of visual clues is not optimal.

These are just some of the examples of detachment of Gnome developers from reality. Thinking that classic mode will somehow fix this (where it is nothing more than a few extensions cobbled together) is even more troublesome.

People that want Gnome 2 can run Mate. The problem is that Gnome 3 needs fixing. Getting rid of the "designed by RFC1925" overview would be a good start.

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 2:55 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> In comparison, fallback works reasonably well.

Just to be clear, even with 24-bit colour depth. So, apples to apples (if it somehow matters).

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 3:02 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

You totally disagree with what? I understand you have registered your displeasure with some of the UI features and animations in GNOME 3 but I don't know what it has to do with the comment you replied to.

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 3:18 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> If this classic mode was introduced a long time back in 3.0, gnome would not have had all the flak it was receiving for the last 2 years.

The above. Classic mode or not, the fundamental flaws of Gnome 3 are still there. UI usability is still worse (i.e. the system has regressed), so naturally, existing users would complain.

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 3:30 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

I disagree with you on that point and agree with the OP, an officially blessed Classic mode (not called "fallback") would have done a lot to assuage most of the complaints and frustrations that plagued the early GNOME releases although you are right that it wouldn't have changed some of the UI issues you are concerned about. A lot of the complaints were that the UI was just too different, Classic mode fixes that.

Of course it's all speculation because that's not what happened.

I've been trying out Ubuntu Unity and GNOME Shell on an old laptop and I wasn't expecting it but I actually like GNOME Shell more than the more traditional Unity (definitely more than KDE which just gives me the heebie-jeebies for some reason, and I actually used KDE 1.x-3.x as my primary desktop for many years).

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 6:14 UTC (Thu) by sheepdestroyer (guest, #54968) [Link]

Totally agree,
my main concern on my ultrabook is energy efficiency.
hence my displeasure when looking at gnome shell's wake up numbers in powertop comparatively to fallback mode.
I never saw that angle properly addressed by gnome. Do someone cares for those numbers anymore?

Personally i do not need classic mode but the "Not So Power Waste" mode, thanks.

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 7:18 UTC (Thu) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]

Agreed on all points, but I would add that people needing a "fixed Gnome 3" should give Cinnamon a try: a sensible mix of old (the "traditional desktop" approach) and new (Gnome 3 framework, expose modes, etc.). Still young, but 1.6 has proved to be very very stable, and there's a lively community coding themes, applets etc.

Rehdon

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 21:26 UTC (Thu) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

I also have found Cinnamon 1.6 to be very stable. It will occasionally display icons on the desktop (I have this disabled), but that is the only problem that I have had after using it for months on a daily basis.

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 8:50 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

Seems you will be displeased with various people no matter what.

Regarding animations. If you read the release notes you'll see that GNOME 3.8 will automatically reduce the amount of animations when you're working remotely, as well as when using llvmpipe.

Seems you suffer from the same self-selection bias that you accuse me and various other GNOME developers of. Suggest to get over it and use a different desktop already. If you're already using a different desktop: did you actually read the release notes fully?

When one paragraph is addressed in the new version and this article is about the new version, it gives the impression that you did not read before commenting.

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 10:27 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

Yeah, I did read the release notes. In fact, I knew low animation mode was coming in 3.8 even before that.

However, that is not enough. There is no valid reason to insist on 3D rendering when no such thing exists on the platform. Somehow, 3D and animations have become essential in Gnome, when they should be used only when they work better.

Furthermore, even when doing trivial things, like scrolling e-mail in Evo, running top etc., gnome-shell is consuming huge chunks of CPU on my VM. The terminal interaction is visibly slower, for instance. Not to mention that shell gobbles up 300 MB of RES there. This slows the system down significantly. I know everyone will wheel out their favourite theories about emulators and JITs. Fact: on my remote VM, Gnome fallback is usable (been using it for work since day one and Gnome 2 before that). Shell is not.

And all that before mentioning all the shell UI silliness, like lack of visibility and basic customisability, as a result of RFC1926(6) implementation.

I am not displeased no matter what. I am displeased because something that worked will be broken, without a real replacement or workaround.

As for using a different desktop, I see the Gnome philosophy of getting rid of existing long term users (which helped chase many a bug) is well and truly alive. Well done.

PS. My criticism of Gnome developers specifically does not apply to Evolution developers. I have been impressed on more than one occasion by Milan and others.

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 10:28 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> RFC1926(6)

Typo: RFC1925(6).

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 10:49 UTC (Thu) by sheepdestroyer (guest, #54968) [Link]

I want to point out that it is not only a problem on vm or remote systems.

My recent core i7 (sandybridge) has all the horsepower needed but effectively consumes more watts with 3D acceleration on. I Use Fallback mode not for it's "classic" layout but to conserve battery on my ultrabook.

This is i think a valid concern, especially if targeting mobility.

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 12:28 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

There is no need for your system to requires more power, no matter if GNOME uses "3D" or not. Only the most basic stuff is used. It should barely make an impact.

In practice, it does. But that is something that should be fixed at the right level. Unfortunately despite GNOME being out for years, not much has happened with drivers/X/whatever causes this.

Reference point is to try Windows 7+ on the same system. It uses "3D", but overall it'll likely have a better power usage while needing more from the "3D" bits.

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 29, 2013 22:39 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

> In practice, it does. But that is something that should be fixed at the right level. Unfortunately despite GNOME being out for years, not much has happened with drivers/X/whatever causes this.

What is happening is called 'Wayland' and 'DRI 3.0'.

With X Windows as the display manager you have to have write out buffers multiple times, copy textures, do texture conversions, and do multiple rendering passes for things like 'server side decorations' if you want to have a composited desktop... for each time the display needs to be rendered, which is usually each screen refresh. You can't fix this without breaking X.

With the current drivers they have different sorts of video memory management schemes, which are not optimal from a security and performance perspective. Live and learn.

With Wayland and DRI 3 drivers all that copying/writing/converting and incrementing/deincrementing should be replaced by simply passing a file descriptor from the client application to the display server. So instead of shuffling around MBs of textures around you end up replacing it all with the copying of a couple bytes.

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 12:24 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

Ignoring some bits and the sarcasm:
There are some big problems in the memory usage of GNOME shell (3.6). That is partly fixed in 3.8, but can only be really addressed in 3.10. Reason behind it was: 1) bug in bindings (clutter references weren't freed), 2) mozilla/gjs/something making it impossible to regularly run auto garbage collection (which was done in earlier versions) 3) mozilla/gjs/something causing #1, which had is now worked around (in 3.8).

Also in 3.6 some stuff was done in process which should've been done out of process (was not enough time).

I'm sort of surprised that not more people picked up on this though. The huge memory usage in 3.6 is quite noticeable. Though maybe some distributions added custom patches to deal with it.

Note that I'm not a dev and might have gotten some details above wrong.

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 29, 2013 4:46 UTC (Fri) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]

What is regarded as huge memory usage? Is something like 300 MB gnome-shell process normal, or broken?

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 2:14 UTC (Thu) by tetley80 (guest, #88691) [Link]

A big "thank you" to the Gnome developers for adding the classic mode. It has been sorely missing in previous releases.

GNOME 3.8 released

Posted Mar 28, 2013 8:54 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

Just curious: You could do the same using fallback mode in previous versions.

Do you like classic mode because it is actually supported? Or do you like it because in fallback mode you still had to make a few changes (default fallback mode: "GNOME 3 without hardware acceleration")? Something else?

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 5:24 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Personally, a thank you to GNOME, KDE, and Ubuntu (Unity) for making me realise what I should have realised years ago: NONE of this is what I need. I've been a happy user of a tiling manager (i3) for about four months now, with a thin-strip XFCE panel on top.

But I realise that most people want something more. The thing is, *most* people also want something familiar -- look at the amount of stick Windows 8 is getting. I admire the ambition of KDE, GNOME and Unity. Of the three, I think Unity has the larger picture correct, that mobile/tablet platforms are going to be more important and more accessible (no entrenched Windows monopoly, sufficient manufacturer frustration with Android, ease of piggybacking on ubiquitous Android kernel to run an alternative UI on the same hardware). KDE also "gets" that, but they don't have the same marketing muscle. At the same time, both of them have to be careful not to leave out desktop users. If they handle things right, though, they can use mobile interfaces to convert users to a new way of interacting with computers, and then bring those same users onto the desktop.

Meanwhile, GNOME has been accused of focusing too much on touch-screen-type interfaces without actually having a touch-screen product. Does Red Hat (as the primary GNOME backer) have any mobile plans? Just curious.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 5:33 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

"The thing is, *most* people also want something familiar -- look at the amount of stick Windows 8 is getting"

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Mac, iOS, Android etc is doing just fine without being "familiar" if you read that as the typical Windows UI.

Also, I really doubt that Red Hat wants to play in the mobile market or that developers involved in this space or driven by a single vendor business need. The whole notion that GNOME 3 is only designed for touch seems pretty bogus to me.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 5:43 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

I switched to Mac OS exactly because it was very similar to my previous xfce-based environment: four static virtual desktops with windows assigned by role, one thin menu bar and a sidebar launcher.

And I can be sure that it all is going to be supported for at least 5 more years or so.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 6:02 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Makes no sense. If you want Xfce, you can run Xfce (available in EPEL repo) and use it in RHEL or rebuilds and you can be sure that it will remain supported for a long time. Besides, I have all those features in GNOME 3, right now.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 15:49 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Except it doesn't work well. I had lots and lots of problems with incorrect styling in GTK3 apps, mismatched fonts, etc.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 19:16 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Pretty weak reasoning. Installing Adwaita Xfce theme and customizing fonts is not more work than switching operating systems.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 19:22 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Did that. Got various minor corruptions (also, adwaita theme is ugly). I've learned to live with them, but once Retina MacBooks became available I jumped immediately.

And no, it wasn't much worse than fiddling with theme files in Linux.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 19:45 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

So the whole reason for switching appears to be the hardware more than anything to do with similarity to Xfce. That wasn't clear from your initial post.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 20:00 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

At that point I was looking for alternatives to my environment. GNOME3 clearly was not working for me, KDE was buggy and XFCE had (and still has) a lot of rough edges.

I got tired of fighting with software only for it to break 6 months later.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 4:33 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Oddly enough, I find it is Mac that doesn't work a lot of the time. Here are some peeves:

If you download, say, a PDF, it doesn't have the extension ".pdf", the Mac won't open it until it rename it. Even though the underlying Unix system includes the magic file, so running "file filename" correctly identifies it as a PDF.
USB-tethering an Android phone does not work and there seems to be no way to get it to work. An example of Apple's NIH syndrome? In fact the help page on my Samsung phone for USB tethering says it works with Windows and Linux -- no mention of Mac. In fact, in general with unsupported hardware, with Linux you can poke around on the net and find someone who has gotten it to work in some fashion. With Mac there's nothing you can do.
Every time I start the Mac, iTunes starts up too and then complains that there is no net connection. Quitting iTunes before shutting down doesn't seem to help. I cannot figure out how to fix this.
And this comment on slashdot suggests that things are getting much worse. Specifically, getting rid of spaces; an autosave that overwrites your old file rather than use a temporary file (like emacs, libreoffice etc); saving to icloud by default; applications not quitting.

And it is years since I have had to fight with Linux to do anything. It just works.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 6:01 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Yes, lack of file utility is bad, but it hardly ever needed. USB tethering works with third-party software (EasyTether). Spaces are re-organized, but they can be brought back by TotalSpaces, I hardly ever notice iCloud, etc.

In short, it actually works pretty well and reliably. Much more reliable than I have come to expect from the Linux desktop.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 5:52 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Mac, iOS, Android etc is doing just fine without being "familiar" if you read that as the typical Windows UI.

Well, Mac OS X is very high quality and that helps. It also helps that Apple tightly control the hardware. But in the earlier years a lot of OS 9 die-hard users vocally hated it.

As for iOS and Android -- as several people have observed, the interface is progman.exe from Windows 3.1, with animations. Both are used in a single-task manner. Neither is used in conjunction with printers, scanners, external webcams, or other peripherals. And the office-suite / productivity-app support on both is rudimentary at best. (An android tablet actually makes a fine laptop with a linux chroot -- I use libreoffice as well as latex on mine. I think Ubuntu "gets" that, too. But the current best solution for viewing the linux display -- vnc -- is not good enough for a mass market.)

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 6:41 UTC (Thu) by tetley80 (guest, #88691) [Link]

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Mac, iOS, Android etc is doing just fine without being "familiar" if you read that as the typical Windows UI.

I'm not sure I agree with the underlying reasoning. Users of Android and iPhone (+ corresponding tablets) do not expect the same interface, because there is no need for it. In contrast, using a PC (which has a mouse + keyboard), brings in expectations of a UI that resembles Windoze, because that kind of UI has been associated with the PC form for a long time.

To elaborate, people are not expecting to edit Word documents or spreasheets on their phones or tablets (*). These devices are primarily seen as ways of obtaining entertainment, instead of doing work. In contrast, a PC is primarily a work device (modulo games), where the workflow (and hence the associated UI) is well established. If you break that, people will go WTF, as they're doing with Windoze 8 (and Gnome prior to 3.8).

(*) yes, editing documents on tablets can be done these days, but it's more painful and slower than simply using a computer.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 8:25 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

A tablet or a phone can be docked and people do edit documents etc just fine. Besides you are ignoring Mac OS X entirely in that argument. Really, people these days are used to different UI's and while relearning is not always easy, if there is a good reason, they will do just that. Familiar user interfaces can actually be harmful unless you mimic the UI 1:1 and this has been shown in real usability studies.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 10:21 UTC (Thu) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link]

*while relearning is not always easy, if there is a good reason, they will do just that.*
In that case with Gnome 3 there is nothing to be gained from gnome-shell UI and every feature that was in gnome2 was just simply lost from user perspective, so there is *no* good reason.

People hate gnome 3 not for just an unfamiliar UI, but the overall attitude the devs took in building the shell with inflexible designs.

If you have seen the android users having the same phone like GS3 each one of the user has a different launcher compared to the other. There is flexibility within even touchwiz interface, but if you take the analogy with gnome-shell its just difficult to customize.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 11:06 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Speak for yourself please. Some of us just prefer the GNOME 3 UI. If you like GNOME 2 better, feel free to use MATE.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 11:12 UTC (Thu) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link]

Except for the fedora/red hat dev shills, I rarely see a gnome-shell fan.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 11:21 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Ah right, let's exclude the people who like the UI and call them shills so that we can pretend that everyone hates it. Must be a good idea!

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 12:01 UTC (Thu) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link]

* that we can pretend that everyone hates it*

Whenever there is some news on gnome-shell there is always a bunch of comments about how they hate it and how the devs are not listening to the users, But a very rare gnome-shell love comment from the users.

Before you accuse *me* of pretending, If you are as honest as I believe you are, even this article has its comments about gnome-shell as any other article or thread about gnome-shell as you can see for yourself.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 12:08 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

You are clearly ready to call people shills when they say they like it. Why would you expect anyone would want to express their preference for something when faced with such unnecessary name calling? When I do like something, I typically just use it and don't really talk about it much. I only air what I find problematic. That's how users work. Learn to live with that.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 5:01 UTC (Fri) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]

Hey, GNOME 3 is not so bad anymore. I don't even remember why I hated 3.0 so much.

I'm really impressed with the touchpad support in GTK+ 3. It seems to use real OS X style 2-finger gestures: you can fling documents up and down to scroll them with inertial movement (can't be done in KDE, it seems), and you have pixel precise scroll control: if you make a very small movement on touchpad with 2 fingers, then the document also only moves a little.(Again, doesn't seem to be possible in KDE.) I like the touchpad behavior so much I switched browsers for it, to Epiphany.

One thing that is odd, though, is: why do I have to enable horizontal scrolling via dconf editor? The horizontal stuff *totally* works. I was really bummed when I first thought it wasn't possible, but then I learnt that it had been possible in a previous version, so I guessed (correctly) that there must be a dconf entry for it. What a shame, but good job otherwise!

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 18:08 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

Can you file a bug on that horizontal scrolling thing? Could be that there just is no space for it in the current window. If so, might be an option for tweak tool.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 11:59 UTC (Thu) by stephane (subscriber, #57867) [Link]

Have you numbers?

Some of my teammates have switched from Unity to GNOME Shell and I'm happy user of GNOME Shell 3.4 on my Fedora 17 (I look forward to GNOME 3.8).

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 22:43 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Shill!

You obviously work for Redhat. You should be ashamed of yourself for even thinking about expressing favor for something in a public forum.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 12:14 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

Counter example: I'm part of the GNOME release team and also great fan of GNOME 3.

PS: Not a Fedora / Red Hat "shill". Would be great to show some restraint in your choice of words if you want to be heard.

Tone

Posted Mar 28, 2013 13:48 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

There are topics we dread posting anything about, mostly because we know certain kinds of comments will result. This is an example. Even if you hate GNOME shell and all it stands for, there is no reason to attack its proponents in this way. Can we please try to be a bit more respectful?

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 15:03 UTC (Thu) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

I rarely see a gnome-shell fan.

There are plenty of satisfied users out there. We just have much less of a tendency to get involved in lengthy flame wars about its merits than the people who are extremely dissatisfied. It's a mistake to confuse the volume of comments on each side of a topic with the number of supporters of each side, much less with the validity of their position.

On the specifics of GNOME 3 and gnome-shell, I would classify myself as a reasonably satisfied user, not a fan. Many of the features that I expected to hate- using the whole screen for opening a new program instead of a task menu, for example- turned out to work fine in practice. In many cases they were actually improvements, just as the developers claimed. Most of my remaining complaints have been addressed by available extensions. I would have been happy had the designers stuck with GNOME 2 for a few more years, but I'm used to the GNOME 3 way of doing things now and wouldn't go back if it were an available option. There's still room for improvement, but that's true of anything. Above all else, I think it's a piece of software intended for getting work done and not worth the level of heat that's been devoted to it.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 22:09 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> Most of my remaining complaints have been addressed by available extensions.

Lucky you. Have you seen the state of extensions in recent days? There is so much junk in there, just like many of us predicted. People get all enthusiastic and write something useful, then if falls by the wayside and becomes incompatible with shell of the day (example: pidgin integration).

It has been pointed out so many times that it is not funny any more. Extensions are no substitute for customisability.

PS. Another trivial example of both breakage and stupidity. I recently installed gnome-shell-extension-remove-accessibility-icon RPM from Fedora repository (F-18). Not only did it not remove the icon (broken), but installing software to do something like that is truly stupid. Every single GUI environment (apart form Gnome 3) can do such things in a trivial manner (including my Android phone).

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 22:27 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Couple of things:

In the next version, extension will get the ability to update on demand similar to Firefox

https://live.gnome.org/ThreePointNine/Features/ExtensionU...

That should solve majority of the issues. Also, the accessibility icon hiding extension is obsolete as of release as this is the default behavior.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 23:59 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

And it will not solve the main issue here: complete lack of the most basic customisation. That is how and why the extension mess was created in the first place.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 0:14 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Ok, we get it. You don't like GNOME 3 but I am not trying to convince you as much as informing others.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 0:41 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

Yeah, make it appear subjective. It is not about what I like.

That one cannot move/remove icons on Gnome 3 panel is a fact. That there is no central configuration where positions of items are kept is another. Both of these are, of course, regressions in the UI.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 2:05 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

It is of course subjective. I don't care about those UI elements and don't consider them regressions. I only use the word "regressions" for actual obvious bugs anyway.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 3:04 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

I knew you would say something like this. Go and check the most popular extension. Then tell me that not being able to do simple drag and drop or remove is not a regression. But, maybe Gnome was specifically designed for you and a handful of others. In fact, that seems like the most plausible explanation to me.

It is also quite ridiculous that a modern desktop system cannot do such trivial things.

Only in imaginary world of Gnome are things that cannot be done (when there is a clear need by users), as compared to the previous version of the system, not regressions.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 3:29 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

The most popular extension was the one to hide accessibility icon and that has been made redundant in this release. I get that you don't like some of the things or perhaps most of the things in GNOME 3 release and I don't believe it is perfect either and some things really do bug me but I don't buy into the echo chamber narration about how everybody hates it and that is the reason I am speaking up now so that we can dispel that notion once and for all.

If you have a clear need for GNOME 2 like UI, it is not like MATE is not available, so I don't get the incentive to spend your energy and time on this.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 5:07 UTC (Fri) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]

It's funny how that accessibility icon bugs me as well. The way I see it, all the other things in the panel are something I want and use, but that thing alone is completely useless. I'm glad there's a way to get rid of it now.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 4, 2013 3:53 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

I'm curious why it took so long. Which people were against this improvement and why?

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 4, 2013 15:33 UTC (Thu) by seyman (subscriber, #1172) [Link]

> I'm curious why it took so long. Which people were against this improvement and why?

I suspect that the extension's existence drives the priority of having it in core way down.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 4, 2013 15:56 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Not merely existence but the high popularity of it. GNOME developers seem to keep an eye on that. They also enable accessibility by default in recent versions and included hot keys to toggle accessibility features and that make the accessibility icon pretty redundant

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 5:22 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> I don't buy into the echo chamber narration about how everybody hates it

My views are my own and are not aligned with anyone (unless coincidentally). I'm basing those views on analysing the system that is in front of me, used in real world scenarios. I actually tried all those things that I mentioned and the results speak for themselves.

Generally speaking, I'm just trying to point out that a rigid "suit some people" system is not a very good desktop. It is not flexible. It doesn't cover a lot of ground. I cannot be used for more then a few things. Many design decisions have clearly not been thought through, otherwise they would have never made it in (prime example: overview). Many are based on some kind of "philosophy" or preconceived notions of what is supposedly good for users (e.g. that avoiding distraction is what everyone wants, that everyone enjoys constant and generally useless animations etc.), instead of offering users the flexibility to create work flows that suit them.

> If you have a clear need for GNOME 2 like UI, it is not like MATE is not available, so I don't get the incentive to spend your energy and time on this.

I don't have a need for Gnome 2 UI. I have a need for an UI that doesn't waste my resources. That shows me where my stuff is, so I don't have to remember. That lets me put things where I want them. That doesn't display expose when I want to start an app. That uses GUI metaphors sensibly. That works just fine on a remote system, over a real world link, not some imaginary 1 GBs pipe between two continents. Etc.

On the point of running obsolete software, what would you say if I told you to go run Red Hat Linux 5.0? Surely, you'd say that you don't want to run software that's pretty much end of line, dead in the water. Same here.

Gnome 3 should be able to satisfy a bit broader set of users, not just people that are either willing to put up with it or are clearly fans.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 5:29 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Every desktop only suits some people because people have different tastes but I am not the one insisting that my opinions have more weight than others and somehow aren't subjective. If you broadly prefer a desktop environment but prefer some things to be changed, that would be fine but if you want to change the entire design to suit you preferences, that is unlikely to fly and yet you seem to be breaking your head against the wall doing just that. Doesn't seem very effective but YMMV.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 5:39 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

Where some in case of Windows, Mac, Android and IOS is north of 90%. Gnome 3 cannot even cover their old, entirely insignificant in numbers, user base. Yeah, great success.

And on the point of designing things "my way" - absolute crap. You clearly did not understand my point.

Your suggestion to me appears to be: when faced with opposition, give up. Yeah, no thanks.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 5:54 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

You are claiming that OS market share which is based on a number of varied factors is dependent on the UI but I don't think GNOME UI is responsible for Linux low market share on the desktop. If that was the case, other desktop environments would have been successful. There seems to be no clarity of thought here.

What I am suggesting is that your UI preferences does not match the design trajectory of the desktop environment and you cannot change it by your approach.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 7:21 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

What I'm saying is that Windows (with version 8 still being a bit of an unknown), OSX, Android and IOS quite obviously suit most people. I don't see folks jumping up and down about Jelly Bean UI, IOS 6 UI, Windows 7 UI or whatever is the current version of OS X UI. And, generally speaking, people pick up on the opposition UI without much fuss.

But, Gnome managed to alienate a good proportion of their already tiny (and most likely dedicated, like myself) user base, which would suggest that things are not all that flexible.

Once again, you bring up UI preferences, trying to imply that I'm appealing to what I want. I will explain it to you this way. If Gnome had the capability of moving/removing things on the panel, for instance, that would suit both you and me. You would not touch anything, I probably would. As it stands, it only works for you. So, objectively, what I'm suggesting is more flexible, because more people can use it.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 9:00 UTC (Fri) by tuna (guest, #44480) [Link]

I do not like MacOSX but I still use it quite a lot.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 16:08 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Most Windows users aren't even aware that are alternatives and just because they use it, I wouldn't assume they are happy with it. I would suggest you ask users if they are actually happy to get the answer.

While the ability to move panels might make it more flexible, that flexibility comes at a price. For instance, the first deployment of GNOME 2 I did, a lot of users removed panels or window switcher and called up support because they couldn't figure out what happened. This was solved by making it more harder to do it by default in subsequent versions but I was amazed at how much trouble it did cause in the first place. When we wrote internal help documentation, if someone else moved the panel around, other users get confused because what they see in the help doesn't match reality. Now with GNOME 3, I can be reasonably sure what the UI would look like and if I were still doing some desktop administration, that is a big advantage.

Now GNOME 3 could still offer the flexibility if they had the ability to lockdown the UI for large deployments but this requires a lot of careful planning and development and isn't as simple a choice as you make it out to be.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 21:43 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

Yeah, "careful planning and development" being the key words. Totally agree with that part.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 5:35 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

The reason people talk about GNOME 3 and not about, say, Enlightenment or LXDE, is that (1) GNOME has been promoted as the "official" desktop for Linux and GNU (the G stands for GNU), (2) Red Hat, which is seen as the single biggest pusher of Linux development, is solidly behind GNOME. I'm old enough to remember when both of these were resented: KDE was clearly far ahead, but had genuine licensing issues. Those issues were resolved, and for a while GNOME 2 and KDE 3 were more-or-less equally "standard" desktops. Then KDE4 came and cost KDE a lot of users, to the point that it is now more a hobbyist alternative for those who don't like GNOME. GNOME 2 became the standard, the desktop that nearly all new Linux users were introduced to.

And now you're forcing all those users to change. "If you don't like GNOME 3, use MATE" doesn't really work the same way as "If you don't like Enlightenment 17, use Enlightenment 16". The latter is a choice made by informed users, the former is a default imposed on uninformed users. Steve Jobs could get away with dictating choices and saying "users don't know what they want". But most others who try that kind of arrogance regret it.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 5:40 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

ps - the result is a new fragmentation of desktops. Ubuntu dropped GNOME 3 for Unity. Linux Mint went with Cinnamon. KDE4 made GNOME2 the standard, and now GNOME3 is making the field open again. I'm not complaining, just saying :)

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 6:02 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Red Hat doesn't have much of a focus or market share on Linux on the consumer desktop. There are other distros that are more targeted on that such as Ubuntu and they are pushing Unity very heavily and you, yourself acknowledge that by admitting that there are many choices and the field is more open than ever. So users can and do chose whatever they like and that is very much evident. It is absurd to suggest that there is somehow some imposition on you or anyone else to use GNOME.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 7:41 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

If that is true, why on earth are they paying people to work on Gnome 3?

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 9:01 UTC (Fri) by tuna (guest, #44480) [Link]

Probably because RedHat wants to sell a really good desktop product/service in the future.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 13:13 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Ah, your position seems to be there are so alternatives, why the fuss? You don't realise that most people who use Linux at work don't get a choice of desktop. And, till recently, what they got -- on Red Hat, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and others -- was GNOME 2 (you could use another environment on all these systems if you wanted, but not if you weren't the sysadmin -- at least, not easily). One could say that the market is working because people are moving to alternatives, and people should just quit whining about GNOME 3 and use the alternatives. Fair enough. But you should also see where the dissatisfaction is coming from. It's not just RHEL customers.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 15:56 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

In most organizations that deploy Linux that I am aware of (which isn't the majority of Linux usage at all), if you are willing to manage your systems on your own, you get to chose what you install (unless you are a sales person or customer facing role) and besides, most distros have different choices for default already and RHEL customers can and do install KDE by default on their systems roughly 1/2 of the time. So yeah, no need to fuss.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 4, 2013 3:58 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Unless you were happy with Gnome 2 of course. People who grew accustomed to Gnome 2 have good reason to complain.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 4, 2013 4:26 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Not really. GNOME 2 UI is preserved reasonably well in classic mode or the MATE project.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 4, 2013 11:38 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (guest, #60784) [Link]

People don't want "reasonably well". They want "perfectly" - and they're not being unreasonable by wanting that.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 4, 2013 15:21 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

MATE reflects GNOME 2 UI perfectly because it *is* GNOME 2. You are grasping at straws so badly.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 6, 2013 1:11 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

MATE is *not* GNOME 2. The code is forked from GNOME 2, but the user experience is quite different, because:

a) You have to recreate all your settings (they had to rename the gconf keys)

b) You have to relearn what application names correspond to what applications, because they had to change all of them.

It is definitely not a smooth replacement. Particularly not with those users less capable of helping themselves.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 13, 2013 5:19 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

We are talking about different things. MATE is literally a fork of GNOME 2 and has the same user interface. You are talking about implementation details like name changes etc which shouldn't really matter much to non technical users since they just point and click generic names such as "File Manager".

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 13, 2013 12:12 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

If it is your contention that the labels that are attached to things in the interface the user interacts with and are visible to them, or that labels in the underlying state that records preferences the user has set, is not a functional part of the UI, then I would not agree with you. I suspect I wouldn't be the only one.

I, for one, am a little confused in MATE at remembering which applications are which. That is not all MATEs' fault either.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 13, 2013 15:45 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

I suppose that is dependent on how the UI is setup. I never had to care about what the program name actually is for the most part. Some distributions show the program name directly and others don't but settings could have been migrated automatically. It is just a mechanical process and a one time thing.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 4, 2013 16:53 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

I am so utterly uninterested in "preservation".

I am also uninterested in learning all new everything every five years.

A middle ground seems like the ideal target to shoot for, no?

Gotta say, if I were on the Gnome team, I'd be rather embarrassed that the MATE project even exists.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 4, 2013 17:48 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

"Middle ground" sounds good for some people but I think the newer UI in GNOME Shell and Unity etc are definitely worth exploring. I don't see MATE as a problem for GNOME anymore than the existence of GNOME represents a failure for KDE. On the contrary, I think the existence of MATE leaves GNOME 3 out to try something different. If MATE becomes more popular over time, GNOME as a project can and should reevaluate their decisions.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 6, 2013 14:19 UTC (Sat) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

As long as Gnome is an experimental plaything, it will make a miserable production desktop. If exploration is your goal then that's fine, I just wish the Gnome project would be clear about that. Then I wouldn't have deployed it on my neighbors' computers (way to confirm some of the bad things they've heard about Linux, argh).

MATE is already shockingly popular. If it's not a clear indication that Gnome as a project should reevaluate their decisions, what more will it take?

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 6, 2013 14:37 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

I don't know how productive you are but it works fine for many of us as I have already noted and I would refrain from blanket statements like that if I were you. Exploring a different path doesn't make it an experimental desktop. As far as MATE being "shockingly popular", that lacks any real references. We will have to see the impact of classic mode in 3.8 as well.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 6, 2013 18:09 UTC (Sat) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

I stand behind my statement that exploratory playthings make miserable production desktops. User retraining is not time well spent. If you disagree, I'd love to hear the rationale.

As you know, nobody can quote meaningful Linux desktop install numbers. But check out the # of commits to MATE and the vitality of the forum: http://forums.mate-desktop.org/ . It's motivated quite a number of people. That's got to mean something to you, no?

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 6, 2013 23:14 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

"Exploratory playthings" has nothing to do with what I am talking about. Also # of commits is not indicative of popularity of the desktop environment itself and one cannot claim MATE is shockingly popular without any meaningful way to quantify it.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 8, 2013 16:30 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

You know very well there's no way to meaningfully quantify desktop numbers so I'm not quite sure why you're asking for them.

Since you seem to want me to be pedantic, this is what I meant by "shockingly popular": I thought MATE would stall out after a year or two but I'm shocked that its releases are still coming steadily and rapidly, meaningful commits are landing, the forums are lively, and they've made some real architectural fixes." Overall, qutie impressive. Does that make sense?

So, allow me to ask again... What more will it take for you to notice that MATE is "becoming more popular over time"?

I guess we must agree to disagree on whether Gnome 3 was a pretty experimental release. Was there much user testing that I'm not aware of? If so, I'd love to see the reports.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 8, 2013 17:16 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

I ask for some way to quantify it (not just numbers) to make a point. You cannot claim something is "shockingly popular" based on the fact that you assumed it will die quietly. I see the desktop environments as popular when more distribution ship it by default.

Yes, we clearly disagree and if the only way for you to accept a desktop environment as non experimental is user studies, all modern desktop environments in Linux are experimental.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 9, 2013 2:06 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Did you miss this? "its releases are still coming steadily and rapidly, meaningful commits are landing, the forums are lively, and they've made some real architectural fixes. Overall, qutie impressive." I'm not quite sure why you only responded to my throwaway lead-in statement.

Guess I'll ask another time: what more would you like to see?

Obviously I'll accept a desktop environment if it continues to work the way it always has (hopefully with good, evolutionary changes). But throwing away existing muscle memory and going a completely new direction? Yes, that sounds pretty experimental, doesn't it?

Unless you did user testing / prereleases+feedback / etc first. Then it would be far less bold of an experiment. Was this the case?

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 9, 2013 16:24 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

I already answered your question on what I would like to see but you seem to have ignored that entirely. I am not sure why. Also as I indicated already, I dont agree with you on your assumption that a new direction implies experimental. Repeating yourself isn't going to convince me at all. Sorry.

It would good to see more user studies published regardless on KDE 4, GNOME 3, Unity etc. Sun did that with GNOME 1 a long time back and Novell did with SUSE a few years ago (betterdesktop.org) and Canonical seems to be doing that sporadically with Unity but there is no concentrated effort and I don't expect to see that happen unless Linux on the desktop starts to make a lot more money than it does. So, good luck with that.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 11, 2013 1:25 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

I totally understand you don't think the Gnome 3 release was experimental. I just don't understand why you think that. It has a number of characteristics that make it look real exploratory to me and not a lot of rigor to indicate a methodical approach. Help me out here?

Yes, you answered, "I ask for some way to quantify it." I provided a number of ways: number of forum posts, consistent release schedule, consistent commit rate (that you discounted), and presence of major architectural fixes. Are any of these acceptable? I get the impression you're looking for magic numbers that you know no human can reasonably provide (hope that's a wrong impression of course).

I think Linux on the Desktop will get tracktion once Gnome/KDE/Unity/other settle down and start producing complete, reliable, long-term releases. Until that happens, it doesn't have chance. And, since that's never happened, I'm not holding my breath for it ever happening in the future. Ah well.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 11, 2013 1:51 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

There is certainly a good amount of design documentation published on the ideas and they are all public if you want to understand the rationale better. It might not convince you that they are "correct" but may be helpful if you want to know why. It is not a set of random changes as you seem to assume.

I don't think any of the metrics you have provided have much to do with popularity with users. They are reasonable indicators that the development community is likely to sustain itself better than you might have estimated. Popcorn numbers for instance are numbers that actually indicate popularity among users. Fedora, Ubuntu etc have some other ways of figuring out the same thing. Bug reports are actually quite a good indicator of user popularity as well. Number of Linux distributions shipping with it by default is a good indicator too.

GNOME, KDE etc were doing incremental changes for nearly a decade and Linux desktop market share didn't really grow much. It is pretty naive to claim that. It has a lot more to do with revenue models, commercial OEM relationships etc.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 17, 2013 2:47 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Are you talking about https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design and its siblings? They have a lot of what but seem somewhat short on why. Ferexample, I'd be very interested why hot corners are promoted. They're not discoverable, not usable on touchscreens or multiple monitor setups, somewhat startling, not very accessible, and haven't been popular among other OSes (Win8's maligned charms menu notwithstanding). Is there data that demonstrates that they are actually a good idea? The Gnome3ers I know just hit the Windows button.

A second question I'm interested in: why copy the iPad's top bar?

I agree 100% that the Linux desktop has had putrid traction so far but that's no reason to abandon steady evolution and start making big, unfriendly changes... That would seem pretty naive too. Besides, history is full of iterative successes. It's perfectly sensible to keep chipping away at a sculpture until everyone can see its beauty.

So, which is the more appropriate approach for Gnome 3? We shall forever disagree.

Bug reports have the obvious problem that, if a platform is stable and working well, they are less likely to appear. Also, I haven't been very happy with Debian's popcon (good post) -- are Ubuntu's or Fedora's better?

Is solid quantification hopeless??

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 17, 2013 3:04 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

I don't know if all the relevant material is linked from that wiki but a google search turns up a lot more including several at https://blogs.gnome.org/mccann/ and https://afaikblog.wordpress.com/ and gnome design mailing list archives. For specific questions, gnome design IRC channel might be a venue.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 17, 2013 21:35 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

I can't take McCann's blog. It reads like a Portlandia parody. If it is considered Gnome design documentation then that certainly explains Gnome 3.

Day's blog is actually readable but, again, it's all WHAT and zero WHY. It's full of adrenalin with very little rigor.

These blogs just reinforce the notion that Gnome3 is a big experiment.

And, alas, neither of them discusses hot corners or copying the iPad top bar so I'm still curious about those. I'm not interested in IRC but thanks for the suggestion.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 17, 2013 21:47 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Blog posts aren't design documentation as such but do provide more info. If you are unwilling to talk to designers either via their mailing list or IRC, I don't think you will get the answers to specific questions. All the best

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 17, 2013 22:02 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

So there's NO design documentation with rationales? The whole GNOME 3 situation suddenly starts making sense....

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 17, 2013 22:07 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

There certainly is and I have provided enough references at this point but design documents don't typically answer questions like what bronson seems to be looking for. Windows or Mac or Android UI design documents don't do that either.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 17, 2013 22:35 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

We don't have internal Android or Windows design documents. And it seems that they simple don't even _exist_ for GNOME.

BTW, Unity actually has pretty good design documents for its core features (for example: http://design.canonical.com/2011/03/introducing-overlay-s... ) with rationales and explanations. I don't like the overall Unity L&F but I can't argue that it has at least been designed with some semblance of sanity.

Mobile plans?

Posted Apr 17, 2013 23:36 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

I don't know what "internal" means in this context since GNOME is a open source project and all the designs have been published long before any code has been written. More early docs at http://people.gnome.org/~mccann/shell/design/ for example.

It is fairly a uncommon thing in Linux desktop UI. I don't find anything similar for KDE 4 for instance.

Mobile plans?

Posted May 8, 2013 18:17 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

I'm not looking for much, just some indication that the Gnome team approached Gnome 3 in a consistent, nuanced way. Everything I've seen implies that a few people said "hey, let's copy the iPad's top bar and Windows 8's metro experience because yeah it's cool!!!" And, to be honest, the blog posts you linked to reinforce that notion.

It's absolutely fine to do experimental things. But, when you do, own it. Be upfront about the status and give users who disagree with the experiment an easy way out (like Apple does). Then everybody can be happy.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 11:18 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

This is a good point. In fact I don't like touchwiz, so on my Samsung phone I have replaced it with zeam. And I have configured it the way I like.

Android lets users tweak to their hearts content, replacing entire components if necessary (even without rooting). iOS may do a better "default" job but if you don't like the defaults you're out of luck. GNOME, it has been clear for a long time, is trying to emulate Apple. But Android is growing much faster than iOS, and with Jelly Bean, many reviews say that it is superior to iOS in many ways, out of the box without tweaking.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 12:11 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

GNOME is not only copying Apple. They're also intending to copy Android. Think of the sharing that is so easy on Android and apparently not even available on iOS.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 3:40 UTC (Fri) by Kit (guest, #55925) [Link]

Sharing is integrated pretty uniformly in iOS, with a rather consistent interface from what I've seen.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 7:16 UTC (Fri) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]

"People hate gnome 3 not for just an unfamiliar UI, but the overall attitude the devs took in building the shell with inflexible designs."

Tell that message to casual users who have no problem using Gnome Shell. Most of them only wanted to use browsers, email and gaming.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 11:21 UTC (Thu) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]

> The thing is, *most* people also want something familiar

When Windows 95 appeared nobody among people I new complained about the switch from the Program Manager GUI of Windows 3.1 to the task bar at the bottom with a start button. The new interface was faster and easier to use in almost all tasks and time to to adjust to it was non-existent.

So a new interface can be very unfamiliar, but as long as it is perceived as a clear win, people would rarely complain. The trouble with Gnome Shell and Windows 8 is that the new GUI was a regression for many tasks and work flows.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 12:09 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

Counter argument is also easy to make: Microsoft Office 2007+ ribbon interface. Loads and loads of complains, but love at the same time.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 17:05 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Office 2007 caused lots of regressions in the UI workflow of lots of people. Arguably, it caused these regressions for good reasons but still.

Win95 did not cause any significant regressions so people were OK with it.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 21:42 UTC (Thu) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

> Win95 did not cause any significant regressions so people were OK with it.

The only one that I recall was putting the 'close window' icon on the far right side of the title bar. I inadvertently closed a lot of windows before I got used to that. Eventually it seemed natural.

On the other hand, I have never gotten used to Apple's document-centric user interface, despite having used OS X at work for years now. So it seems that not all user interface indiscretions are healed by time.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 21:45 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

They've left the windows menu on the left side of the titlebar, though. So it's not a regression per se, but a somewhat confusing new functionality.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 12:29 UTC (Thu) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

"nobody among people I new complained about the switch from the Program Manager GUI of Windows 3.1 to the task bar at the bottom with a start button."

While, on the other hand, everyone I knew complained about it, and ridiculed the start button -- "only with Microsoft, I have to click Start to stop" was my dad's comment at the time.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 12:46 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (guest, #60784) [Link]

Yes, I remember that exact complaint about "Start to shut down" too :)

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 13:04 UTC (Thu) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]

Surely there were complains, but I do not remember a valid GUI regression cases when a new way to perform frequently used task was slower. Re-learning was quick as there was a clear point of doing that. This is just not the case with Gnome Shell-type GUI. There some tasks are faster, but there are way too many regression cases compared with a task bar.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 29, 2013 22:45 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Why on earth would I want a task bar when I can just arrow to the application window I want to use?

If you really want to have a task bar in Gnome shell then just get one. The whole operation takes a total of about 15 seconds to accomplish.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 31, 2013 14:32 UTC (Sun) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]

Because a task bar doesn't require you to execute an extra action, then try to find a tiny preview window out of a blurp of always-moving-around windows? Because it is always there so you know stuff is available instead of making you hunt for windows? I've had the option to slam my mouse to the top-left of my screen for 5 years and while it looks fancy and I tried using it, it never stuck. Simply because it is an inferior solution. Maybe it works for some people, but most certainly not for everyone. This has nothing to do with GNOME shell or any kind of hate - it's just a practical fact. If this would be a good solution, I'd be using it already for a long, long time.

Note that showing window previews on alt-TAB with a similar layout DOES work for me, but this isn't available in Shell :(

BTW the extension offering a taskbar is a crappy one - no drag and drop of tasks to virtual desktops, no switching between applications through scrolling... That extension is no replacement (and typical for the state of most extensions in my experience). It's why I removed GNOME Shell 3.6 again from my laptop - it's not there yet. Let's see if 3.8 will do any better - but I won't be trying it for a while.

Mobile plans?

Posted Mar 28, 2013 13:16 UTC (Thu) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link]

Hey, the winners write history. And Windows won, so obviously nobody ever complained it. Just like nobody ever complained about how awesome GNOME 2, KDE 2, KDE 3 or KDE 4 were when they were introduced. And in the future, when GNOME 4 comes around, nobody will have ever complained about GNOME 3 either.