Shell and Zeitgeist: the future of GNOME?

Posted Apr 24, 2009 21:42 UTC (Fri) by jayavarman (guest, #19600)
In reply to: Shell and Zeitgeist: the future of GNOME? by sebas
Parent article: Shell and Zeitgeist: the future of GNOME?

Yes, it is using Clutter. My understanding is that there won't be fallbacks, unless someone comes up with an implementation that doesn't jeopardize the current design and leanness of the code.

This is 2009 after all and a new desktop shouldn't compromise on old hardware. For older hardware you have alternatives like XFCE.

Why would you not want to use compositing?

to post comments

Shell and Zeitgeist: the future of GNOME?

Posted Apr 24, 2009 23:31 UTC (Fri) by ikm (subscriber, #493) [Link] (4 responses)

Well let me tell you something. Here I have some freakin' Nvidia 7800GT, and my thought was that with a card that powerful, a 2D-composited desktop with some simple 3D effects should totally fly with, like, 300 fps. But here I am, with KDE4, and that doesn't look too smooth at all. Yes, it's bearable, even to the point that I decided to leave this hush-mush on, but jeez, sometimes I just want to run IceWM for a change. It's SO much more responsive. Which makes me wonder, is it really 2009 or what?

Shell and Zeitgeist: the future of GNOME?

Posted Apr 25, 2009 2:03 UTC (Sat) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (3 responses)

Have you tried the latest Nvidia drivers? With 180.29 and up, I have had no problems with KDE4 (I have a GeForce 8600M GS).

Shell and Zeitgeist: the future of GNOME?

Posted Apr 25, 2009 9:32 UTC (Sat) by ikm (subscriber, #493) [Link] (2 responses)

That's what I use right now. Somehow I've got the feeling that my notebook's GeForce7400 is better with compiz than my desktop 7800GT.

Point is, compiz and friends are quite demanding, be it year 2009 or not.

Shell and Zeitgeist: the future of GNOME?

Posted Apr 30, 2009 7:33 UTC (Thu) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link] (1 responses)

They are not demanding, NVIDIA just sucks. To say it in short. Even Intel graphics with maybe 1/10th of processing power and bandwidth of your 7800GT works pretty fluently compiz.

By the time these applications are ready, either a) NVIDIA fixes their drivers (very probable, but specific card owners might be left in the cold), b) Nouveau will come to the rescue from binary blobs c) change to FLOSS-friendly manufacturer (AMD, Intel, maybe Via soon).

Shell and Zeitgeist: the future of GNOME?

Posted Apr 30, 2009 8:25 UTC (Thu) by ikm (subscriber, #493) [Link]

Actually, my experience with Intel was a bit worse than with Nvidia. Anyways, drivers or whatnot - my main point is that right now Linux desktop isn't at the place where it can just silently enable Compiz and suppose everything would work nicely. The "try another card" approach doesn't pass muster here.

Shell and Zeitgeist: the future of GNOME?

Posted Apr 25, 2009 10:06 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (9 responses)

Because you want to use 3D? Unless you're one of the roughly 2% of people
who can use DRI2 and kernel modesetting, and possibly even then,
compositing and other apps trying to use OpenGL really don't get on, IIRC.

GNOME 3 is not ready yet

Posted Apr 25, 2009 10:44 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (8 responses)

Unless you're one of the roughly 2% of people who can use DRI2 and kernel modesetting, and possibly even then, compositing and other apps trying to use OpenGL really don't get on, IIRC.

Do you believe that'll be the case 2-3 years down the road? There are enough support to develop this thing now and if you'll be unable to use DRI2 and kernel modesetting when GNOME 3 will be ready it'll be your own fault...

GNOME 3 is not ready yet

Posted Apr 25, 2009 12:21 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (7 responses)

Aha. So everyone has to replace their current machine to use GNOME 3?

I remember when Linux worked well even on machines more than three years
old. (I generally upgrade only every eight years or so, because it takes
that long for the old machine to start to seem slow.)

It's nice to know that this is being comprehensively forgotten.

GNOME 3 is not ready yet

Posted Apr 25, 2009 16:03 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

I generally upgrade only every eight years or so,

Yep. All our desktops at work run Linux, and all of the machines are at least 5 years old. If GNOME stops working on our hardware, we'll switch our non-technical users to something else (probably XFCE.) The developers already stay away from GNOME, so no problems there.

GNOME 3 is not ready yet

Posted Apr 25, 2009 16:36 UTC (Sat) by bronson (guest, #4806) [Link] (5 responses)

Have no fear. This will be like when that awful spatial fad swept the Gnome community. http://www.bytebot.net/geekdocs/spatial-nautilus.html

Gnome discovered (after shipping unfortunately) that spatial actually sucks rocks in general usage. The distros turned off spatial for one release, Nautilus backpedaled, and within 6 months everything was back the way it was.

I also submit Longhorn for your consideration. Microsoft explored and marketed all these exciting new technologies, then jettisoned them all before shipping Vista.

Let the Gnome guys play for now. Hopefully they hit on some really neat new features. And hopefully the distros will paper over their mistakes.

GNOME 3 is not ready yet

Posted Apr 25, 2009 20:28 UTC (Sat) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (4 responses)

> Nautilus backpedaled, and within 6 months everything was back the way it was.

Do you only use Ubuntu for your desktop?

With Fedora and Debian, at least, spatial mode is still the default, and always have been the default since that was introduced by Gnome. As far as I know Ubuntu is the only one that does browser mode by default.

(Of course users can select one or the other)

GNOME 3 is not ready yet

Posted Apr 25, 2009 21:45 UTC (Sat) by bronson (guest, #4806) [Link] (3 responses)

Ack, yes, you caught me. Debian and Centos on the servers, Ubuntu on the desktop. I try Fedora every few releases but I run into graphics (Radeon 3650) and printer (Samsung ML2510) driver issues, too lazy to fix em.

Microsoft and Apple ditched spatial almost a decade ago; I thought Linux had finally caught up. My condolences to anyone who still has to open and drag around 22 separate windows just to find the song you want to play. :)

GNOME 3 is not ready yet

Posted Apr 26, 2009 14:23 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Oh, Samsung's proprietary printer driver is awful. Ditch it and just use
pxlmono...

GNOME 3 is not ready yet

Posted Apr 27, 2009 8:13 UTC (Mon) by dwmw2 (subscriber, #2063) [Link]

"I try Fedora every few releases but I run into graphics (Radeon 3650) and printer (Samsung ML2510) driver issues, too lazy to fix em."

What bug numbers? Seems strange that the same or similar bugs would be present in various releases of Fedora but not also affect other distributions.

That would be a remarkable coincidence, since Fedora stays close to upstream and isn't likely to have broken those things in distro-specific patches.

GNOME 3 is not ready yet

Posted May 1, 2009 15:54 UTC (Fri) by kov (subscriber, #7423) [Link]

Finding songs to play is done by Banshee, for me. Why would I use a file manager for that? =)