The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience [LWN.net]

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 16, 2011 0:38 UTC (Wed) by jcm (subscriber, #18262)
In reply to: The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience by sramkrishna
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

I don't want a 3D desktop, period. I have a 3D capable graphics card so that I can run glxgears occasionally. Once upon a time, I used to play Quake 3, but that's about it. I'm not a gamer and I don't care (at all) about 3D desktop effects, or any of these things. The only reason I can think of for using 3D effects on my desktop is to be distracting, or to look cool in reviews/demos, etc. It's ok that these features exist, but many of us are not asking for them :)

It's a similar story with things like smooth-transition from bootloader to X with KMS. Sure, it's a nice pretty thing, but I don't care at all (the first thing I do is turn off this and go back to a real bootloader setup). One thing I would have liked to see is a Mac-style graphical panic screen. That would actually be useful, but the rest is just pretty dressing to me :)

Jon.

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The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 16, 2011 8:29 UTC (Wed) by alexl (guest, #19068) [Link]

I think using "3D" to describe this is a bit ingenious, as it doesn't at all describe what e.g. gnome-shell does. Its nothing like Quake 3.

However, what gnome-shell does is use the graphics card hardware in the way that modern graphics accelerators really work, not like the previous generation of graphics hardware worked.

Current graphics cards have none of the traditional bitblit or drawing primitives in hardware, and the "native" way to program them is with an API like OpenGL or Direct3D. That doesn't mean you can only program a 3D game using them, it just means that is how you program them.

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 16, 2011 19:59 UTC (Wed) by airlied (subscriber, #9104) [Link] (1 responses)

so you claim you use Mac OSX on weekends because it does things the Linux desktop isn't sufficient for your needs and yet when anyone tries to improve the Linux desktop, you moan like a kid. Go use Mac OSX full time if you like it so much.

You are using a 3D desktop on Mac OSX every time you sit at it. You are seeing a smooth boot when Mac OSX boots. Why be a whiner when Linux tries to be better?

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 16, 2011 21:14 UTC (Wed) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]

we might need some working 3d-enabled graphics/video drivers first ;-)