GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

[Posted April 1, 2011 by jake]

From:		Vincent Untz <vuntz-AT-gnome.org>
To:		devel-announce-list-AT-gnome.org, gnome-announce-list-AT-gnome.org
Subject:		GNOME 3.0 Rescheduled for September 2011 Release
Date:		Fri, 1 Apr 2011 07:04:13 +0200
Message-ID:		<20110401050413.GM27272@vuntz.net>
Archive‑link:		Article

GNOME Friends,

The release team met this week at the Bangalore hackfest, and after much
discussion, took the decision that it is in our best interest to delay
3.0 to September. We had a call with the Board to explain the
motivations, and the Board fully supports this decision.

This was obviously not an easy decision to take, but several factors
lead to this delay:

   - the number of freeze break requests
   - some modules seeing merge of branches with more than 10000 lines of
     changes
   - the constant changes in the design
   - a platform that is moving in new directions (with GTK+ 4 coming
     soon, for example)

To keep the focus on 3.0, we are not proposing to release GNOME 2.34
next week. However, a new module proposals period will open for 3.0, and
we are committed to carefully consider the forthcoming proposals,
including alternate desktop shells.

You can read the full press release about this:
  http://www.gnome.org/press/releases/2011-04-gnome-3.0-res...

Thanks,

Vincent

-- 
Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.
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GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 13:47 UTC (Fri) by mclasen@redhat.com (subscriber, #31786) [Link] (6 responses)

April fools

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 14:01 UTC (Fri) by jake (editor, #205) [Link] (5 responses)

> April fools

I certainly wondered. Other than the date, though, I didn't find any of the usual "foolishness" that distinguishes such things. If GNOME wanted this to be taken as a prank, they probably should have been a bit more obvious. I guess we'll see ...

jake

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 14:09 UTC (Fri) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link] (1 responses)

Given the level of scepticism everyone (let alone journalists!) should adopt on Annual Internet Dickhead Day, and the liberal sprinkling throughout this email of mistruths and what could, at a stretch, be described as "jokes"... I am gobsmacked that LWN posted it.

As a matter of contrast, I was (merely) surprised to see that "OMG! Ubuntu!" fell for it. ;-)

Not a comparison I thought I'd ever make!

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 2, 2011 4:46 UTC (Sat) by nzjrs (guest, #35911) [Link]

Lol, my thoughts exactly

It's a shame because I usually use LWN as an example of good tech reporting and omgubuntu as an example of a terrible one.

But they both fell for this... what a pity

(the alternative desktop shells part was a clear giveaway, it's like red meat to the shell haters)

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 14:09 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Oh come. The Mozilla announcement casting doubts on the 'technical underpinnings' of Gnome Shell? If that's for real, run far, far away from Gnome. And which horizon has Gtk4 appeared on, yet?

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 14:23 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/devel-announce-list/2011-A...
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/devel-announce-list/2011-A...

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 3, 2011 7:20 UTC (Sun) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]

This was a rather poorly done April Fools as it had no outlandish elements (usually introduced towards the end), and it wasn't amusing or shocking. Unless you closely follow the GNOME project in detail, it just seemed like another boring 'release delayed' announcement. Contrast this with many other April Fools stories from Google et al.

So I can quite understand why LWN posted this as a serious story - the fault lies with the author of the announcement...

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 13:53 UTC (Fri) by neonux (guest, #74014) [Link] (9 responses)

If this is an April fools it is too sad/realistic to be funny.
If this is for real, it is just nonsense to announce this today.

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 14:05 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (8 responses)

It is clearly a joke - but does that imply that they are confident the release will NOT be delayed?

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 14:07 UTC (Fri) by xxiao (guest, #9631) [Link] (6 responses)

i wish it's true, learn from KDE4 release...

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 15:25 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (5 responses)

I haven't tried the betas, so I can't say if I wish it were true, but I certainly wouldn't see any problem with it being delayed.

I see no pressure to stick to pin 3.0 to a rigid timeline. If it's ready in June, great. If it's ready in September, or in 2012, great.

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 17:21 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (4 responses)

I am using Fedora 15 Alpha, which has the best Gnome 3.0 setup I can find and I can say with all honesty and candor that it's in a better shape then Ubuntu's Unity... which is suppose to be out this month.

It's a simplistic interface, but using it comes very naturally after a week or so. The application menu is now finally useful and far far better design then old Gnome-shell versions I used in the past.

The weakest part of the interface so far is that the multiple desktops makes it a bit too hard to find applications running on different desktops. You can easily click on the application icon to bring up the entire application, but often you are instinctively looking at the windows for content, not application. The reason it's slow is because the vertical line of desktop images along the right side auto-hides. I can understand the logic, it seems likely that the designers wanted it to be out of the way to avoid confusing inexperienced users as well as saving space on small displays, but it adds a extra step to selecting windows that slows the workflow down.

I have never been a fan of auto-hide panels, though. If they don't want to make it a configurable option, then it might be a good idea to make heuristic decision on screen size to decide if it is hiding or not.

I expect that people that prefer to use click-file-to-launch approach to starting applications (as opposed to open application, menu to select file) are going to be irritated by inability to embed links to folders and such in their tool bar or their desktop. Gone completely is any notion of a folder-as-a-desktop.

Themes are going to be a problem for a lot of people. GTK2 applications integrate naturally into the desktop, but gtk2 themes are not supported by gtk3 applications, as far as I can tell. I am not sure about this. GTK3 themeing seems a lot better and easier then gtk2 theming, but for now you have to do both.

But it should not be a big deal to port applications from GTK2 to GTK3, I assume... since gtk3 is less of a revolution and more of a evolution of gtk2. I am sure that somebody else can comment better then I.

Things seem to be fast and I am not experiencing any of the same visual glitches and whatnot that I experience with Unity.

I am disappointed that I don't see any Zeitgeist integration for Fedora yet. I don't understand why this is so as it seems that zeitgeist and search are suppose to be core elements to Gnome 3.0.

I really see no sign of KDE4-ness here.

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 18:30 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

I expect Zeitgeist in the development versions of GNOME 3.2. Currently there is a branch and some integration with a few modules. Zeitgeist makes a lot possible and that has to be done in a way that is clearly better than anything before.

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 18:50 UTC (Fri) by xxiao (guest, #9631) [Link] (2 responses)

what about the embedded javascript engine that Mozilla stops supporting while Gnome Shell depends on...

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 18:56 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

Last time I checked there was no plans to stop supporting the embedded javascript engine from Mozilla. Their recent announcement was about something else.

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 2, 2011 11:23 UTC (Sat) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]

That is correct. Support for embedding the JS engine is unchanged.

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 14:07 UTC (Fri) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link]

I think 5 days to launch if they don't have a good idea now then there's a serious problem.

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 15:52 UTC (Fri) by codewiz (subscriber, #63050) [Link] (2 responses)

For a moment I had really hoped that they'd give GNOME 3 more time to solve all the outstanding maturity and usability issues I'm still seeing in rawhide.

Delaying a release for QA reasons isn't good news, but it's still better than repeating the KDE4 fiasco by releasing code that isn't quite ready.

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 18:27 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

What maturity and usability issues do you see?

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 2, 2011 13:53 UTC (Sat) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]

Rawhide is a bit neglected right now, with development focus being on the Fedora 15 release branch. Some packages in Rawhide are actually older than on F-15!

I'd advise tracking F-15 if you want to experience GNOME 3.

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 16:31 UTC (Fri) by mfedyk (guest, #55303) [Link] (3 responses)

Why did they have to joke about good news?

This "joke" is likely to bite them in the behind (be a source of ridicule) if in fact they don't give gnome 3 more time to mature.

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 17:41 UTC (Fri) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link] (1 responses)

No kidding. Many of us would be glad to see Gnome 3.0 delayed until Ragnarok, not just until September.

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 18:34 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

Hehe.. just ignore GNOME 3.0 then :) We'll move to GNOME 3.2, 3.4, etc anyways. Hopefully GNOME 4.0 at one point.

GNOME 3.0 delayed until September

Posted Apr 1, 2011 18:33 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link]

We'll still do a GNOME 3.2 in 6 months. If you do not want to use it now, just wait 6 months. Hopefully with integrated Zeitgeist.

Yah...

Posted Apr 1, 2011 19:01 UTC (Fri) by csigler (subscriber, #1224) [Link] (7 responses)

"... um, I'm gonna need you to funny-up that April Fools announcement before it goes out for publication.... It's a bit lacking in the obvious chuckle department and might be seen as being real news by a few influential readers.... So if you could take care of that by 8 AM tomorrow morning...."

(Seriously, IMHO this is a poorly done April Fools. It's impossible to lampoon your own project and have it be recognized as a joke when other people outside the project are lampooning it at the same time. Humor fail.)

Clemmitt

Yah...

Posted Apr 1, 2011 19:35 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (6 responses)

No idea what you meant with Lampoon, so I looked it up and it said "Publicly criticize".

I still do not get your meaning. Could you explain what you are trying to say?

I'll try to explain....

Posted Apr 1, 2011 19:57 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] (4 responses)

Simple: It's not funny.

There's a difference between a lie and a joke. Every April 1 I wish people understood that difference.

Amen.

Posted Apr 1, 2011 20:02 UTC (Fri) by hollis (subscriber, #6768) [Link]

It doesn't help that many geeks are humor-challenged.

I'll try to explain....

Posted Apr 1, 2011 21:11 UTC (Fri) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link] (2 responses)

You do realize that the whole point of an April *Fools* prank is to fool people into believing some lie? It's not about being a comedian.

I'll try to explain....

Posted Apr 1, 2011 21:36 UTC (Fri) by csigler (subscriber, #1224) [Link] (1 responses)

I would reply to your comment by quoting rfunk's post above, but the resulting recursion would just knock lwn.net offline, and none of us want that.

Clemmitt

I'll try to explain....

Posted Apr 1, 2011 23:59 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

Or quoting hollis's post.

Yah...

Posted Apr 1, 2011 21:01 UTC (Fri) by csigler (subscriber, #1224) [Link]

> No idea what you meant with Lampoon, so I looked it up
> and it said "Publicly criticize".
>
> I still do not get your meaning. Could you explain what
> you are trying to say?

If you've heard of an American magazine and related movie series titled "National Lampoon," it'll give you an idea of how I used the word. I meant it more in the vein of, "a biting and/or satirical swipe intended as a joke."

I believe I shouldn't have written a comment that was belittling, for which I apologize.

Clemmitt