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

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Apr 6, 2011 17:21 UTC (Wed) by mfedyk (guest, #55303)
In reply to: The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience by sramkrishna
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

> if we didn't try something new, the whole thing is going to be dead in a couple years.

You have to be kidding me.

You know some of us don't actually have a flat screen monitor yet. My screen size ratio is 3x4 at 1024x768 on a 17" monitor.

How about using less memory? or...
- faster, make it awesome on 10 year old hardware too

- fix using alt+tab while dragging (most of my windows are full screen, so dragging between apps means switching foreground windows at the same time)

- fix the problems that happen when various parts of the the desktop crash or are kill -9ed. (why do my icons move around in the panel even when they are locked?)

- fix all of the dialogs that are too tall to fit in smaller screens (think netbooks, or systems set to 640x480 for accessibility reasons or have larger fonts set.

- merge metacity and compiz and make sure 2d only works just fine (test it on an old Pentium III with an ati video card)

- fix the system monitor applet so it doesn't get stuck when a remote sshfs filesystem gets stuck

- change the list of cities in the weather applet so they are grouped by smaller areas like counties (in the US) instead of just state.

- convert mono based apps to java, scala, vala, etc. and remove any reference to mono in gnome. (the sun of freedom may be setting in the Java space, but it is better than .net, or use something that isn't JVM based.)

Gnome 3 should have been a branch and the 2.x mainline development should not have stopped until gnome 3 was ready to be merged.

Seriously, it's like gnome merged reiser4 or something...

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The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Apr 6, 2011 19:11 UTC (Wed) by Darkmere (subscriber, #53695) [Link] (2 responses)

> You have to be kidding me.

You've got to be trolling me?

I won't do a point for point rebuttal, there's simply no need for it.

> * fix using alt+tab while dragging (most of my windows are full screen, so dragging between apps means switching foreground windows at the same time)

That's an interesting bug, should probably be fixed, yes. If you don't have a bug number already, tell me and I'll file it.

> * fix the problems that happen when various parts of the the desktop crash or are kill -9ed. (why do my icons move around in the panel even when they are locked?)

Already fixed. But why are you expecting things to shut down cleanly when you do not shut it down, cleanly?

> * fix all of the dialogs that are too tall to fit in smaller screens (think netbooks, or systems set to 640x480 for accessibility reasons or have larger fonts set. )

640x isn't even a usable resolution any more, most definitely not for "accessibility" reasons. However, 1024x600 resolutions are quite common on netbooks.

> * merge metacity and compiz

Why? Merging two active and distinctly separated codebases with different development policies is not a pretty option, just look at the mess it causes in kvm/qemu and similar developments. This is just you wanting others to do gruntjob for no good reason, so you can sit around and feel superior that you were such a good idea person.

> * make sure 2d only works just fine

Sure, it does, tested and working.

> * fix the system monitor applet so it doesn't get stuck when a remote sshfs filesystem gets stuck

Fixed. No more bonobo-applets, no more issues.

> * change the list of cities in the weather applet so they are grouped by smaller areas like counties (in the US) instead of just state.

That's depending on datasets import, most probably you'll have to file a bug with weather.com or weather underground.

Or perhaps just move, Seems like a reasonable solution, letting you do the work rather than you telling others what to do with bias and poor reason?

> * convert mono based apps to java, scala, vala, etc. and remove any reference to mono in gnome. (the sun of freedom may be setting in the Java space, but it is better than .net, or use something that isn't JVM based.)

Once again, going on about changing something from a negative bias. Second system syndrome and everything. In one side you _complain_ when they do it, claiming gnome-shell is horrible and bad and they should never have done it. And then you want them to do it on _other_ things, except there should be no visible change, and all the behaviours should be the same, just so you can feel smug and superior.

Rewriting code just in order to change the platform it's running on is never a good option. You introduce a lot of regressions and changes for marginal gains. Once again you want others to do a lot of work for no gain and no reason, other than your own self esteemed of being a managerial idea person.

> * Gnome 3 should have been a branch and the 2.x mainline development should not have stopped until gnome 3 was ready to be merged.

It was a branch, and it was merged when it was decided to be ready, then work continued on it.

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Apr 6, 2011 19:56 UTC (Wed) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> > fix the problems that happen when various parts of the the desktop crash or are kill -9ed. (why do my icons move around in the panel even when they are locked?)
> Already fixed. But why are you expecting things to shut down cleanly when you do not shut it down, cleanly?

I've seen a similar issue with desktop icons/widgets in KDE4. The expectation isn't that processes shut down cleanly during a crash or when they're killed. The expectation is that updates to the saved configuration happen only when you specifically alter the layout, such that an unclean shutdown should generally have no effect on the saved layout. In particular, programs shouldn't wait for a clean shutdown to save configuration changes.

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Apr 8, 2011 19:29 UTC (Fri) by mfedyk (guest, #55303) [Link]

> > > if we didn't try something new, the whole thing is going to be dead in a couple years.
> > You have to be kidding me.
> You've got to be trolling me?

The implication was that gnome 2.x was done, and it certainly was not.

> > * fix using alt+tab while dragging (most of my windows are full screen, so dragging between apps means switching foreground windows at the same time)
> That's an interesting bug, should probably be fixed, yes. If you don't have a bug number already, tell me and I'll file it.

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135056

> > * fix all of the dialogs that are too tall to fit in smaller screens (think netbooks, or systems set to 640x480 for accessibility reasons or have larger fonts set. )
> 640x isn't even a usable resolution any more, most definitely not for "accessibility" reasons. However, 1024x600 resolutions are quite common on netbooks.

I'll let you tell that one to some of the co-workers I have had in the past. Good luck.

> > * fix the problems that happen when various parts of the the desktop crash or are kill -9ed. (why do my icons move around in the panel even when they are locked?)
> Already fixed. But why are you expecting things to shut down cleanly when you do not shut it down, cleanly?
If I add an item in a list, I do not expect that doing so will randomize the list if I don't close the program down safely.

> > * merge metacity and compiz
> Why? Merging two active and distinctly separated codebases with different development policies is not a pretty option, just look at the mess it causes in kvm/qemu and similar developments. This is just you wanting others to do gruntjob for no good reason, so you can sit around and feel superior that you were such a good idea person.

Because even though I have an ATI video card with good, working open source drivers, I end up switching back to metacity from compiz whenever I need to get work done. Compiz just doesn't have many of the usability enhancements that have been in metacity for a long time.

> > * Gnome 3 should have been a branch and the 2.x mainline development should not have stopped until gnome 3 was ready to be merged.
> It was a branch, and it was merged when it was decided to be ready, then work continued on it.

Gnome 2.x was 90% of the way there, now it is abandoned and any fixes will only be seen in enterprise distro patches (if any).