GNOME 3.2 released

Posted Sep 30, 2011 23:21 UTC (Fri) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698)
In reply to: GNOME 3.2 released by jspaleta
Parent article: GNOME 3.2 released

Suppose Ford offered to upgrade your Mustang to have better engine performance at no cost to you. You drop it off at the dealership. When you return to pick it up, you discover that the steering wheel has been replaced by a joystick. They insist that a joystick is better and that many people like it. You say that you prefer a steering wheel, but they just say that you're in the minority, and that you "made a calculated decision to upgrade", so if you don't like it, it's your own fault.

GNOME 3.2 released

Posted Sep 30, 2011 23:59 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (6 responses)

Are you saying there was something not communicated with regard to the extent of the change? You may not like the changes. And you might not have bothered to ask what was being changed. But if you were unaware that gnome 3.0 was a significant change in UI and not simply a performance boost... then yes its your own fault for not paying attention and not asking questions before making the change...absolutely...yes.

-jef

GNOME 3.2 released

Posted Oct 1, 2011 1:16 UTC (Sat) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (5 responses)

Strange analogy but I'll try to work with it... When the dealership gave the car back, only then did the customer discover that it no longer works on dual-screen setups, no longer works on the Thinkpad x120e, and focus follows mouse has been removed. What should have been a nice little upgrade turned into an 2-day ordeal where the customer had to sell the Mustang for scrap and switch to a Ford Focus XFCE.

Maybe Fedora dropped the ball for not warning: if you use dual screens and focus-follows-mouse then DO NOT UPGRADE!

> its your own fault for not paying attention and not asking questions before making the change

Really? What questions should I have asked before doing the F14->F15 upgrade? Isn't it reasonable to assume that laptops and dual-screen setups will continue to work? They always have in the past. (Well, I can think of one or two _minor_ exceptions like ALSA, but nothing like Fedora 15's break-the-world).

GNOME 3.2 released

Posted Oct 1, 2011 6:15 UTC (Sat) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

I have no idea what you are talking about. Gnome Shell works on my dual screen setup in my office at work using my work laptop. Laptop into a dock with 2 external displays and the laptop screen off. Works like a charm, no regression from F14 and gnome2 on the same hardware. No weird graphics artifacts, overview animations are smooth enough that I don't notice. I haven in fact previously conversed in a previous lwn thread about how I like how the dual head works better than previous design.

Works on my older personal laptop which I'm writing on right now. I haven't tried the s-video output yet, so I can't comment on that functionality. External vga output works dual head with the lcd display.

Works on my wife's laptop, external vga output works dual head with lcd display.

Suspend/resume appears to work on all 3 laptops.

Bugs are bugs. Fedora does not make a zero regression promise, never has...and never will. There are bugs every single Fedora release that cause a hardware regression for someone, considering the complexity of the system you can't lay any particular hardware issues at the feet of Gnome 3 even if it appears to be the cause and the only thing affected.

-jef

GNOME 3.2 released

Posted Oct 1, 2011 15:29 UTC (Sat) by ean5533 (guest, #69480) [Link] (3 responses)

Add me to the list of people that had no trouble using dual monitors in GNOME Shell. Of the three things you listed, two of them are *bugs*, not intentional feature removals. So submit some bug reports.

As for focus-follows-mouse, I have no opinion on the matter because I don't use it. I don't know the usage statistics of FFM, but my instinct tells me that it's rarely a rarely used option (I have no data and will fully accept someone disproving me), which would explain why they've dropped support for it.

But regardless, the responsibility to research feature changes lies with you. The rest of the world is not obligated to enumerate every difference between their new default setup and your current one. It's not as though you were forced to do an upgrade -- you had as much time as you needed to read the numerous reviews and watch videos and read announcements. You could have even loaded F15 into a VM to test it out ahead of time.

Following this silly Mustang analogy: you willingly brought your car to the dealer for an upgrade which you knew nothing about. You didn't try taking an upgraded model for a test drive, nor did you even look at an example of what the upgraded model looked like. You just blindly did the upgrade. So why is this the dealer's fault?

GNOME 3.2 released

Posted Oct 1, 2011 16:07 UTC (Sat) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (2 responses)

> you willingly brought your car to the dealer for an upgrade which you knew nothing about. ... You just blindly did the upgrade. So why is this the dealer's fault?

Because I've bring my car in for this maintenance every six months without trouble. The dealer knew that this one was going to be brutal but didn't say anything ahead of time and had no plans for expected problems.

You can't seriously be suggesting end-users should bench-test every new release in a VM? What a waste of time that would be! The day distros demonstrate this much contempt for their users is the day I'll reluctantly buy a Mac.

According to the Gnome team, focus-follows-mouse wasn't dropped. The release notes mention fixes in 3.2.

GNOME 3.2 released

Posted Oct 1, 2011 17:41 UTC (Sat) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (1 responses)

On re-reading, I realize my post is too one-sided. Just wanted to make it clear that I'm not saying that Gnome or Fedora have all blame here, just some of it. Next time, when presented by a huge upgrade like this, I hope they spend some time to make the transition go smoother. Flag days will always suck.

Fallback mode was good but seems to have suffered a lot of the same driver problems as Gnome 3.

GNOME 3.2 released

Posted Oct 1, 2011 18:21 UTC (Sat) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

Fallback mode uses exactly the same driver paths as Gnome 2 did.

GNOME 3.2 released

Posted Oct 1, 2011 0:00 UTC (Sat) by ean5533 (guest, #69480) [Link]

And what if many people DO like the joystick? What if (gasp!) MOST people like the joystick better?

Let me stop you before you respond with "haven't you been reading the forums? No one likes GNOME 3.x". Two words: confirmation bias. Yes, if you search for examples of GNOME 3.x hatred, you can find plenty of examples of GNOME 3.x hatred. However, if you actually read the reviews and responses objectively then you will find praise as well -- nevermind that people are much more apt to complain than complement anyway.

Besides, if you don't like it then just go back to that Mustang you liked before. GNOME 2.x is out there for anyone to get their hands on. Yes, it isn't actually supported by the GNOME foundation anymore, but then again, neither is GNOME 1.x, yet somehow we manage to get through the day.

For the record, this is coming from someone who doesn't like GNOME 3.x at all.