Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Allowing you to focus on your task and minimizing interruptions has been an important aspect of the GNOME 3 design from the start. So far, we just had a global switch to turn off notifications. The new Notification panel expands on this and allows fine-grained control over what applications get to annoy you, and how much."
Posted Jan 25, 2013 16:40 UTC (Fri)
by Zizzle (guest, #67739)
[Link] (96 responses)
Second half actually looks usable. Wouldn't surprise me if the class mode becomes more popular than the shell.
Still it looks like Cinnamon is the more polished and usable desktop. Hopefully Fedora 19 defaults to it.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 16:55 UTC (Fri)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (15 responses)
Posted Jan 26, 2013 8:33 UTC (Sat)
by marcel.oliver (subscriber, #5441)
[Link] (14 responses)
As a long-time Fedora user and current user of Gnome 3/Cinnamon I would very much welcome if Fedora would take a more active role toward Cinnamon. Here are some reasons and benefits:
Posted Jan 26, 2013 12:48 UTC (Sat)
by kigurai (guest, #85475)
[Link] (6 responses)
I realize that this is a personal taste, of course, but I see this "only for casual users" comment so often that it seems to have become some kind of universal truth. And it's not.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 10:30 UTC (Sun)
by marcel.oliver (subscriber, #5441)
[Link]
Posted Jan 29, 2013 17:52 UTC (Tue)
by whitemice (guest, #3748)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Jan 29, 2013 18:36 UTC (Tue)
by marcel.oliver (subscriber, #5441)
[Link] (3 responses)
Note: these are your words, not mine. I am also no-one to argue that Gnome cannot be used on multiple large displays. Peoples' workflows and requirements are very different, so who am I to tell you what works for you?
Here are some items which I found cumbersome with Gnome Shell and where I have not been able to come up with an equivalent workflow using native Gnome Shell techniques. Maybe you can enlighten me, it could be that I just did not discover the right tricks:
That Gnome Shell is "great" with external displays is plain false. Since Fedora 15 it has this bug which make Gnome Shell (Cinnamon works fine, though) a total no-go in my production setup. The fact that no-one has even looked at it makes me think that Gnome Shell does not have very many users who use external screens, at least not the way I do.
Posted Jan 30, 2013 10:46 UTC (Wed)
by thisisme (guest, #83315)
[Link]
I'm relieved to hear I'm not the only one who does this, with graphs, lists and spreadsheets.
Posted Jan 30, 2013 15:12 UTC (Wed)
by mgedmin (subscriber, #34497)
[Link] (1 responses)
> Using "minimize" as a quick, non-distracting way to say "I am done with this window, I don't think I want to look at it again but I don't want to close the application just now because I may have to revisit the case".
I tend to middle-click the window title bar, which sends that window to the background.
You can also ask to have the minimize button back with GNOME Tweak Tool.
> Flipping windows on and off (I do this often for visual comparison of two near-identical graphs or images)
And a quick Alt-Tab or Alt-` doesn't work for this?
For images I prefer to do the comparison in my web browser: two images in adjacent tabs, fliping between them with Alt+number (or Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn, that's a bit slower).
> Selectively closing windows when a certain sub-task is done.
The overview is fine for this, if you can distinguish the windows visually. Which you already said you can't always, so disregard this part of my comment.
> That Gnome Shell is "great" with external displays is plain false.
Yes, multiple displays only work great if you position the desktops side-by-side. They don't work well if you position one of them above the other.
Posted Jan 31, 2013 15:01 UTC (Thu)
by marcel.oliver (subscriber, #5441)
[Link]
I knew about the GNOME Tweak Tool, thanks for telling about the middle mouse button (works in Cinnamon, too...). So I agree that this point is not a killer argument, it just makes me wonder why hiding it is considered an improvement.
And a quick Alt-Tab or Alt-` doesn't work for this?
For images I prefer to do the comparison in my web browser: two images in adjacent tabs, fliping between them with Alt+number (or Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn, that's a bit slower).
What you suggest is rather clunky, at best a poor workaround. Especially using the browser is just another workflow indirection and does not help when the windows are actually application windows rather than views of a standard format file stored in the filesystem.
The overview is fine for this, if you can distinguish the windows visually. Which you already said you can't always, so disregard this part of my comment.
Here the overview is not too bad, but as you already realize, can be a problem when the window content is too similar. Another reason why the taskbar feels more natural is that windows which are logically related (thus opened at a similar time) are close on the taskbar, but typically scattered geometrically all over the overview pane. I think that's the primary reason why in Cinnamon, where I have both easily accessible, I very much favor the taskbar and use the overview more for "lost" windows where I don't have any mental connection any longer between position in task bar and window.
Yes, multiple displays only work great if you position the desktops side-by-side. They don't work well if you position one of them above the other.
That's a shame because here there there does not even seem a philosophical or "big vision" obstacle to just fixing it. Given the fact that it used to work great for years in old Gnome and continues to work in Cinnamon, it can't be that much of a fundamental problem to fix.
Posted Jan 26, 2013 16:58 UTC (Sat)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2013 10:20 UTC (Sun)
by marcel.oliver (subscriber, #5441)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2013 17:27 UTC (Sun)
by marcel.oliver (subscriber, #5441)
[Link] (1 responses)
It will be interesting to watch how it turns out. It might obsolete Cinnamon if it is done well. I am not a fan of forking everything if that can be avoided...
Posted Jan 28, 2013 12:14 UTC (Mon)
by Rehdon (guest, #45440)
[Link]
One could also remark that not such thing as a "classic mode" would have been conceived if it were not for the success of GNOME 2 and 3 forks (Mate, Cinnamon).
At this point in time, I'm pretty happy with Cinnamon as is: it's much more than a "classic mode", although among other things Nemo kept all the useful features that they threw away with Nautilus, and more stuff is coming with Cinnamon 1.8 (http://www.webupd8.org/2012/12/what-to-expect-in-linux-mi...).
Rehdon
Posted Jan 26, 2013 23:59 UTC (Sat)
by misc (subscriber, #73730)
[Link] (1 responses)
I tested Cinnamon when it was in the updates-testing, and I was far from being impressed ( but it worked so I gave +1 karma ). There was clearly a lack of polish and small design errorss all over the place ( like non aligned button, non coherent options, or too much useless detail like the 16 different way of minimizing a windows, or the whole plugin applet in the control center that was just empty ), and I found that disturbing.
Then I started to look at the commits, the code is better than Mate ( who is mainly taking code from gnome nowadays ) or mint ( where the python code is not that great ), but there is still some weird stuff going on.
This one is clearly wrong :
Because that's just a no-op, but starting the python interpreter for nothing. What is fun is that another commit was done to workaround the same problem this file try to correct ( ie having .py not matched by the windows matcher ), on 8374cb9a3661cb3dc71dfd66b3916f5a5adddf5d .
The cleaner solution is to just rename the file, but well...
The whole C part of gnome-shell was forked and is left almost untouched since 1 year. And since they renamed every possible function, there is merge conflict from time to time ( and sometime, they get committed 287f77f771078a5bc2df026dfe2376bf8c469bba ). So it is not hard to see this approach will sooner or later be more costly to maintain, unless they decide to do things cleanly. Because for now, that's not really sitting "cleanly on gnome 3", that's more "duplicating half of gnome-shell".
And in the python code, there is still some weird stuff like subprocess call instead of proper library ( 0cbb29180eed3d389a22c7d1be35a24d5d931f16 ), hardcoded paths everywhere ( https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/blob/master/files/u... ), so no jhbuild or test as non root.
So there is lots of things to do, and you are right that they could benefit from more coders, but given they forked alacarte, nautilus and said they would fork the rest if needed, I am not sure if they really wish to collaborate and work to a consensus if they can just fork. yet people are free to help, I have seen fedora packagers sending patches so there is some help.
And to finish, as said in another comment, I also have a big screen ( 23" ), I use command line, a browser, evolution on my day job and at home, and I use gnome shell without problem.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 11:13 UTC (Sun)
by marcel.oliver (subscriber, #5441)
[Link]
Well, one can always push responsibility downstream. But the problem is not that there are not enough desktop environment options. What is lacking right now is a reasonably inclusive distribution policy toward the Fedora desktop which has a clear path into the future and does not lead to further fragmentation of the Linux desktop. If the "Gnome Classic Session" mentioned by Rahul Sundaram is what it might promise to be, that could be something worth focusing effort on. But just calling for effort without a strategy seems a waste.
As for me personally: I have given feedback to Cinnamon. (In fact, I don't think Cinnamon is perfect, but I think they are taking a sensible approach.) My own expertise is not in C/C++ programming, but then I don't think being able/having the time to contribute code should be a necessary condition for taking part in a discussion on features and strategy.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 1:31 UTC (Sun)
by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458)
[Link]
Fedora goes where, well, its members take it. If you want more Cinnamon involvement, participate and help out. Disclaimer: I'm Fedora Ambassador, and so an active member of the Fedora community.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 16:55 UTC (Fri)
by proski (subscriber, #104)
[Link] (76 responses)
Posted Jan 25, 2013 17:24 UTC (Fri)
by tjc (guest, #137)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jan 25, 2013 17:34 UTC (Fri)
by bpepple (subscriber, #50705)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2013 1:36 UTC (Sun)
by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458)
[Link]
Care to share the intimate insight that tells you so? Might it just be that it isn't being pushed because it just isn't up to snuff, or even just that there is very little real interest (you know, not just vocal whining on random websites, but real users and developers)?
Posted Jan 25, 2013 18:25 UTC (Fri)
by Company (guest, #57006)
[Link]
Posted Jan 25, 2013 17:38 UTC (Fri)
by tetley80 (guest, #88691)
[Link] (70 responses)
That's inconsistent. Where was the Gnome 3 spin of Fedora before it became the default desktop?
(the preview of the G3 shell in Gnome 2 doesn't count, as it was incomplete)
Using the testing-via-spin argument right now is also bogus as Cinnamon has had plenty of testing via the Linux Mint distribution.
Any arguments along the lines of "keeping Gnome 2 and 3 in parallel would have been too much of a job" (in order to have a G3 spin) would be also bogus. Fedora could have kept Gnome 2 as is, without putting any further work into it.
Arguments in the theme of "the changes for Gnome 3 were too big at the OS level" would simply demonstrate that a separate Gnome 3 spin was sorely needed to test out the changes in a wide manner and get feedback before making G3 the default.
The non-testing of Gnome 3 in Fedora is more consistent with the view that Fedora is simply a dumping ground for new, untested stuff. Fedora has "first" in its mission, but "first" doesn't mean "forced".
Posted Jan 25, 2013 17:51 UTC (Fri)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (69 responses)
Keeping GNOME 2 as it is isn't really an option since it is dead upstream and no distribution has chosen to do that for precisely the same reason. Also there is zero "force" unless you consider any "default" as force since there are tons of options in http://spins.fedoraproject.org and one more is easily possible when someone volunteers to do the work.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 18:58 UTC (Fri)
by tetley80 (guest, #88691)
[Link] (68 responses)
Sorry, but that's a gross misinterpretation at best, and attempt at rewriting history at worst.
Labeling G3 as an "upgrade" is not in the same league as updating gcc 4.6 to 4.7, or going from Gnome 2.26 to 2.28, or going from kernel 3.4 to 3.5.
In comparison to Gnome 2, Gnome 3 is closer to a rewrite, even if we only restrict ourselves to looking at the UI changes. This clearly indicates that G3 was a brand new component. This new component got insufficient testing before it was forced upon the Fedora community.
If you can force a new component such as G3 to be the default, not applying the same standard to the Cinnamon desktop is disingenuous. This is further underlined by the fact that the "delta" between G3 and Cinnamon is much smaller than between G2 and G3.
Moreover, the Gnome 3 shell can be considered a regression from a UI perspective, with Cinnamon aiming to fix that regression (while still using the underlying Gnome 3 components).
If we use the above logic, nobody will mind if we suddenly switch over to the Clang compiler (instead of gcc), without any wide testing in Fedora. After all, if people don't like it they can create their own gcc spin. While we're at it, how about we swap the Linux kernel to use one of the BSD kernels? Nobody will mind, as after all, there are tons of options. People can always create a Linux-kernel spin of Fedora.
The point I'm making above is that Gnome 3 was an arbitrary choice of a default, without due testing of the proposed default by the wider Fedora community. It certainly wasn't a simple "upgrade".
Posted Jan 25, 2013 19:15 UTC (Fri)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (49 responses)
Posted Jan 25, 2013 19:30 UTC (Fri)
by tetley80 (guest, #88691)
[Link] (48 responses)
That's false. Red Hat is directly paying for Gnome 2 maintenance, via maintaining Gnome 2 in both RHEL 5 and RHEL 6.
Well then, the "paid employment" argument is awfully sounding like the main criterion for selecting Gnome 3 as the default in Fedora.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 19:44 UTC (Fri)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (47 responses)
Posted Jan 25, 2013 21:21 UTC (Fri)
by tetley80 (guest, #88691)
[Link] (46 responses)
So then, is the "paid employment" a clearly codified and documented criterion that Fedora officially uses? If not, it indicates that non-technical reasons are being used underhandedly to make decisions on technical matters. Even if it was a documented criterion, wouldn't it amount to discrimination based on non-technical issues? Either way, this type of behavior is certainly not in the spirit of the Fedora community.
It also amounts to letting people loose on a major every-day UI component and putting a blind eye to what they're doing, just because they're getting paid for it.
It's all well and good to propose new things, but to implement major UI regressions is abusing the community's patience. This is yet more evidence towards the view that Fedora is simply an unstable testing ground for future RHEL releases.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 21:55 UTC (Fri)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (38 responses)
Posted Jan 25, 2013 22:05 UTC (Fri)
by tetley80 (guest, #88691)
[Link] (37 responses)
Technical reasons include: is software X more stable than software Y, or my favorite, does software X have more regressions than Y ?
Posted Jan 25, 2013 22:21 UTC (Fri)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (36 responses)
Posted Jan 26, 2013 1:09 UTC (Sat)
by ebiederm (subscriber, #35028)
[Link] (35 responses)
Posted Jan 26, 2013 1:16 UTC (Sat)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Jan 26, 2013 3:41 UTC (Sat)
by hadrons123 (guest, #72126)
[Link] (5 responses)
Why do you think 'nemo' got accepted in fedora?
Posted Jan 26, 2013 4:34 UTC (Sat)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jan 26, 2013 7:44 UTC (Sat)
by hadrons123 (guest, #72126)
[Link] (2 responses)
Gnome components are forked so much becoz there is an audience for older versions and people are actively using it. New versions of nautilus should have more functions on top of old features, but instead calling it as unmaintainable and removing the features is not what users want. Now instead of nautilus 3.6, people are willing to stay with nautilus 3.4 with new name 'nemo'. Within a couple of years if the gnome project continue the tradition of removing the core features and thrust some feautres that the devs think is important, I am pretty sure there will complete fork of all the components.
Posted Jan 26, 2013 7:46 UTC (Sat)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link]
Posted Jan 26, 2013 16:52 UTC (Sat)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link]
You don't seem to understand the package review process. FESCo is not involved. All it takes is one package maintainer to review and approve and it is typically upto him or her to determine packaging quality and only that. We don't typically ask the question why at all as part of the review process. Ours concern are usually limited to maintenance and sustainability. They can appeal to Fedora packaging committee to determine whether it conflicts with the packaging guidelines and in this case, there was a request to FPC and they determined that Cinnamon didn't conflict. The relevant packaging guidelines are at
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:No_Bundled_Libra...
There is really nothing stopping an older version of GCC from going in and Fedora does that now and then for compatibility. Fedora repositories have a lot of forked components and they are accepted on a routine basis. If a forked version of GCC gets submitted for review, it takes just one maintainer to review and approve it unless someone objects and in that case, it is upto FPC and they might escalate all the way to FESCo or even Fedora Board but such instances are very rare.
Posted Jan 26, 2013 5:44 UTC (Sat)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link]
Posted Jan 26, 2013 5:41 UTC (Sat)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (27 responses)
Posted Jan 26, 2013 14:43 UTC (Sat)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link] (22 responses)
One can claim that the product is now different and that you can't compare the old product with the new one (that conveniently uses the old product's name), but to the person thinking that they're getting an update of the same thing, it's a step backwards.
This means that when we try and put a modern distribution in front of people, instead of explaining how it is mostly the same (and thus what they are used to themselves) but better, we now have to explain why it is different and things that used to work no longer do so.
Frequent blog posts by people pretending to be brand strategists and visionaries don't actually placate user concerns because the users are mostly concerned with whether stuff does what they need it to, not whether the "positioning" of the software is right according to current market trends, or whatever.
After all, no amount of blogging can make something work again or even work in the first place.
Posted Jan 26, 2013 15:38 UTC (Sat)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (21 responses)
Posted Jan 26, 2013 16:37 UTC (Sat)
by sorokin (guest, #88478)
[Link] (9 responses)
Posted Jan 26, 2013 17:09 UTC (Sat)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (8 responses)
Posted Jan 26, 2013 18:10 UTC (Sat)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link] (7 responses)
Posted Jan 26, 2013 18:33 UTC (Sat)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Jan 26, 2013 19:19 UTC (Sat)
by bronson (subscriber, #4806)
[Link] (5 responses)
And, whenever you remove a feature from a large project, no matter how meaningless or crappy, you will find somebody who cares.
Posted Jan 26, 2013 20:54 UTC (Sat)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Jan 26, 2013 21:18 UTC (Sat)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (1 responses)
No. If things is mostly the same but has different name people expect that some features will not be available. When something is billed as "pure upgrade" but it removes features - people become quite vocal. Is it fair? No. But that's life. Deal with it.
Posted Jan 26, 2013 21:29 UTC (Sat)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2013 16:16 UTC (Sun)
by bronson (subscriber, #4806)
[Link]
Sounds like a meaningful conversation to me. Where's the confusion?
Posted Jan 28, 2013 22:51 UTC (Mon)
by sorokin (guest, #88478)
[Link]
In GNOME -- yes. In other reasonable projects that is simple not true. I would say that for most projects that is not true.
Posted Jan 26, 2013 16:56 UTC (Sat)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link] (10 responses)
You can make the case that the lack of a gold exhaust pipe on a hypothetical electric car - let's call it the Ford Luxury - is not a regression since its non-electric predecessor - also called the Ford Luxury - needed such a thing, whereas no-one is really going to miss it on the electric model. The argument in such cases is that technology has made something obsolete and thus the need to choose between, say, gold and steel has been eliminated.
The problem is that the view (or excuse) that technology has made something obsolete is brought out far too often. GNOME 2 won't let you do something that GNOME 1 did? It's because it's all better, that's why! When the developers famously closed bugs against GNOME 1 because GNOME 2 was new and different (http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html), they illustrated precisely this phenomenon.
People want the benefit of brand recognition but also the benefit of not having their current product compared to the previous one, even though having the same name on the product is inevitably going to invite such comparisons. If you want to enjoy the former benefit, you have to relinquish the latter.
Posted Jan 26, 2013 17:10 UTC (Sat)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (9 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2013 15:44 UTC (Sun)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link] (8 responses)
Perhaps launcher buttons couldn't be transparent before and the background setting was a workaround that was made obsolete, just like the absence of an exhaust pipe on a hypothetical car whose predecessor required one. Since the result is almost completely superior, there's little reason to complain about it, but that almost certainly cannot be said for many consequences of these big product upgrades.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 16:27 UTC (Sun)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (7 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2013 17:52 UTC (Sun)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link]
I also noted that if a feature goes away because it is obsolete - to take an ancient example that once applied to some desktop systems, you don't have to allocate memory manually to a process because the system now does that for you - you can ignore the regression because nothing that anyone was doing before that they can no longer do now (say, allocate a process size of N) is anything they still need to be able to do (because the system will give the process N if it asks for it). Since there is no longer any benefit in even being able to do those obsolete things, there's no general functional regression (you can still run that process).
None of this has anything to do with whether I "like the changes". The issue I have is the way that people deny the experiences of the users by playing games with definitions of what the system was and is, as if the users were supposed to care more about the brand gymnastics than the features actually being delivered.
Posted Jan 28, 2013 14:04 UTC (Mon)
by nye (subscriber, #51576)
[Link] (5 responses)
Clearly, everything you say is therefore correct. It must be wonderful to know that you are so much better at everything than anyone else. I hope you enjoy your future career in law, and wish you all the best.
Posted Jan 28, 2013 16:05 UTC (Mon)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Jan 28, 2013 16:17 UTC (Mon)
by patrick_g (subscriber, #44470)
[Link] (3 responses)
With Gnome 2 I was able to control my CPU governors with a graphical applet.
For me it's simply a regression.
Posted Jan 28, 2013 16:40 UTC (Mon)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link]
Posted Jan 28, 2013 17:02 UTC (Mon)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (1 responses)
Perhaps there isn't an "applet" but there is an extension, available through the extensions.gnome.org website.
Posted Jan 28, 2013 18:52 UTC (Mon)
by patrick_g (subscriber, #44470)
[Link]
You're right. The extension is here : https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/444/cpu-freq/
Posted Jan 26, 2013 20:31 UTC (Sat)
by jubal (subscriber, #67202)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2013 21:38 UTC (Sun)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (2 responses)
Here's the problem with that.
Pretty much any change (short of a crash fix) will qualify as breaking someone's workflow -- ie "it's different than what I'm used to"
It's been said many times over in this thread; nobody's forcing you to update anything. Your three-year-old Fedora/OSX/Windows/DOS/whatever installation works as well (and identically) today as the day it was released. Heck, go with something like RHEL and it'll be continually supported for a decade.
But don't complain about it lacking $randomfeature, because in the real world nothing is independent.
Posted Jan 28, 2013 7:21 UTC (Mon)
by ebiederm (subscriber, #35028)
[Link] (1 responses)
It is a cop out to say that you can't have that in other UIs.
Posted Jan 28, 2013 7:40 UTC (Mon)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link]
Posted Jan 25, 2013 22:14 UTC (Fri)
by raven667 (subscriber, #5198)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Jan 25, 2013 22:50 UTC (Fri)
by tetley80 (guest, #88691)
[Link] (5 responses)
I can understand the need for flexibility, but the use of a "documented criterion" cannot be simply dismissed as "bureaucratic". If one does not have good and well thought basis for making decisions, then one gets arbitrary decisions which can lead to strife, such as UI regressions.
If "documented criterions" did not work, nations wouldn't have laws and constitutions.
There is obviously a trade-off between codification and flexibility. However, in this case it is my strong opinion that too much flexibility in the UI area has provided a disservice to the Fedora community.
A nice condescending comment. I do not wish for this discussion to degenerate into a flame fest, so I will not entertain this further.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 23:16 UTC (Fri)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link] (3 responses)
You keep using that phrase as if it means something other than "I don't like this UI", but I don't know what.
Posted Jan 30, 2013 0:04 UTC (Wed)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link] (2 responses)
You know, stuff like this. Changing workspaces took one mouse click before and one view change (using GUI). Now it takes several, including a lot more mouse travel. Desktop visibility is zero, which was not the case before. The amount of pixels that change when working remotely using VNC has been significantly increased, which makes things even slower over poor links. It is practicality impossible to move items on the panel or define new panels using techniques available for at least two decades. Etc.
The _measurable_ stuff.
As I pointed out numerous times, Gnome 3 overview is essentially an implementation of RFC1925(6). That in itself is a regression, because everything is one step further away.
Unfortunately, nobody in Gnome development team is brave enough to acknowledge any of these facts. Instead, we are getting an Ultralite Gnome Classic, which just looks a bit like "classic", but it can't do most of the stuff that was possible before.
Posted Jan 30, 2013 8:49 UTC (Wed)
by ovitters (guest, #27950)
[Link]
Learned loaded question in another article :)
Posted Feb 2, 2013 3:46 UTC (Sat)
by fandingo (guest, #67019)
[Link]
Posted Jan 26, 2013 20:40 UTC (Sat)
by raven667 (subscriber, #5198)
[Link]
If you don't like GNOME 3 Shell just stand up and say so, no need to beat around the bush.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 19:16 UTC (Fri)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (16 responses)
If you want to propose a switch by default to Clang, it will go through the same feature proposal as Cinnamon and must have a very robust rationale for doing so. So I am afraid I don't see your point at all. Nobody is using any force to make you install Fedora or even if you chose Fedora to force you to install GNOME.
As we move forward, we continue to make more choices available and in fact, one of the accepted features for Fedora 19 is to bring in Enlightenment 17. I am working on that.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 19:44 UTC (Fri)
by tetley80 (guest, #88691)
[Link] (15 responses)
For all intents and purposes, MATE is Gnome 2. Furthermore, Red Hat is still maintaining Gnome 2 in RHEL 6. As such, Gnome 2 is far from dead.
You are of course correct in the above observation. However, this is boiling down to a chicken and egg argument (pardon the unintended pun).
MATE probably wouldn't exist if Gnome 3 didn't have such massive UI changes. If Gnome 3 was more evolutionary, or had built in options to let people choose which new UI elements to use, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
The Fedora review process is hence broken, given the amount of fall out that the UI changes in Gnome 3 have generated. It strongly suggests the engineering steering committee has a very cavalier attitude when it comes to UI regressions.
This is consistent with a cop out. You have responsibility to the Fedora community, and instead of admitting that the Gnome 3 shell UI is a point of pain for many in the Fedora community, you are in effect telling them to go away.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 20:42 UTC (Fri)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (7 responses)
"You have responsibility to the Fedora community, and instead of admitting that the Gnome 3 shell UI is a point of pain for many in the Fedora community, you are in effect telling them to go away"
Now, you are being intentionally dishonest. I told you explicitly that I am working on integrating Enlightenment and I helped review Cinnamon as well. So no, I am not telling them to go away but use whatever they prefer and I am working on making those choices available.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 21:59 UTC (Fri)
by tetley80 (guest, #88691)
[Link] (6 responses)
So on one hand we have a major UI regression in a component that has worked fine for years, and on the other hand we're being told that this regression doesn't matter because of the many choices we have?
Okay, let's follow this through. Gnome 2 used to be a first class citizen in Fedora. It has been replaced (not "upgraded") by a completely different user interface, known as the Gnome 3 shell. Packages such as Cinnamon are closer to the Gnome 2 UI, yet they're second class citizens (ie. I need to manually install them in F17/F18, or explicitly do a network install in F18). Yes, technically the choices are there, but you need to dig to find them.
Summary: "You liked ABC? Sorry, you can't have it anymore. Here's DEF instead. Oh, you don't like that? Well, we have GHI which is kind of like ABC, but you'll have to find it yourself. Have fun!"
If Fedora is serious about "making choices available", Cinnamon should be elevated to be one of the main options (in the installer) for the user interface, while also being present on the _default_ installation media. None of this separate "spin" nonsense.
While this might be a workable solution, it's also a type of bug fix. It would be far more productive to prevent these kind of UI interface regressions in the future.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 22:12 UTC (Fri)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (5 responses)
sudo yum install @mate-desktop
The "default" download is a live image cannot hold all the different desktop environments due to size constraints and this is the reason we have multiple options at http://spins.fedoraproject.org. I am not sure what more you want honestly. You seem to be arguing for the sake of it.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 23:03 UTC (Fri)
by tetley80 (guest, #88691)
[Link] (4 responses)
The discussion started off about Cinnamon being the default UI for Fedora, so let's not fuzzify the issue by stating that the MATE desktop takes up too much space.
Given all the pain about the Gnome 3 UI, Cinnamon provides a more traditional user interface, while still using Gnome 3 components. Cinnamon should be a first class citizen in Fedora (along with Gnome 3), and be on the default install media, not relegated to a separate spin. In contrast to MATE, Cinnamon requires relatively little space. It can be considered as an addon to Gnome 3, not a replacement like MATE.
This discussion is starting to go around in circles, so I'll leave it here.
Posted Jan 26, 2013 1:22 UTC (Sat)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2013 13:06 UTC (Sun)
by deepfire (guest, #26138)
[Link] (2 responses)
Sorry for this bit of judgementality, but I used to regard you as
The "personal" preference sticker you slap on tetley80's words
Tread carefully -- the project you represent can handle only so much self-inflicted alienation.
Listen.. Can you hear it? The sound of mindshare going away?
Posted Jan 27, 2013 15:06 UTC (Sun)
by ovitters (guest, #27950)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2013 15:06 UTC (Sun)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link]
Posted Jan 26, 2013 0:53 UTC (Sat)
by misc (subscriber, #73730)
[Link] (6 responses)
So on one comment, you say that the fact that people are paid to work on a software should not be taken in account, and yet, you now use the same exact argument to say that since people are paid to keep gnome 2 aline, then it is not dead and so should be considered.
Can I recommend a little bit of self consistency ?
And frankly, for people wanting gnome 2, there is RHEL, SLES ( around 50$ per year ), or for the one who cannot afford this either due to volume or to any reason, there is Centos, Scientific Linux, etc.
Posted Jan 26, 2013 17:06 UTC (Sat)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link] (5 responses)
Of course, Red Hat may be eager to stop having to maintain GNOME 2, and the real reason may be that the existence of external paid developers is what really decides whether something is included in any of the company's products - a matter of not having to bear all the load internally - plus the level of enthusiasm for GNOME 3 amongst internal developers compared to that for GNOME 2, but I'd also hope that the users of the company's products might also get some say (other than voting with their feet, of course).
Posted Jan 26, 2013 20:49 UTC (Sat)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Jan 29, 2013 17:09 UTC (Tue)
by hadrons123 (guest, #72126)
[Link] (3 responses)
Is it so?
That's an interesting piece of information to know from you.
Posted Jan 29, 2013 17:56 UTC (Tue)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jan 30, 2013 15:14 UTC (Wed)
by hadrons123 (guest, #72126)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 30, 2013 15:48 UTC (Wed)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link]
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=771252
It was submitted by a volunteer, Leigh Scott and I took up the review voluntarily.The major opposition came from another volunteer, Christoph Wickert who was concerned about sustainability and violation of packaging guidelines regarding forks and we discussed it with the packaging committee and it was eventually approved by another volunteer, Dan Mashal. The delay was partly my fault since I took up the review and didn't finish it up quickly since I was focusing on release specific tasks at that time and we also had to get the packaging committee approval and the reviews themselves took time.
systemd was submitted by me and approved by another volunteer.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=598299
It became the default after approval by FESCo (a fully elected body btw) which did delay it by one release despite having a number of Red Hat employees in it. So if you are looking for favoritism you have picked the wrong examples. Are there other packages submitted by Red Hat employees as part of the job? yes but the important point is that the process is not designed to be any different regardless of who you work for.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 19:22 UTC (Fri)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link]
G2 didn't '_die_' upstream. Gnome released a new version of the desktop. The Gnome 2 developers became Gnome 3 developers. All the GTK libs and everything else that applications need to be backwards compatible still exists and have had new stable releases.
Mate is a fork of Gnome 2 and didn't exist until much more recently then Fedora following the upgrade path away from Gnome 2. It's a _NEW_ project.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Gnome3
Targeted release: Fedora 15
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_(desktop_environment)
Initial release August 19, 2011; 16 months ago
And it didn't make it into Fedora until the Fedora 18.
If you want to get all weepy over this stuff then that's fine, but at least don't just make random crap up.
> Labeling G3 as an "upgrade" is not in the same league as updating gcc 4.6 to 4.7, or going from Gnome 2.26 to 2.28, or going from kernel 3.4 to 3.5.
It's in the same league as going from 2.4 kernel to 2.6 kernel.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 17:46 UTC (Fri)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link]
Posted Jan 25, 2013 17:53 UTC (Fri)
by tjc (guest, #137)
[Link]
The second half probably looks a lot like RHEL7.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 18:19 UTC (Fri)
by Kit (guest, #55925)
[Link] (1 responses)
GNOME's design has pretty much always* been heavily inspired by Apple's OSes (or more so a caricature of them). GNOME Shell seems to be an obvious exception to that design...
* I hear early GNOME 1 was much more Windows like, while early KDE was more Apple OS like... but I didn't use either till late GNOME 1 / KDE 2.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 20:27 UTC (Fri)
by sorpigal (guest, #36106)
[Link]
Early KDE was a lot more like Windows than MacOS. Try comparing some KDE 1.x screenshots with Win9x, for example, and you'll see a lot of resemblance.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 16:49 UTC (Fri)
by robert_s (subscriber, #42402)
[Link] (27 responses)
I can't be the only person that sees a problem with these.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 16:59 UTC (Fri)
by proski (subscriber, #104)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 29, 2013 15:57 UTC (Tue)
by mgedmin (subscriber, #34497)
[Link]
That's a good thing, actually.
The new switches bugged me too, but I got used to them after a week or so. The clearly different background color when the widget is in the "ON" position helped.
Posted Jan 25, 2013 17:08 UTC (Fri)
by epa (subscriber, #39769)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jan 25, 2013 17:18 UTC (Fri)
by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jan 25, 2013 18:56 UTC (Fri)
by mlinksva (guest, #38268)
[Link]
(Binary sliders minor complaint; overall good work GNOME people.)
Posted Jan 25, 2013 20:19 UTC (Fri)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
But then it got controlled by a stupid skeuomorphic binary slider, so sliding the slider towards the word 'On' turns the wireless on again (though they call it 'turning airplane mode off'), and sliding it towards the word 'Off' turns the wireless off (though they call it 'turning airplane mode on').
Making simple things complicated...
Posted Jan 25, 2013 17:40 UTC (Fri)
by tjc (guest, #137)
[Link] (9 responses)
Light switches in buildings are label-less, and this doesn't seem to confuse too many people. Perhaps toggle widgets should be the same, and follow convention: left off, right on.
Posted Jan 26, 2013 8:43 UTC (Sat)
by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 26, 2013 12:42 UTC (Sat)
by nijhof (subscriber, #4034)
[Link]
For added fun maybe one could add a multi-way switch ("hotelschakelaar") to the GUI, where effectively the on or off status is an XOR of all the switches..
(certainly in my house I knever know which switch will turn which light on or off: most of the time there are three switches together in some random order compared to the topology of the rooms, half of which are multi-way)
Posted Jan 26, 2013 19:02 UTC (Sat)
by bjencks (subscriber, #80303)
[Link] (6 responses)
"Three-way" switches (the ones mentioned below that XOR multiple switches) are unmarked. That's actually usually my first cue that it's a three-way switch rather than on-off.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 16:46 UTC (Sun)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link] (5 responses)
I suspect the nature of light switches is one of those things heavily controlled by historical contingency and national regulation. You cannot say 'normal' about things like light switches: different regions have different normals.
Posted Jan 29, 2013 12:18 UTC (Tue)
by sorpigal (guest, #36106)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Jan 29, 2013 12:54 UTC (Tue)
by cortana (subscriber, #24596)
[Link]
Posted Jan 29, 2013 14:46 UTC (Tue)
by micka (subscriber, #38720)
[Link]
My parent would not know the meaning of "on" or "off", anyway.
Posted Jan 29, 2013 16:25 UTC (Tue)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 29, 2013 19:05 UTC (Tue)
by foom (subscriber, #14868)
[Link]
Posted Jan 25, 2013 18:52 UTC (Fri)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link] (6 responses)
Most languages do not use two/three-letter words for on/off. But the widget assumes it is the case (on/off is the only bit that makes it non-ambiguous; every time I see it I'm reminded of All the UI disasters where designers had to include a huge "press here" arrow to get users to notice their hidden-in-chrome button)
Posted Jan 26, 2013 1:22 UTC (Sat)
by misc (subscriber, #73730)
[Link] (5 responses)
So i guess the "on/off" is just a locale variation of the gtkSwitch widget ?
Posted Jan 27, 2013 16:00 UTC (Sun)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2013 16:22 UTC (Sun)
by bronson (subscriber, #4806)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jan 28, 2013 22:48 UTC (Mon)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 29, 2013 16:09 UTC (Tue)
by mgedmin (subscriber, #34497)
[Link]
Posted Jan 28, 2013 16:32 UTC (Mon)
by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
[Link]
Of course during the implementation process they found the whole concept was untranslatable. Instead of revisiting the original decision, they just dumped the text labels on most locales
Posted Jan 25, 2013 19:03 UTC (Fri)
by bluss (guest, #47454)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jan 25, 2013 19:26 UTC (Fri)
by dashesy (guest, #74652)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jan 26, 2013 0:11 UTC (Sat)
by proski (subscriber, #104)
[Link]
Posted Jan 26, 2013 8:54 UTC (Sat)
by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742)
[Link]
Posted Jan 26, 2013 22:13 UTC (Sat)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link] (49 responses)
- where is the workspace switcher (i.e. visibility is still zero)?
Looking at the state of extensions, the answer to the first one is probably "there won't be a fully functional one". If nothing changed in the way components are laid out in Gnome 3, the answer to the second one is probably "this cannot be done". Don't really know how good emulated 3D will be by the time 3.8 hits released distros. Last time I checked (F-17) it was too slow and was burning CPU like there was no tomorrow on my VMware VM.
Posted Jan 26, 2013 22:55 UTC (Sat)
by drago01 (subscriber, #50715)
[Link] (43 responses)
2. No.
3. No ... but "a computer that has no 3D acceleration" in 2013?! Even my phone has a GPU that can handle 3D acceleration at a rather large resolution.
> was too slow and was burning CPU like there was no tomorrow on my VMware VM.
VMware does support 3D acceleration just install the driver.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 1:19 UTC (Sun)
by cortana (subscriber, #24596)
[Link] (5 responses)
My VirtualBox VM doesn't. Once fallback mode is gone I'm regretfully going to have to find a new desktop environment.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 4:45 UTC (Sun)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2013 13:32 UTC (Sun)
by cortana (subscriber, #24596)
[Link] (3 responses)
Not IME. <https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/9581> <http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=651936> <http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=651936>
> 2) Fedora can use purely software LLVMPipe for OpenGL.
Good for them. If only it worked in Debian <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=synr-avC0WA>.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 15:42 UTC (Sun)
by Company (guest, #57006)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2013 17:00 UTC (Sun)
by cortana (subscriber, #24596)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2013 17:08 UTC (Sun)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
So, currently, Fedora when run atop Fedora is a platform that doesn't support 3D, even if the hardware does.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 8:43 UTC (Sun)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link] (2 responses)
Installed as part of default Fedora. Still, slow. Still, high CPU usage.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 9:36 UTC (Sun)
by drago01 (subscriber, #50715)
[Link] (1 responses)
Then there is a bug somewhere (or a configuration issue) ... this is not the expected behavior.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 23:25 UTC (Sun)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2013 8:54 UTC (Sun)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link] (14 responses)
See, that in itself, is a major regression.
A perfectly fine, working system of arranging things has been replaced by chance (e.g. whoever loads last gets to be the leftmost, for instance). Also, users cannot use the usual drag/drop to organise their desktop.
Which serious desktop environment doesn't support even the simplest of customisations in 2013? Even the brain dead Windows 8 has the old desktop hidden away somewhere...
Instead of working on Gnome Classic in terms of "here is a set of extensions that will give you look XYZ", the developers should be thinking about "here is a set of tools to make you desktop the way you want it". I know - not the "philosophy" of Gnome...
Posted Jan 27, 2013 9:39 UTC (Sun)
by drago01 (subscriber, #50715)
[Link] (13 responses)
There is a limit on what you can do with configuration. "the way you want" can be very different for many people. Drag and Drop to reorder some elements does only help with one aspect. So in GNOME 3 there is a powerful extension system that lets you change / edit almost anything ... so it allows way more changes that GNOME 2 did to achieve the "the way you want" (for users that for whatever reason don't like the defaults and/or have specific unique needs).
Posted Jan 27, 2013 11:59 UTC (Sun)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link] (12 responses)
Yes, so powerful it _cannot_ help you with reordering of elements, for instance. It also requires fiddling with source code, as it has been pointed out numerous times.
I have an idea. Why don't we just have autoexec.bat and config.sys. That'll fix it. :-)
Posted Jan 27, 2013 12:03 UTC (Sun)
by drago01 (subscriber, #50715)
[Link] (11 responses)
That's plain wrong.
> It also requires fiddling with source code, as it has been pointed out numerous times.
It does not require "fiddling with source code" ... writing code is enough. Or get someone to do that for you.
> I have an idea. Why don't we just have autoexec.bat and config.sys. That'll fix it. :-)
The extension system allows that as well. You can write an extension to read those files and do actions based on their contents. ;)
Posted Jan 27, 2013 12:25 UTC (Sun)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (6 responses)
Then there's the remaining set, who even if they had the inclination, couldn't do it in a reasonable amount of time. Further, some significant subset of those will not have the inclination.
Really, it's 2013, and we can't re-order icons with the mouse by default? It's approaching 20 years now since the days of complex config files for window managers were seen as a good thing. And at least back then they were primarily declarative - which didn't require programming skill (things like m4-preprocessed config file systems excepted).
Posted Jan 29, 2013 0:15 UTC (Tue)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (5 responses)
Exactly. It's 2013 and that's why we don't reorder icons with mouse. MacOS had the ability to reorder program icons in 1984. MS Office 97 had the ability to drag-n-drop menu items in 1997. But you can not rearrange program icons in iOS 6.1 and menu MS Office 2013! I'm still not sure if it's good trend or not, but it's not like GNOME is the only program which moves in this direction.
Posted Jan 29, 2013 8:32 UTC (Tue)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (4 responses)
In both Android and iOS you have complete freedom to add, re-arrange and remove the short-cut icons on the default / "home" / front screen.
Posted Jan 29, 2013 16:22 UTC (Tue)
by mgedmin (subscriber, #34497)
[Link] (3 responses)
What was your complaint again?
Posted Jan 29, 2013 16:30 UTC (Tue)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jan 29, 2013 18:31 UTC (Tue)
by mgedmin (subscriber, #34497)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 30, 2013 7:49 UTC (Wed)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2013 13:29 UTC (Sun)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link] (3 responses)
The silly suggestion that users should ask someone to write code when they want to move something on their desktop is truly amusing. It does remind of config.sys and autoexec.bat days and ordering of drivers, so they can all fit.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 15:05 UTC (Sun)
by drago01 (subscriber, #50715)
[Link] (2 responses)
A extension can allow reordering using DnD and it can as well write a config file (or use gsettings) to store them. It can also listen for other extensions that get enabled (after it got loaded) and reorder them as well.
Before claiming that others "obviously" don't understand anything please go and read the code you are talking about.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 22:27 UTC (Sun)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link] (1 responses)
Please, look at some of the extensions and how they clash with each other in this way. Without predefined, central configuration, which decides on what goes where with finality, it is not possible to have deterministic behaviour.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 23:32 UTC (Sun)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
So, the Gnome Classic is more like Gnome Classic Ultralite. Just looks like it, but really doesn't do the same thing.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 10:51 UTC (Sun)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (16 responses)
I guess the GNOME answer is that I'm supposed to buy a new graphics card, or computer.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 11:59 UTC (Sun)
by drago01 (subscriber, #50715)
[Link] (15 responses)
Your graphic driver has a bug that causes your system to look up the obvious solution here is to get that debugged and fixed rather then running away from it and pretending that the system cannot accelerate 3D. It can and you paid for a GPU that does that ... so why not use it?
Posted Jan 27, 2013 12:12 UTC (Sun)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (14 responses)
Also, why are you assuming I chose that GPU? Had it been my choice, I would indeed have gotten something with better drivers. It wasn't my choice though. I'm sure I'm not unique in that. Not everyone has the ability to choose to buy graphics cards that have well-supported 3D drivers - either because of their position, or possibly because of their knowledge.
Sadly, a significant number of computers do not have well-supported 3D under Linux. Sadly, this means GNOME Shell (and derivatives) are not going to give users a nice experience on a significant numbers of computers.
That's reality.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 12:47 UTC (Sun)
by drago01 (subscriber, #50715)
[Link] (13 responses)
You have searched for the wrong thing ... what you want is a bug tracker to report your problem (and data to help to get it fixed). In your case you have another driver to chose from.
> Also, why are you assuming I chose that GPU?
I have just said that you paid for it. Maybe that is not true either but someone has payed for it ... why do you just accept that it is useless rather then try to get it to work?
> Sadly, a significant number of computers do not have well-supported 3D under Linux.
Citation needed. That might have been true in the past but 3D is no longer considered just "nice to have" and driver have improved significantly because of that.
Also the comment I have replied to stated "does not have 3D acceleration" ... finding such a system in 2013 is a challenge ;) (if you exclude obscure server chipsets).
Posted Jan 27, 2013 13:26 UTC (Sun)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (12 responses)
As for which computers don't have good 3D support under Linux, install Fedora on any NVidia system. I don't have a citation to hand, however it's surely not controversial that NVidia graphics constitute a sizeable set of modern computers?
Posted Jan 27, 2013 13:52 UTC (Sun)
by drago01 (subscriber, #50715)
[Link] (11 responses)
My point was you won't just accept that it is broken but try to get it fixed.
> So where do I go where I can pay someone to fix GNOME-shell induced graphics problems?
Find an engineer that has the required knowledge and pay him for fixing it. You can search in IRC channels or mailing list for people with the required skills.
> I don't have any confidence that just leaving a bug report in some tracker somewhere, in the hope some hacker I have no contractual relationship with will fix it, will lead to this issue being fixed.
If you don't even tell the developers about your bug chances are that it indeed never gets fixed unless someone fixes it by accident or someone else hits it and reports it.
> As for which computers don't have good 3D support under Linux, install Fedora on any NVidia system.
Done that and works fine.
> I don't have a citation to hand, however it's surely not controversial that NVidia graphics constitute a sizeable set of modern computers?
No the controversial part is that they don't have working 3D acceleration. Just because you hit a bug with your specific GPU / configuration does not mean that NVIDIA cards do not work at all. Also there is the binary driver which works as well.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 14:11 UTC (Sun)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (10 responses)
The problems with nouveau's 3D support and GNOME-Shell are not exactly there because of a lack of my bug-report. Look in the bug trackers yourself I'd love to see nouveau support improve.
I have in the past donated money to or bought things from wish-lists for various projects and people. Ideally, I'd pay the employer of the majority of GNOME and Linux graphics hackers, but they don't (yet?) have any offering of support for GNOME shell, afaik. Been less able to do this the last few years, for personal financial reasons.
I guess there's lessons here for me about what I should rely on.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 16:11 UTC (Sun)
by drago01 (subscriber, #50715)
[Link] (9 responses)
You can't expect developers to not utilise the hardware that is available because there is a bug on your system. Apparently it either always has been broken (and you just did not notice it) or it coincidently broke at the same time you upgraded to GNOME3 (by getting the broken driver at the same upgrade).
> The problems with nouveau's 3D support and GNOME-Shell are not exactly there because of a lack of my bug-report. Look in the bug trackers yourself I'd love to see nouveau support improve.
[citation needed]. Which bugs? Sure there are bugs but stop claiming that GNOME3 does not work on nouveau just because it hits a particular bug on your system. Just tested it again (NVA0 GPU) works just fine.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 16:32 UTC (Sun)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2013 16:38 UTC (Sun)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (7 responses)
Note that I'm not blaming any one, I'm just giving factual statements as to what led me to make the decisions I did. I suggest you reflect on the utility of reacting to such by blaming me.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 18:08 UTC (Sun)
by drago01 (subscriber, #50715)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Jan 28, 2013 14:36 UTC (Mon)
by nye (subscriber, #51576)
[Link] (5 responses)
Your 'sufficient' solution is orders of magnitude more difficult than the 'not necessary' solution. Fixing this requires either:
Some combination of b and c is the most probable outcome, but we're still looking at a few years yet, at least. In comparison, buying new hardware is simple and relatively cheap.
That's not to say that it's the *best* solution, since clearly we'd all like to have working high-quality drivers for all the hardware we can buy, but saying "oh, x isn't necessary because you can just do y" is silly when x is a far easier option than y.
Posted Jan 28, 2013 18:44 UTC (Mon)
by drago01 (subscriber, #50715)
[Link] (4 responses)
Depends on the bug in question ... we don't have any details nor a bug report with details.
> a) Finding and employing a team of sufficiently skilled people for sufficient time to solve the problem - let's say financing ten person-years, for a rough order of magnitude..
No idea where you are getting this numbers from but if fixing it costs more then buying new hardware then sure go ahead and buy new hardware. To go back to the car analogy if fixing the car costs more then buying a new one I'd rather go and buy a new one.
Posted Jan 28, 2013 21:34 UTC (Mon)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (3 responses)
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?list_id=1055201&...
I don't think it is terribly controversial to say that 3D with Nouveau is less than super-stable. The driver is also blacklisted by Google Chromium for WebGL, for whatever that's worth (they seem to have a high bar though).
My solution for now is to use a desktop that exercises only the more mature, 2D parts of the graphics driver. I may give a GNOME shell / mutter based environment (i.e. Cinnamon) another go when I upgrade to F18, as it has a blacklist and (I gather) will fallback to soft-rendering (or can be made to).
Posted Jan 29, 2013 11:32 UTC (Tue)
by drago01 (subscriber, #50715)
[Link]
Posted Jan 29, 2013 14:18 UTC (Tue)
by ovitters (guest, #27950)
[Link]
I noticed it is related to system resources somehow. Meaning: if I don't open too many tabs in Firefox, it is way more stable.
Posted Jan 29, 2013 16:57 UTC (Tue)
by Thanatopsis (guest, #14019)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2013 13:23 UTC (Sun)
by deepfire (guest, #26138)
[Link] (1 responses)
How soon the 4 fixed workspace limit is going to be lifted? (I mean, is 4 a magic number or what?)
What about the 2D grid workspace layout?
Posted Jan 27, 2013 13:53 UTC (Sun)
by drago01 (subscriber, #50715)
[Link]
That is a config option. Has been since 3.6 (where you can also enable fixed workspaces using a config option).
Posted Jan 27, 2013 0:46 UTC (Sun)
by misc (subscriber, #73730)
[Link] (4 responses)
Given that I can use gnome-shell with vnc/spice, I see no reason to not be able to do it with vmware virt system.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 8:45 UTC (Sun)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link] (3 responses)
I cannot speak for the reasons, because I really don't understand enough to comment. However, when I tried Gnome Shell/mutter in my VMware session under F-17, that was noticeably slower than fallback/metacity. It was also consuming a lot more CPU.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 21:34 UTC (Sun)
by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2013 22:33 UTC (Sun)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
Which brings us to the real point: what is the purpose of using 3D rendering here? Is it to display (more or less) useless animations and endless screen changes (i.e. overview) or is it so that _appropriate_ hardware does the job of rendering? With Gnome 3, it appears to be the former.
Posted Jan 27, 2013 23:43 UTC (Sun)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
To be fair, I just tried with F-18. It seemed faster than F-17 in this scenario, but all Windows were distorted (half width, distorted colours), so not sure whether that was a proper test.
Posted Jan 28, 2013 11:01 UTC (Mon)
by heijo (guest, #88363)
[Link] (3 responses)
That seems quite bad, I hoped we were already down to a tenth at most.
At this pace, it's going to take a few more years before we can finally have the ideal, perfect, completely featureless, desktop.
Posted Jan 28, 2013 11:45 UTC (Mon)
by drago01 (subscriber, #50715)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jan 28, 2013 23:34 UTC (Mon)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 29, 2013 10:41 UTC (Tue)
by ovitters (guest, #27950)
[Link]
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
To bring this discussion on a more constructive track:
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
If this could be achieved, the question of what is the default would be essentially moot.
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
As a guy who works with development, with multiple terminals, IDE's and documentation open, I have no problem using Gnome-Shell. I actually think my workflow is better now than with the "traditional" desktop paradigm.
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Point two GNOME3-is-for-tablets is BOooo-ooo-ooo-gus!
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
These are the ones that quickly come to mind. I also find that I travel longer distances with my mouse using Gnome Shell, but that is not a killer criterion for me. Probably I still have the "old" midset too deeply engrained due to 25 years of computing with traditional Unix deskop metaphors?
Flipping windows on and off (I do this often for visual comparison of two near-identical graphs or images)
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
I tend to middle-click the window title bar, which sends that window to the background. You can also ask to have the minimize button back with GNOME Tweak Tool.
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Oops, I now realize that this is in fact in TFA. I did not initially read it to that point, shame on me. This is big news, I did not expect this at all.
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/blob/61f89a61861c64...
Maybe you just didn't found how to use it, for example, the middle click trick ( middle click on the dash run a new instance of the application, quite handy and feel almost natural if you already use the middle click for cut and paste as any old X11 user ).
People are free to work on it if they want. If no more peole work on it, it is likely because Cinnamon is unconvincing, you say you are a user of Cinnamon, what prevent you from helping them ?
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Fedora 19 feature submission deadline is January 29, and Cinnamon is not in the feature list yet. Moreover, there is no Cinnamon spin of Fedora 18. It's very unlikely that a desktop environment would become default before it's available as a spin for wide testing.
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Features/Cinnamon as Default Desktop
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
It's very unlikely that a desktop environment would become default before it's available as a spin for wide testing.
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Keeping GNOME 2 as it is isn't really an option since it is dead upstream
That's false reasoning from two points of view. (i) G2 is not dead upstream, as the MATE desktop is maintaining the G2 branch. (ii) Just because something is "dead upstream", it doesn't mean it's useless; you can always incorporate minor bug fixes, which is the job of a distribution.
GNOME 3 was an upgrade to an already existing default
Also there is zero "force" unless you consider any "default" as force since there are tons of options
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
That's not the case for any of the other desktops, including GNOME 2.
It clearly wasn't arbitrary. There are people paid to do GNOME development in Fedora
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Initially I was interested in gnome-shell and I am still using it but recently things started to disappear from components like nautilus.
Becoz nautilus 3.6 took away the features, what people wanted.
This logic applies to cinnamon as well.
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Not all packages which are forked from existing components are accepted by FESCO. Would you accept a older forked gcc or linux-lts kernel accepted in fedora just becoz someone is interested in maintaining it?
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Regression
Regression
If someone complains about a feature missing it's a regression.Regression
If a feature is removed and somebody used it, you alienate your user. If people in GNOME cared about users they will never make something like G3. If people in Fedora cared about users they will never put G3 as default only because G3 is made by the same people as G2.
That is the main difference between free and commercial software. If they alienate users they lose money. If GNOME people alienate users they don't care. They only thing they care about is a "brand presence".
Regression
Regression
Regression
Regression
Regression
Regression
By this sense, changing from GNOME 3 to Cinnamon would be a regression.
Regression
Regression
Regression
Regression
Regression
Regression
Regression
Regression
Regression
Regression
Regression
With Gnone 3 there is no applet and I can't control my CPU governors through the GUI.
Regression
Regression
>With Gnone 3 there is no applet and I can't control my CPU governors through the GUI.
Regression
It didn't exist six months ago and I'm glad someone took the pain to create it. I retract my comment about this regression :)
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
nor is it necessary to thow up the bureaucratic smoke screen about "documented criterion" as if decision making is about some mechanistic following of a pre-written rule book.
You can take all of this as just more evidence to service your prejudices or you can try to better understand the world around you and why things happen, the choice is yours.
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/464/workspacebar/
took two minutes to find and two clicks to install. That seems to completely alleviate your workspace problem.
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
You claim that GNOME 2 is not dead upstream because there is a fork but the presence of the fork doesn't say anything about GNOME 2 itself
the fork didn't exist when Fedora switched to GNOME 3
There was a GNOME 3 feature proposal btw which was accepted by Fedora engineering steering committee.
Nobody is using any force to make you install Fedora
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
use whatever they prefer and I am working on making those choices available.
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
The "default" download is a live image cannot hold all the different desktop environments due to size constraints and this is the reason we have multiple options at ...
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
one of the more reasonable fellows.
is actually being attached to the collective perception of an awfully
significant audience.
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Last updated: 2010-04-04
Percentage of completion: 100%
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
> They take much more screen space than checkboxes
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Skeuomorphic binary sliders suck on touch displays too.
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
binary sliders
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
When switching a light switch, you see whether the light is currently on or not, so switching will always change that, so no label is needed.
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
In the USA a typical light switch has on and off printed on it (and done in raised beveling so that a blind person could figure out the distinction if necessary). Most everyday light switches follow this pattern and I think it's probably where the GNOME3 style checkbox switch concept gets its skeuomorphic inspiration.
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
I believe these come from the IEC standard ("Graphical symbols for use on equipment"). And yes, they were inspired by binary 0 and 1, if you trust Wikipedia.
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Classic mode questions
- can it be customised (can components be moved from panel to panel or from place to place on the panel)?
- will it be usable on a computer that has no 3D acceleration?
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
2) Fedora can use purely software LLVMPipe for OpenGL.
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
You can write extensions to reorder whatever you want to reorder.
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Really, it's 2013, and we can't re-order icons with the mouse by default?
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
a) Finding and employing a team of sufficiently skilled people for sufficient time to solve the problem - let's say financing ten person-years, for a rough order of magnitude (I would hope it's somewhat less than ten, but one is clearly unrealistic, given that it entails catching up with a constantly moving target from a position quite a long way behind)
b) Waiting until either somebody else does this, or
c) Waiting until enough volunteer time goes in to provide the equivalent result.
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
> Don't know the answer to that yet probably there will be one
> (you have 4 fixed workspaces though).
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Classic mode questions
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
Clasen: GNOME 3.7 at the halfway mark
