LWN: Comments on "GNOME 2.22 released"

GNOME 2.22 released

dcoutts — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:36:34 +0000

There are a couple reasons beyond portability. One is a standard interface for various kinds
of urls, like http etc. I suppose it might be possible to set this up using FUSE, perhaps
running a FUSE daemon and mounting ~/.gvfs/http or something. The point is that there has to
be a known mapping between urls and local FUSE paths.

Another reason is that not all resources behave like local POSIX files. This is obviously true
of most network resources and it was one of the acknowledged flaws with GnomeVFS that it tried
to pretend that everything was POSIX. I don't know enough about FUSE to know if it helps with
that issue but it would appear on the face of it to be tricky.

GVFS help by providing asynchronous APIs for almost all VFS actions, which again makes a lot
of sense for network resources. I presume with FUSE we must rely on the somewhat limited POSIX
AIO interfaces.

GNOME 2.22 released

drag — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 05:27:19 +0000

> Of course, a lot of us stopped using GNOME at the GNOME 2 transition because all that nice
simplicity made it impossible for us to work the way  we were used to: the configurability we
were relying on had vanished, and we had to work the way the GNOME devs wanted us to.

And to a lot of us Gnome before 2.4 or so (including 1.x stuff) was a unstable and/or
confusing mess that was nearly unusable.

:)

GNOME 2.22 released

nix — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:41:18 +0000

Of course, a lot of us stopped using GNOME at the GNOME 2 transition 
because all that nice simplicity made it impossible for us to work the way 
we were used to: the configurability we were relying on had vanished, and 
we had to work the way the GNOME devs wanted us to.

Given how rarely the control panel gets used (personally I get my settings 
just right and then change them very occasionally), a bit of clutter in 
there, in exchange for extra configurability, is more than worth it.

GNOME 2.22 released

Los__D — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:29:47 +0000

It has nothing to do with code size, or code complexity, it's an UI issue.

Take KDE's control panel (At least 3.5, haven't seen 4, but I've heard they're starting to
adopt some of GNOME's ideas for that), it's a complete mess.

Now, I agree that sometimes GNOME is erring too much on the side of simplicity, but I like
that a LOT more than on the side of complexity where it's not needed.

GNOME 2.22 released

alecs1 — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 07:50:28 +0000

If people ask for those features then they are not useless. 
I can write C and even wrote a few hundred lines of C programs using GTK+ (though I had not
pleasure in that :( ). So if I would come up with a 500 lines patch adding that rename
feature, just to prove that this is not like writing a new Gnome or adding imense complexity,
probably some people would give up this smartass attitude "Gnome is not useless features and
clutter, it is user friendly". 
How much would add this feature? 2 KB of code and less than 1 KB executable size?

How about providing access to more settings? An extremely dirty example: drag and drop some
widgets, write some labels and some tooltip text, making some connections to the pool of
settings.

GNOME 2.22 released

Los__D — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 07:22:57 +0000

Although some of your points are valid (Preview and hover), the others are definitely
intended, added clutter and complexity to GNOME is NOT wanted for useless features.

GNOME 2.22 released

drag — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 04:27:37 +0000

Oh.. And one more thing to keep in mind about FUSE is that current implimentations require
setuid root binaries and permissions granted to /dev/fuse to get it to work. So it's a bit of
a security hole if you want to have locked-down environments.

I don't know how serious it is, but requiring regular users root rights to a kernel interface
in order to use Gnome can't be a great idea when it comes to security.

The ultimate work around for FUSE, I would expect, is to have a daemon in charge of FUSE
mounts and use policykit and dbus to regulate and communicate to the daemon.

GNOME 2.22 released

drag — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 01:23:55 +0000

Well I would not pass judgement on gvfs until I see how well (or not) it actually works.

Although I find the term 'Legacy Applications' pretty damn insulting considering that means
90% of all applications made for the Linux desktop now and into the future. I mean it's not
like Posix-compatable file systems are going away any time soon or that GVFS will ever come
close to replacing any posix fs.

If their FUSE binding is fast and if it's transparent then it can still be a very good thing.
That is if you drag a file from sftp:// folder in nautilus to the terminal it will put the
proper ~/.gvfs/ path WITH NO EXTRA USER ACTION... Then that would be totally kick-ass. Fonts,
search results, etc etc. It's up to the GVFS stuff to figure out if it should pass the GIO
path or the FUSE path to the application.

GVFS can be a wonderful thing. The concept is so-so, IMO, but if the execution is good then it
will totally make up for it.

GNOME 2.22 released

nix — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:26:14 +0000

Why bother posting a comment trashing a piece of software *that you don't even use*?

Don't be silly, this is the Internet and the age of Web 2.0. People can't be expected to *think* before typing!

GNOME 2.22 released

ajross — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:25:47 +0000

Platforms such as Windows? Does GNOME support such platforms?

Glib and Gtk do, so the requirement isn't specious. There's nothing wrong with portability per se.

But what annoys me here is that we've been here before. Early KDE and Gnome versions had these I/O abstraction APIs to allow tools to use URLs as "files" and everyone agreed that this was a nifty feature. But the APIs were complicated and not universally used, so not every application actually supported the capability. And they were slow for many common tasks. And they didn't support error handling that looked like the old Unix calls, so when things went wrong they did so mysteriously and inscrutably. And they broke the abstraction of a "file" pretty badly too (you can open this string as a "file", but never find it in your chooser dialog, or feed it to a script, etc...).

And the kernel folks saw this, and fixed it by providing a nice way for a userspace process to provide something that looked like a filesystem to other userspace processes. And the Gnome folks announced that they would use it, and I thought everyone agreed that these awful abstraction APIs were going away. But instead, we have an all new abstraction API that we're all supposed to use.

That's just wrong. The lesson of the first round of these things wasn't that they should have been done better, it was that they shouldn't have been done at all at the level of an abstraction API. I/O is the job of the kernel, it's simply too basic a feature to put in a complicated external library. GVFS is going to have all the same annoyances as the older abstractions, because it simply isn't capable of fixing the problems they had. And that lesson appears to have been lost on the Gnome folks.

GNOME 2.22 released

epa — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:06:09 +0000

Platforms such as Windows?  Does GNOME support such platforms?

GNOME 2.22 released

alecs1 — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:13:41 +0000

I think there are still some points about Gnome (I might be mixing Gnome with Gtk generaly
though):
The first, and the most important is the lack of development. Examples:
-the file chooser continues not to show convenient previews. As I can see now with GIMP 2.4.5
(fairly new version, I think) it does show the current file.
-nice and easy access to more settings continues to be missing
-the inactive button hover problem (here for example:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gtk+2.0/+bug/12246) , I think it more than 5 years
old, before I even heard about Linux.

This guy actually aknowledges that nobody wrote the code for some bugs:
http://prokoudine.info/blog/?p=60

When I complained about the lack of delete/rename functionality inside the same file chooser,
I got a polite reply actually stating that the lack of functionality was intended:
http://www.mail-archive.com/gnome-list@gnome.org/msg02173...
I gathered that instead of someone writing the code and offer a button to enable/disable the
feature (I guess they are not 10000 lines for that) people preffered to have a new politics
talk.

GNOME 2.22 released

tomd — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:53:59 +0000

*Sigh* Apologies for feeding the troll...

> The changelog doesn't change the bugs Gnome is famous for.

So famous that they defy enumeration, apparently.

> I quit using Gnome years ago after Nautilus wiped out my research files.

You had non-backed-up research?

> Evolution is unusable in the real world and is full of bugs.

You mean "was", right? Since you quit years ago. Why bother posting a comment trashing a piece
of software *that you don't even use*?

GNOME 2.22 released

Ed_L. — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:41:33 +0000

Although I agree with your assessment of Evolution, I also strongly feel that when "a group of programmers focuses on Accessibility", that group of programmers is focusing on the future viability of their project. And that future is immediate. If GNU/Linux cannot beat Windows by a substantial margin in terms of Accessibility, then GNU/Linux *will* lose U.S. and local government procurements vs. Microsoft. Accessibility is *the* critical driving factor in local and state government computer desktop procurement, as well it should be. I'm certainly willing to wait for my own whistles and bells whilst Accessibility is ensured.

That said, I still think it absurd that I have to configure either Outlook or Thunderbird in order to read the configuration error messages my ISP server sends when I've got email problems. Not really clear why Evolution depends on its competitors to do its debugging for it. Perhaps someone can clue me in :-)

GNOME 2.22 released

dulles — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:22:26 +0000

INTERNATIONALIZATION AND ACCESSIBILITY?

Not much of a release from the Gnome people. The changelog doesn't change the bugs Gnome is
famous for. When a group of programmers focus on "International Clocks" and "Accessibility"
improvements it's not good. I quit using Gnome years ago after Nautilus wiped out my research
files. Evolution is unusable in the real world and is full of bugs. My favorite Gnome
improvement is how they reversed the standard "OK" and "Cancel" buttons. Let's face it, Gnome
is a completely retarded desktop. I'm sure we can all agree on that.

GNOME 2.22 released

coulamac — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:52:59 +0000

Alex Larsson, who principally wrote gio/gvfs, has been the maintainer of the gnome-vfs for
many years and has first hand knowledge of the problems with the earlier API, which, by the
way, was modeled on POSIX i/o calls.

Also, Gnome could not rely directly on FUSE because it is not portable across all the
different platforms.  gio/gvfs gives people the option of using FUSE without forcing it upon
the users or making the i/o operations inoperable on such platforms as Windows.

If you google gio, gvfs or Alex Larsson, you will probably get links to some of his
presentations on the subject.

At any rate, if after some review you still disagree with the design decisions, that's your
prerogative, but your comment that "the authors don't really understand what they're doing" is
grossly unfair.

GNOME 2.22 released

ajross — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:31:42 +0000

This part freaks me out a bit:

GVFS also offers a FUSE mountpoint in ~/.gvfs/ so that GVFS mounts can be exposed to legacy applications using standard POSIX IO. [...] API documentation for using GIO is available online along with migration guides for moving from POSIX IO and GNOME-VFS to GIO.

Wasn't one of the purposes behind FUSE integration precicely to get away from this kind of brain damaged "you must use a different API for I/O in GUI programs just because we say so" design choice? What possible advantage could there be to using a newer, bigger, more complicated and inevitably buggier I/O API than the one that has been stable, clean and tested for three decades now?

At least they didn't chuck FUSE entirely, so the feature is still there. But it seems like the authors don't really understand what they're doing.