Well, I've tried GNOME 3 now...

On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 06:07:43PM -0400, Tom Horsley wrote:
<SNIP>

Post by Tom Horsley
My only real question now is how fast I can install the bits
I need to switch to my normal fvwm based X session and never
look at GNOME 3 again.

I think Gnome3 is quite impressive but its not my personal preference
and for others who share my outlook on the subject I encourage to visit
http://spins.fedoraproject.org/ and see what other fine live/installable
media the Fedora project has to offer via is many Special Interest
Groups.

Hope you can find yourself a SIG to join up and an environment that
makes your computing experience all that it can be.

-AdamM

Adam Williamson

2011-04-21 23:29:29 UTC

This is the case with pretty much any desktop. They're fundamentally
sufficiently complex that you can either have very discoverable (but
inefficient) or efficient (but not so discoverable), and all desktops
I've ever seen end up being a mix of the two. The difference here is
that some of these are _new_ and hence you have to learn stuff and
everyone hates learning.

Post by Tom Horsley
but the one keystroke that has been
traditional forever is hitting F1 for help, but alas, there
is no help, so the hope of discovering the mysteries of
GNOME 3 by actually reading the online help was dashed.

http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/

Post by Tom Horsley
When I first logged in and started poking mysterious stuff
with sticks to try and make something happen, I found a
menu for all the programs I could run (a hideous one that filled
my entire 46 inch screen, but at least a menu). I used it
to start a terminal, but never found it again. Apparently
you can only use the menu once.

Go to overview, click 'Applications'. But what you probably want to do
is go to overview and type a bit of the name (or description) of
whatever it is you're looking for.

Post by Tom Horsley
There are a slew of mysterious cryptic icons at the top
right of the screen, but nothing seems to have any tooltips,
so they remain mysterious.

You could try just clicking on them. From left, they are accessibility,
volume control, bluetooth (if you have it), network, user menu.

Post by Tom Horsley
My only real question now is how fast I can install the bits
I need to switch to my normal fvwm based X session and never
look at GNOME 3 again.

You could try just learning a bit about it before writing it off
forever.

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Ed Greshko

2011-04-22 04:03:20 UTC

Post by Adam Williamson
You could try just learning a bit about it before writing it off
forever.

Sound advice. The discussions going on seem a lot like the ones going
on when KDE 4 started to arrive. The paradigm has changed (radically?)
and it takes some time to adjust...if one is willing.

I'm not a GNOME user. But, I did try it for a few minutes today. (Will
try again when I have more time.) But, I did find one thing that seems
annoying...unless there is a trick.

Pardon if I get the nomenclature incorrect.....

When you mouse-over "Activities" in the upper left your get a selection
of "Windows" and "Applications". The available "Windows" are shown over
on the right side. It seems, that if you want to pick a window you have
to move your mouse first all the way to the left...then all the way to
the right. Too much mouse movement for me. Is there a way to bring up
the Windows selection with a key-combo or another less motion intensive
method?
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Rob

2011-04-22 04:12:20 UTC

Post by Adam Williamson
You could try just learning a bit about it before writing it off
forever.
Sound advice.? The discussions going on seem a lot like the ones going on
when KDE 4 started to arrive.? The paradigm has changed (radically?) and it
takes some time to adjust...if one is willing.
I'm not a GNOME user.? But, I did try it for a few minutes today.? (Will try
again when I have more time.)? But, I did find one thing that seems
annoying...unless there is a trick.
Pardon if I get the nomenclature incorrect.....
When you mouse-over "Activities" in the upper left your get a selection of
"Windows" and "Applications".? The available "Windows" are shown over on the
right side.? It seems, that if you want to pick a window you have to move
your mouse first all the way to the left...then all the way to the right.
Too much mouse movement for me.? Is there a way to bring up the Windows
selection with a key-combo or another less motion intensive method?

The logo key or alt-f1 bring up the activities overview. Or you can
alt-tab to switch applications or alt-<key above tab> to switch
windows within an application.

FOR EVERYONE: https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet is well worth a read.

I found Gnome Shell very natural and easy to use, but I was using
gnome-do before for launching applications. So, I went from have
gnome-do and pressing logo-space, typing a few characters and pressing
enter when it displayed the app I wanted to launch, to just having
Gnome Shell, pressing the logo key, typing a few characters and
pressing enter to launch the app.

For example, logo, f, enter launches Firefox for me. It's very quick
and efficient and much better than browsing menus, but you have to
know that you can type characters to find an app and press enter to
launch it.

Regards,
Rob

Dan Scott

2011-04-22 04:15:52 UTC

On 22 April 2011 00:03, Ed Greshko <Ed.Greshko at greshko.com> wrote:

<snip>

Post by Adam Williamson
When you mouse-over "Activities" in the upper left your get a selection of
"Windows" and "Applications".? The available "Windows" are shown over on the
right side.? It seems, that if you want to pick a window you have to move
your mouse first all the way to the left...then all the way to the right.
Too much mouse movement for me.? Is there a way to bring up the Windows
selection with a key-combo or another less motion intensive method?

I think by "Windows" you mean "Workspaces"; if so, CTRL-ALT-Down /
CTRL-ALT-Up move up and down between workspaces.

http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/shell-keyboard-shortcuts.html.en
is a nice resource (CTRL-ALT-Shift-R for recording a screencast?
Cool!)

Ed Greshko

2011-04-23 04:47:44 UTC

Post by Dan Scott
<snip>

Post by Adam Williamson
When you mouse-over "Activities" in the upper left your get a selection of
"Windows" and "Applications". The available "Windows" are shown over on the
right side. It seems, that if you want to pick a window you have to move
your mouse first all the way to the left...then all the way to the right.
Too much mouse movement for me. Is there a way to bring up the Windows
selection with a key-combo or another less motion intensive method?

I think by "Windows" you mean "Workspaces"; if so, CTRL-ALT-Down /
CTRL-ALT-Up move up and down between workspaces.

Yes, that is what I meant, and what I actually knew. :-(

Post by Dan Scott
http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/shell-keyboard-shortcuts.html.en
is a nice resource (CTRL-ALT-Shift-R for recording a screencast?
Cool!)

Thanks to you and Rob for the links. Should make life easier for
everyone that cares to take the time.

Ed

mike cloaked

2011-04-22 14:54:03 UTC

Post by Adam Williamson
This is the case with pretty much any desktop. They're fundamentally
sufficiently complex that you can either have very discoverable (but
inefficient) or efficient (but not so discoverable), and all desktops
I've ever seen end up being a mix of the two. The difference here is
that some of these are _new_ and hence you have to learn stuff and
everyone hates learning.
You could try just learning a bit about it before writing it off
forever.
--

I think Gnome3 has the potential to work very well but it is new and
it is a learning curve. There are some things I would like to know
will get included - for example will there be some alternative themes
available at F15 release? I would like to be able to change the style
of windows that open for applications - eg are there equivalents to
the nodoka or glider window decorations that have existed for some
time in Gnome2 ?

I have been testing the last available iso for the Gnome 3 test day in
the past evening or so - and it is certainly working much better than
a few weeks ago though there are still some bugs that remain and it is
not always fully stable yet - there is time before final GA though!

I am also still not clear on whether it is easy to create a launcher
for a program that is not in the system by default - for example if I
want to run a nightly build of Thunderbird, and I have the binary
available on the system, can I set up an icon that will be in the dash
to launch it in the analogous way to setting up a custom launcher in
Gnome2?

--
mike c

Angel

2011-04-22 15:37:50 UTC

Post by mike cloaked
I think Gnome3 has the potential to work very well but it is new and
it is a learning curve. There are some things I would like to know
will get included - for example will there be some alternative themes
available at F15 release? I would like to be able to change the style
of windows that open for applications - eg are there equivalents to
the nodoka or glider window decorations that have existed for some
time in Gnome2 ?

There has already an extension gnome-shell-extensions-user-theme, it will
allow you to apply a style from ~/.themes/[Theme
Name]/gnome-shell/gnome-shell.css. Afaik, there has already a gnome3 theme
available on gnome-look.

Post by mike cloaked
I have been testing the last available iso for the Gnome 3 test day in
the past evening or so - and it is certainly working much better than
a few weeks ago though there are still some bugs that remain and it is
not always fully stable yet - there is time before final GA though!
I am also still not clear on whether it is easy to create a launcher
for a program that is not in the system by default - for example if I
want to run a nightly build of Thunderbird, and I have the binary
available on the system, can I set up an icon that will be in the dash
to launch it in the analogous way to setting up a custom launcher in
Gnome2?

A .desktop file needs to be placed in /usr/share/Applications or
~/.local/share/applications/.

--
Angel
Give me Linux.. ..or give me death
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Genes MailLists

2011-04-22 15:57:20 UTC

Post by Angel
A .desktop file needs to be placed in /usr/share/Applications or
~/.local/share/applications/.

Great - Aunt Tillie can learn to use Emacs and XML at the same time ..
yay ... certainly new and different as one poster put it ... better ..
time till tell ...

:-) ...

Genes MailLists

2011-04-22 16:08:23 UTC

Post by Angel
A .desktop file needs to be placed in /usr/share/Applications or
~/.local/share/applications/.

Someone made a comparison to Mac OS being new and different as a goal
- that was not the case - the Mac UI was designed to be sufficiently
obvious for most things and strove for elegant simplicity ... we will
see if gnome-3 achieves a similar end .. it is a bit early yet.

Simple, as an aside, does not demand minimalism ... I am a fan of
Occam's razor - as an example - the standard model in physics - while
the simplest one to be sufficient in explanation (and predictability) is
by no means minimalist .. in fact it is quite complicated .. just ask
those quantum field theorists who work in the field!

Elegance and simplicity are good goals .. but they still need to be
sufficient as well .. minimalism by itself is not a good goal ...
gnome-3 seems to be more minimalist than elegant simplicity ... by
design or accident is unclear to me.

Rob

2011-04-22 17:37:38 UTC

Post by Angel
A .desktop file needs to be placed in /usr/share/Applications or
~/.local/share/applications/.

?Someone made a ?comparison to Mac OS being new and different as a goal
- that was not the case - the Mac UI was designed to be sufficiently
obvious for most things and strove for elegant simplicity ... we will
see if gnome-3 achieves a similar end .. it is a bit early yet.

I like Mac OS X but I wouldn't call it obvious how to use it. Unless
it has changed since 10.6 - you've never used OS X before, you boot
into it and want to launch an application that isn't in the dock -
without reading the manual or clicking on things randomly, how do you
do it? With Gnome Shell there's at least the 'Activities' label as a
hint. In many cases, one still has to know what software does what
though.

[...]

?Elegance and simplicity are good goals .. but they still need to be
sufficient as well .. minimalism by itself is not a good goal ...
gnome-3 seems to be more minimalist than elegant simplicity ... by
design or accident is unclear to me.

- Launching an app
- Hit the logo key, type a couple of characters, press enter.
- Click Activities -> Applications [-> a category] -> the application
you wish to run.
- Switch window
- Alt-tab / Alt-<key above tab>
- Logo key, click desired window
- Click Activities, click desired window

I think launching an app gained in the elegant simplicity department
for those using a computer a lot. Switching a window becomes less
obvious and seeing the open applications is less obvious because one
has to go to the overview to see them. I'm not sure why you call Shell
minimalist though. No panel applets?

Regards,
Rob

Angel

2011-04-23 06:24:17 UTC

Post by Genes MailLists
Someone made a comparison to Mac OS being new and different as a goal
- that was not the case

May be, this was not a major goal, but of course this was in their mind
people who initially designed it. Else there has not much sense about ?not
being visible the maximize minimize close button? in default installation
(this is just one example). They could make it visible in default and
extension for make it invisible.

Anyway, it?s not like I am not liking it. I am already pretty much happy
about Gnome3, now I can show off my desktop to Mac user! :D

Adam Williamson

2011-04-23 02:45:56 UTC

Post by Genes MailLists

Post by Angel
A .desktop file needs to be placed in /usr/share/Applications or
~/.local/share/applications/.

Great - Aunt Tillie can learn to use Emacs and XML at the same time ..
yay ... certainly new and different as one poster put it ... better ..
time till tell ...

Aunt Tilly (or Uncle Tilson) wouldn't be setting up any apps which
didn't provide their own menu entries. You can't expect Tilly / Tilson
to be writing their own shell scripts, or running nightly builds of
Thunderbird. If you can do those things, you can write a .desktop
file...

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Genes MailLists

2011-04-23 05:41:44 UTC

...

Post by Adam Williamson
Aunt Tilly (or Uncle Tilson) wouldn't be setting up any apps which
didn't provide their own menu entries. You can't expect Tilly / Tilson
to be writing their own shell scripts, or running nightly builds of
Thunderbird. If you can do those things, you can write a .desktop
file...

I think you've illustrated the point Adam - namely the difference
between minimalist (take things away) and making things elegant and
simple ... gnome 3 is minimal, it is not simple to do things.

In this sense, it fails in my view.

Tom Horsley

2011-04-22 15:57:41 UTC

On Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:54:03 +0100

Post by mike cloaked

Post by Adam Williamson
You could try just learning a bit about it before writing it off
forever.

I think Gnome3 has the potential to work very well but it is new and
it is a learning curve.

But for months now they've been telling us this new design was
made for new users who don't want to learn about computers and
just want a desktop that works.

Does this model of the "typical user" the devs seem to imagine
exists come with a deep desire to research everything on google in
order to be able to use the desktop?

There was one improvement after getting updates though: At least
I could find the applications menu again. I guess the "only show it
once" behavior was a bug that was fixed in the updates. The icons
are still all blown up about 100 times larger than they were
designed for so they all mostly just look like amorphous blobs
of random color unless you scoot back a few feet from the screen.

Adam Williamson

2011-04-23 02:53:58 UTC

Post by Tom Horsley
On Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:54:03 +0100

Post by mike cloaked

Post by Adam Williamson
You could try just learning a bit about it before writing it off
forever.

I think Gnome3 has the potential to work very well but it is new and
it is a learning curve.

You don't have to do that. It works fine without knowing any of the
shortcuts. And if you're a new user you don't have any in-built
expectations for how fast you'll be able to do something or exactly how
to perform a given operation, so you won't be frustrated that it's
taking 'longer than it did before' or that it doesn't work the same way.

It's only people who are coming from an existing desktop - like GNOME 2
- for which they already know all the shortcuts who are getting
frustrated, because they've changed, and now some of that knowledge you
built up doesn't apply any more, and you know you 'should' be able to do
certain things faster (because you could before) but you don't know how
to (because the shortcuts have changed).

Let me give you an illustration...I went snowboarding this morning. The
conditions were pretty crappy and I wasn't really feeling it so I just
decided to go to the bunny hill and try and learn to ride switch (that
is, the opposite way around to how I normally do it - for me, with my
right foot at the front instead of my left).

When I first learned to snowboard, it took me hours just to learn to
make a turn without falling on my ass - and I was having fun the whole
time, because I was learning something new and it was cool and awesome.

Trying to ride switch is more or less like learning again from scratch,
because everything is switched around and you don't have the balance and
reflexes you figured out with all that learning. So you have to do it
all again. But it's not anywhere near as much fun; it just feels
frustrating and embarrassing, because all the time you're thinking 'man,
I know exactly how I SHOULD be able to do this, but instead I'm falling
on my ass the whole time'. It's way, way worse than just learning from
scratch. It still took me hours to make turns without falling on my ass,
and the whole time I was thoroughly pissed off, not enjoying myself like
I was when I first learned.

Well, I hope that kinda makes sense. It did to me, anyway. =)

Post by Tom Horsley
The icons
are still all blown up about 100 times larger than they were
designed for so they all mostly just look like amorphous blobs
of random color unless you scoot back a few feet from the screen.

All GNOME apps should have icons that look reasonable up to 256x256 now.
Many other apps do too (Firefox and Transmission, for instance). Other
apps should get their icons up to scratch over time.

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Jon Masters

2011-04-23 04:33:30 UTC

Post by Adam Williamson
It's only people who are coming from an existing desktop

This happens to be most users, whether GNOME 2, Windows, or OS X. There
is *one* way computers work for most people, and it involves panels in
certain locations that work in certain ways.

It's off-topic for this list, so I'll leave it at that. But assuming
everyone is going to re-learn how to use their computing experience is
something that deeply concerns me. Like most people, I don't have time
to do that (and I tried GNOME 3 for several weeks before giving up), so
I switched to XFCE. There will be a trend there, because people don't
have the time to be told how to use their computer again.

Jon.

Adam Williamson

2011-04-23 06:37:39 UTC

Post by Jon Masters

Post by Adam Williamson
It's only people who are coming from an existing desktop

This happens to be most users, whether GNOME 2, Windows, or OS X. There
is *one* way computers work for most people, and it involves panels in
certain locations that work in certain ways.

Please take context into account when replying. I was replying
specifically to a statement about GNOME 3's suitability for new users.

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Jon Masters

2011-04-23 17:00:20 UTC

Post by Jon Masters

Post by Adam Williamson
It's only people who are coming from an existing desktop

This happens to be most users, whether GNOME 2, Windows, or OS X. There
is *one* way computers work for most people, and it involves panels in
certain locations that work in certain ways.

Please take context into account when replying. I was replying
specifically to a statement about GNOME 3's suitability for new users.

Sure. I get that. I'm just saying it's only "suitable" (in terms of
getting into it easily) for totally new computer users. Anyone who is
already used to using any other kind of environment will have a steep
learning curve, and many will shy away as a result. There's a reason
GNOME and KDE were popular with Windows refugees.

Anyway. It's not the right list. I'll leave it at that.

Jon.

Chris Adams

2011-04-23 06:56:26 UTC

Post by Adam Williamson
It's only people who are coming from an existing desktop - like GNOME 2
- for which they already know all the shortcuts who are getting
frustrated, because they've changed, and now some of that knowledge you
built up doesn't apply any more, and you know you 'should' be able to do
certain things faster (because you could before) but you don't know how
to (because the shortcuts have changed).

I think the problem is that people think GNOME 2 -> GNOME 3 is an
upgrade of the interface, not a radical change. GNOME 3 is not GNOME 2
improved, it is something different (it might have been less confusing
if it wasn't called GNOME 3, but since the shell isn't the whole
project, that obviously wouldn't work). People don't like radical
change when they're expecting an upgrade (look at MS Office going to the
"ribbon" interface).

MS Windows hasn't really changed the basic user interface since Windows
95. I haven't used a Mac in a while, but it is my understanding that
their interface hasn't really changed that much over time either. Both
have certainly evolved, adding new features and such, but they haven't
had a radical departure in basic functionality from one release to the
next.

If the GNOME 3 shell had been a new development (especially under a
different name), with the existing interface continuing as well, I don't
think there would have been anything like as many complaints, and the
new interface could "sink or swim" on its own merits. However, in the
Open Source world, that requires people to step up to continue
maintaining the old interface, and that's a lot of work (I'm a system
admin, not a GUI developer; my personal web pages tend to be plain black
text on a plain white background).

While some interesting things have come out of the big changes in both
GNOME and KDE over the years, when the big changes land, they tend to
frustrate existing users. IMHO this is a big thing that has killed the
perpetual "year of the Linux desktop" hopes.

But what do I know; when I do have to use Windows, I still set it up in
the "Windows Classic" theme so I get a plain interface that still looks
largely like Win95.

--
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

Adam Williamson

2011-04-23 14:50:49 UTC

Post by Chris Adams
While some interesting things have come out of the big changes in both
GNOME and KDE over the years, when the big changes land, they tend to
frustrate existing users. IMHO this is a big thing that has killed the
perpetual "year of the Linux desktop" hopes.

GNOME 2.0 came out in 2002, so we had that interface for nine years.
It's not like no-one gave it a chance.

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

John Morris

2011-04-24 18:16:49 UTC

Post by Adam Williamson
GNOME 2.0 came out in 2002, so we had that interface for nine years.
It's not like no-one gave it a chance.

Quite the contrary, people seem to like it and are confused when things
that work are replaced with things that don't.

Chris Adams upthread was on to something when he observed that GNOME3
isn't an upgrade over GNOME2, it is something new and different.

Had it been honestly pitched that way everyone interested in GNOME could
have known their favorite desktop project's maintainers had abandoned
them over a year ago and made the decision to either step up and
maintain it or put the effort into picking a new one.

More importantly for the topic of a Fedora mailing list, had Fedora
evaluated it as two events, the abandonment of the GNOME project and a
new effort based on parts of the GTK and GNOME libs (kinda like XFCE)
it is doubtful, as a new and immature effort at reinventing the desktop,
it would currently be the default desktop for the Fedora project. As
just another desktop spin there would be zero controversy over GNOME3.
There would of course have been a major bikeshedding flameorama over
which of the existing desktops would have been promoted to the new
default.

Viewed from an outsider's perspective the root of this problem seems to
be too many of the dreamers behind GNOME3 are in RedHat and too deeply
connected to the Fedora maintainers, also mostly walking the same
cubefarm at RedHat. It would have been easier to tell some outside
group they were getting kicked to an alternate spin and would have to
compete to regain the default position purely on merit.

Whether GNOME3 is a good idea for GNOME depends on whether there really
is this mythical pool of new users they keep tossing their existing
users over the side of the boat in a quest for. As someone who deals
with public library users (currently on GNOME2) in a deeply rural area I
can tell ya there aren't many totally virgin users left in the USA, so
perhaps they are going for the third world. Perhaps they really are on
the brink of bringing about 'the year of the Linux Desktop.' Either
way, good for them because they are doing what they want to do and will
either change the world or learn an important lesson.

What isn't really debatable is that GNOME3 isn't a good fit for Fedora
as very few Fedora users are going to be inexperienced new users. Few
existing fedora users are looking for what GNOME3 is selling. Some
might end up accepting it, but that isn't the same thing. Fedora should
not be buying into a policy of chasing off existing or experienced users
in the hope there are newbies waiting to jump in because that isn't
Fedora's stated mission. The problem appears to be that there was never
a debate so none of these questions were even asked until the release
calendar had already imposed a commitment to ship GNOME3 as the default.

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Frederic Muller

2011-04-25 03:47:44 UTC

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2011-04-25 13:40:44 UTC

Post by John Morris

Post by Adam Williamson
GNOME 2.0 came out in 2002, so we had that interface for nine years.
It's not like no-one gave it a chance.

Quite the contrary, people seem to like it and are confused when things
that work are replaced with things that don't.

I agree very much with your posts and analysis.

The more they tell us we should like it, the more ...

Well, I am sitting in front of a GNOME 3 desktop.
For the last hour or so I have been holding a voodoo doll in my hand
and with a needle pinpointing exactly the elements I dislike most.

Just like french women do when they watch and listen to their president
Sarkozy.

JB

Adam Williamson

2011-04-26 15:20:52 UTC

Post by John Morris
Chris Adams upthread was on to something when he observed that GNOME3
isn't an upgrade over GNOME2, it is something new and different.

I think you're confusing GNOME Shell (note the new name - it's not
gnome-panel 3.0) with GNOME 3. GNOME is more than its shell, and the
rest of GNOME 3 is a clear update and refresh versus GNOME 2, and very
similar to GNOME 1 vs GNOME 2.

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Steven Stern

2011-04-21 23:32:34 UTC

Post by Tom Horsley
...and my current theory is that GNOME 3 was funded by Dell
computers so when people hurl their computers off the highest
cliffs they can find and have to buy new ones, Dell profits
will go up :-).
As others have noted, there seems to be a lot of things that
you have to just know the magic keystrokes to find (hold down
Alt, hit ESC, etc), but the one keystroke that has been
traditional forever is hitting F1 for help, but alas, there
is no help, so the hope of discovering the mysteries of
GNOME 3 by actually reading the online help was dashed.
When I first logged in and started poking mysterious stuff
with sticks to try and make something happen, I found a
menu for all the programs I could run (a hideous one that filled
my entire 46 inch screen, but at least a menu). I used it
to start a terminal, but never found it again. Apparently
you can only use the menu once.
There are a slew of mysterious cryptic icons at the top
right of the screen, but nothing seems to have any tooltips,
so they remain mysterious.
My only real question now is how fast I can install the bits
I need to switch to my normal fvwm based X session and never
look at GNOME 3 again.

Tom: In installed AWN Navigator and I have a nice combo now of Gnome 3
and OS/X look and feel. And I put a terminal launcher front and center
on my dock.

Click on the image for a larger view.
http://www.sterndata.com/content/gnome-3-and-awn-new-desktop

--
-- Steve

Kevin DeKorte

2011-04-22 00:04:10 UTC

Post by Steven Stern
Tom: In installed AWN Navigator and I have a nice combo now of Gnome 3
and OS/X look and feel. And I put a terminal launcher front and center
on my dock.
Click on the image for a larger view.
http://www.sterndata.com/content/gnome-3-and-awn-new-desktop

Steven,

That is exactly what I have done as well.. seems to fit in nicely.

http://kdekorte.blogspot.com/2011/04/avant-window-navigator-vs-gnome-shell.html

Kevin
- --
Get my public GnuPG key from
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x7D0BD5D1

Andre Robatino

2011-04-22 08:42:34 UTC

Post by Tom Horsley
As others have noted, there seems to be a lot of things that
you have to just know the magic keystrokes to find (hold down
Alt, hit ESC, etc),

I don't understand why as long as there's unused vertical space, the user menu
can't just be made longer, and the menu items the devs consider bad (like "Power
Off...") put at the bottom. Anyone who doesn't use them isn't affected at all,
anyone who does just moves the mouse pointer down another half-inch to reach
them, and everyone should be happy. If someone doesn't like long menus, they
could install an extension to shorten it (instead of the other way around).

Angel

2011-04-22 09:01:03 UTC

On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 2:42 PM, Andre Robatino

Post by Andre Robatino
I don't understand why as long as there's unused vertical space, the user menu
can't just be made longer, and the menu items the devs consider bad (like "Power
Off...") put at the bottom. Anyone who doesn't use them isn't affected at all,
anyone who does just moves the mouse pointer down another half-inch to reach
them, and everyone should be happy. If someone doesn't like long menus, they
could install an extension to shorten it (instead of the other way around).

I think, the devs wanted to create something which is completely new and
different than other old DE/OS behaves. Lets think about Mac OS X, from the
beginning they have many things different than Linux DE (infact different
from Windows too), for example the close minimize maximize button is in the
left side of the title bar, and the global menu, the mac dock etc, none of
these are available in any DE's default installation (but yes, you can
customize of course). So I guess, GNOME devs wanted to create something like
this, which is totally different than others.

Antonio Olivares

2011-04-24 19:11:40 UTC

From: John Morris <jmorris at beau.org>
Subject: Re: Well, I've tried GNOME 3 now...
To: "For testing and quality assurance of Fedora releases" <test at lists.fedoraproject.org>
Date: Sunday, April 24, 2011, 11:16 AM
On Sat, 2011-04-23 at 07:50 -0700,

Post by Adam Williamson
GNOME 2.0 came out in 2002, so we had that interface

for nine years.

Post by Adam Williamson
It's not like no-one gave it a chance.

Quite the contrary, people seem to like it and are confused
when things
that work are replaced with things that don't.

This is deja vu all over again with
sed -i 's|Gnome 3|KDE 4|'

People liked KDE 3.X too, but movement to 4.X was in the works and it happened :)

I have had the opportunity to learn new things and new ways of doing things with Gnome 3. I put it to the test with High School students. Some like it and say that it is just different :)

Tomas M from Slax has written in his blog some interesting things about Gnome 3:

http://www.tomas-m.com/blog/18160-Gnome-3-better-than-KDE.html

He preferred KDE before now it is being challenged :)

I honestly think that each desktop has its place. I use many of them on my machines

four use KDE, four use Gnome 3, two use XFCE two use LXDE. This are for some of my machines at school.

While people are discussing the differences, it seems that we will have more complaints coming like the KDE 4 series on Fedora 9 and now (not too many people are complaining about KDE 4)*

Some things I have figured out on my own, like adding apps to the activities section, moving windows to maximize and to split them (ala windows 7 and KDE 4.X), starting programs automatically(thanks to several kind folks), how to shut down (press alt), this one seems strange, but I don't mind since I have most of my machines automatically shutdown at 4:25 end of school day via a cron job:) .

The people that have more say are paying customers of RHEL and some of them might be here watching behind the scenes :)

Since the KDE disaster^{1} many people moved to Gnome :)
Now it seems that it could go the other way? or to XFCE? Interesting things are going to happen. Some might even embrace the new refreshing Gnome 3 desktop.

Regards,

Antonio

{1} Fedora 9 testing cycle

Ian Pilcher

2011-04-24 21:09:56 UTC

Post by Antonio Olivares
This is deja vu all over again with
sed -i 's|Gnome 3|KDE 4|'

I keep seeing this comparison made, and I don't think that it's
accurate. It's certainly true that the release of KDE 4.0 was terribly
mismanaged, and the buggy/incomplete state of the code caused huge pain
for KDE users. But releasing a "product" which is buggy and incomplete
and telling users that they'll just have to wait to get their old
functionality back is not the same as deliberately removing
functionality and discoverability with no intention of ever restoring
it.

As incredibly (and unnecessarily) painful as the KDE 3.5-to-4.x
transition was, the current incarnation of KDE is actually very usable.
I can think of only one KDE 3.5 feature that I used that isn't present
in KDE 4.6 -- different wallpapers per virtual desktop -- and I think it
may actually be possible to achieve that by using activities.

By comparison, if one believes the statements that have been made by
GNOME developers in various blogs, mailing lists, etc., most of the
features that people miss from GNOME 2.x are never coming back. This is
very different.

This is drifting well off-topic for this list, but the whole GNOME 3 ==
KDE 4 meme has been bugging me for a while. I feel so much better now.

:-)

--
========================================================================
Ian Pilcher arequipeno at gmail.com
"If you're going to shift my paradigm ... at least buy me dinner first."
========================================================================

Adam Williamson

2011-04-26 15:23:01 UTC

Post by Ian Pilcher
By comparison, if one believes the statements that have been made by
GNOME developers in various blogs, mailing lists, etc., most of the
features that people miss from GNOME 2.x are never coming back. This is
very different.

That's not really true, but often what's said is misrepresented as this.
GNOME 3 has a powerful extensions mechanism, and major future plans for
development. A lot of things 'missing' in GNOME 3 compared to GNOME 2
aren't going to be replaced as part of GNOME's core development, but
could certainly be replaced by extensions. A lot of other things
'missing' aren't going to be re-added in the same form, but the form
isn't really the important thing. Consider panel applets. The point
isn't really the form of a panel applet, which was never the greatest
form in the first place, but the functionality. Is it that you want a
weather panel applet, or that you want to be able to tell what the
weather is quickly? Because you're probably not going to get the first,
but you may well get the second.

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

mike cloaked

2011-04-26 17:32:51 UTC

Post by Adam Williamson
That's not really true, but often what's said is misrepresented as this.
GNOME 3 has a powerful extensions mechanism, and major future plans for
development. A lot of things 'missing' in GNOME 3 compared to GNOME 2
aren't going to be replaced as part of GNOME's core development, but
could certainly be replaced by extensions. A lot of other things
'missing' aren't going to be re-added in the same form, but the form
isn't really the important thing. Consider panel applets. The point
isn't really the form of a panel applet, which was never the greatest
form in the first place, but the functionality. Is it that you want a
weather panel applet, or that you want to be able to tell what the
weather is quickly? Because you're probably not going to get the first,
but you may well get the second.

I am convinced that you are right about this but the critical factor
will be how long it takes for the extensions to be developed - the
crucial outcome is what users will do in the period when gnome3 is the
gnome desktop and released in f15, and the time, somewhat later, when
the useful extensions and added functionality have been developed and
released? Will users stay with Gnome3 after installing F15? Will they
turn to KDE4 which has indeed been developed a lot since the rather
stuttering initial KDE 4.0 release? Will they turn to other DEs like
xfce or lxde?

If some users switch to KDE again they might then be disinclined to
return to Gnome3 for some time?

It will certainly be interesting to see the chatter here in the weeks
following GA!

--
mike c

Adam Williamson

2011-04-26 19:16:03 UTC

Post by mike cloaked
If some users switch to KDE again they might then be disinclined to
return to Gnome3 for some time?
It will certainly be interesting to see the chatter here in the weeks
following GA!

Maybe. Would that be terrible? No. I think it was probably good for both
KDE and GNOME in the long run that the KDE 4 switch caused some people
to shift to GNOME (sometimes temporarily), and if GNOME 3 causes some
people to shift to KDE (possibly temporarily), I don't think that's
necessarily bad either. A bit of a shake-up tends to lead to interesting
things for all parties.

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Antonio Olivares

2011-04-25 02:52:57 UTC

From: Ian Pilcher <arequipeno at gmail.com>
Subject: GNOME 3 != KDE 4 (was Well, I've tried GNOME 3 now...)
To: test at lists.fedoraproject.org
Date: Sunday, April 24, 2011, 2:09 PM
On 04/24/2011 02:11 PM, Antonio

Post by Antonio Olivares
This is deja vu all over again with
sed -i 's|Gnome 3|KDE 4|'

I keep seeing this comparison made, and I don't think that
it's
accurate.? It's certainly true that the release of KDE
4.0 was terribly
mismanaged, and the buggy/incomplete state of the code
caused huge pain
for KDE users.? But releasing a "product" which is
buggy and incomplete
and telling users that they'll just have to wait to get
their old
functionality back is not the same as deliberately
removing
functionality and discoverability with no intention of ever
restoring
it.
As incredibly (and unnecessarily) painful as the KDE
3.5-to-4.x
transition was, the current incarnation of KDE is actually
very usable.
I can think of only one KDE 3.5 feature that I used that
isn't present
in KDE 4.6 -- different wallpapers per virtual desktop --
and I think it
may actually be possible to achieve that by using
activities.
By comparison, if one believes the statements that have
been made by
GNOME developers in various blogs, mailing lists, etc.,
most of the
features that people miss from GNOME 2.x are never coming
back.? This is
very different.
This is drifting well off-topic for this list, but the
whole GNOME 3 ==
KDE 4 meme has been bugging me for a while.? I feel so
much better now.
:-)
--

You don't think it is accurate but many folks would agree with me,

some folks wanted kde 3.5.X back, and Fedora would not go back and put in Kde 3.5.x ---> i don't see Fedora putting Gnome 2.3X back just because people want it or miss some features

Fedora moved forward and pushed KDE 4.X down the throats, and after a while several releases/updates it has become a workable desktop, but many bugs and * were ironed out. Gnome 3.0 might have its quirks, but if it has bugs, they will be ironed out too! The new features new things are not going to go back.

This is like the Windows 98 vs Windows 95 thing, like Bush was an upgrade over Reagan :) Gnome 3 could be the "Change" that Mr Obama promised the American people, but in his case not really that great :(

I agree with some things that you mention that the things that worked or people were used to they will not be there on Gnome 3, but on KDE some things were pushed beta and not really in good working condition.

But Fedora developers did not give way to the complaints, they moved forward with the code and released Fedora 9 with KDE 4.X while Debian, Ubuntu and others released long term KDE 3.5.X desktops because there were many complaints about it. After a while and great effort by the community KDE 4.X became usable and other distributions have included great KDE, but thanks to Fedora/other Linux Distros that strung together and did not move back to KDE 3.5.X. The same should apply with GNOME 3.0 :) It is different, there are somethings that are different, but in my opinion it is a fresh welcome :)

We need to move forward and test the new technologies. Time will tell if the developers of Gnome made the right decisions or not. There new things out there gadgets that will give back some things that the users want back. But things move forward and Gnome 3.X is no exception.

I was one that was not very happy with many of the changes that KDE 4.X brought I missed KPF and Kghostview from 3.5 series and okular replaced kdvi, kghostview and kpdf. The digital clock[LCD] never came back :(, but things moved forward and have not locked back.

You will see complaints about Gnome 3 when Fedora 15 is released, mark my words. People will complain left and right, where is this, where is that. The same thing happened when KDE 4.X was released the long threads about I miss this, I miss that.

This is what I mean by it is deja vu all over again :)

Regards,

Antonio

P.S.
Time will tell, but for me Gnome 3 is a welcome change :)
It is different^^ and some students tell me which windows is that?, I tell them that it is the new Windows 8 :) jokingly of course.

Ian Pilcher

2011-04-25 14:09:11 UTC

Post by Antonio Olivares
some folks wanted kde 3.5.X back, and Fedora would not go back and put in Kde 3.5.x ---> i don't see Fedora putting Gnome 2.3X back just because people want it or miss some features

You make a good point that from Fedora's point of view, the transitions
are similar. (I.e. Fedora isn't going back no matter how much people
complain.)

I was actually talking about GNOME 3 and KDE 4 more generally. As I
said, not really on-topic for this list.

As a KDE user, I fully support Fedora's transition to GNOME 3. After
the pain that KDE users experienced, it seems only fair.

Jonathan Masters

2011-04-25 16:08:50 UTC

I think the point is that it takes many years to build traction. We should consider we have established players in desktop and a trend towards Android, iOS, MeeGo etc. powered devices in the consumer space over a pure play Linux distro. We would have been better served in the traditional distro space in building on the traction we had with GNOME 2. After all, it finally was offering a fairly compelling alternative. My blog has more personal opinion on consumer behavior and desktop adoption - my belief is innovation should happen in the new platform space, not on traditional desktops. Throwing away 30 years of tradition is not actually what mainstream computing users want.

Sorry for top post.

Jon.
--
Sent from my phone - message formatted and/or shortened accordingly.

-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Williamson [awilliam at redhat.com]
Received: Saturday, 23 Apr 2011, 10:51
To: For testing and quality assurance of Fedora releases [test at lists.fedoraproject.org]
Subject: Re: Well, I've tried GNOME 3 now...

GNOME 2.0 came out in 2002, so we had that interface for nine years.
It's not like no-one gave it a chance.
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

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test mailing list
test at lists.fedoraproject.org
To unsubscribe:
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drago01

2011-04-25 16:19:23 UTC

Post by Jonathan Masters
I think the point is that it takes many years to build traction. We should consider we have established players in desktop and a trend towards Android, iOS, MeeGo etc. powered devices in the consumer space over a pure play Linux distro. We would have been better served in the traditional distro space in building on the traction we had with GNOME 2. After all, it finally was offering a fairly compelling alternative. My blog has more personal opinion on consumer behavior and desktop adoption - my belief is innovation should happen in the new platform space, not on traditional desktops. Throwing away 30 years of tradition is not actually what mainstream computing users want.

"If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster
horse.? ? Henry Ford

Horses even had a *much* longer tradition then the windows 95 style desktop ;)

Ian Pilcher

2011-04-25 16:35:01 UTC

Post by drago01
"If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster
horse.? ? Henry Ford

But Henry Ford didn't eliminate animal powered transportation by fiat.
The "people" ultimately decided that they preferred motorized transport.

GNOME users are not being given that choice.

It's as if Henry Ford had sent squads of employees out to shoot every
horse they could find.

Bill Nottingham

2011-04-25 21:23:56 UTC

Post by Ian Pilcher

Post by drago01
"If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster
horse.? ? Henry Ford

But Henry Ford didn't eliminate animal powered transportation by fiat.
The "people" ultimately decided that they preferred motorized transport.
GNOME users are not being given that choice.

http://git.gnome.org/
http://spins.fedoraproject.org/

The beautiful thing about open source is that you always have that choice.
Sure, you may not like the amount of effort that may be involved (on a
scale that goes from switching your local desktop, all the way up to forking
your own copy of GNOME 2.30 and taking it in whatever direction you feel
like), but it doesn't mean you don't have that choice.

Bill

Gregory Maxwell

2011-04-25 21:46:17 UTC

Post by Bill Nottingham
http://git.gnome.org/
http://spins.fedoraproject.org/
The beautiful thing about open source is that you always have that choice.
Sure, you may not like the amount of effort that may be involved (on a
scale that goes from switching your local desktop, all the way up to forking
your own copy of GNOME 2.30 and taking it in whatever direction you feel
like), but it doesn't mean you don't have that choice.

Even if there were no "open source" you'd have the _choice_ of creating your
own operating system and software all from scratch if the available software
didn't work the way you needed it to. But because of the enormous effort
required that "freedom" isn't very meaningful.

Likewise, when the whole distribution is driven in a particular direction
going against that direction is quite costly: Even if you're willing to put
in the effort to support and maintain gnome 2.30 you will still suffer from
the fact that Fedora is developed against and tested with the new stuff and
will almost certainly become gratuitously incompatible with the old stuff.

People use distributiosn because assembling and maintaining the whole system
on their own is not a good (or available) option for them. Fedora's support
for non-standard configurations is not especially good, even compared to
some other distributions.

The difference from the above no-open-source example is only quantitative.
Meaningfully so, but "you can break free from the fedora default and engage
in an unsupported high effort configuration" is still not a valid argument
against claims that a decision is net-detrimental to the Fedora user
community, even if it is technically true.

That sort of argument should be rebutted with evidence that on the whole
and in the long term the change is expected to be beneficial to the user
community and/or the GNU/Linux ecosystem overall and evidence that these
goals could not otherwise be met through means which deprived (by forcing
them into non-standard configurations) fewer users of the value that
Fedora provides.

Bill Nottingham

2011-04-26 02:36:45 UTC

Post by Gregory Maxwell

It was stated that GNOME upstream, to use the Ford analogy, have eliminated
the panel/menu/desktop-icon desktop metaphor from existence in Fedora 'by
fiat'. I find that a pretty silly argument given the choices that are
available.

However, it's these sort of reactions that drive me up the wall. Carping
about "not being given a choice"? Complaining to "give me XXX back"? Saying
"it been honestly [described] everyone interested in GNOME could have known
their favorite desktop project's maintainers had abandoned them over a year
ago and made the decision to either step up and maintain it or put the
effort into picking a new one"? (Ignoring the part where GNOME Shell
has been developed entirely in the open for the better part of 2-3 years..)

The entire point of creating a participatory culture is that *you have
agency in your decisions*. Anyone using OSX, or iOS, or hell, even Android
in a lot of cases, can vent on a mailing list, or post to their blog about
how all the horrible changes The Man is doing to their software is ruining
it. But with F/OSS, Fedora, GNOME, *you* have some ability to direct what
happens. Now, is a voice in the wilderness who is othewise dissociated from
anything happening upstream going to dissuade people? Not likely. Is a
general consensus? Maybe. Is a huge swath of the userbase voting with their
feet, or forking the project? Likely. But, really... talk is just that.
Talk.

And, truly, it is work to take over maintenance of something when upstream
goes a different way. But it *does* happen in open source.

Mozilla discontinued the all-in-one application suite. Enough people got a
critical mass that there's now the SeaMonkey project -
http://seamonkey-project.org/

Oracle was becoming less and less attuned to the OpenOffice.org community
of users and developers. Thus begat... LibreOffice.

KDE switched to KDE 4, changing many things in the process. Some people were
disgruntled enough to maintain a fork of that - http://www.trinitydesktop.org/

If, truly, 'everyone interested in GNOME' has been abandoned, surely some
level of critical mass could be attained? Or could be redirected to make
some other desktop better in the way these people want?

Post by Gregory Maxwell
That sort of argument should be rebutted with evidence that on the whole
and in the long term the change is expected to be beneficial to the user
community and/or the GNU/Linux ecosystem overall and evidence that these
goals could not otherwise be met through means which deprived (by forcing
them into non-standard configurations) fewer users of the value that
Fedora provides.

Well, there's the unstated link from "I don't like it" to "net-detrimental
to the Fedora user community" above. Which is an argument that also needs
evidence. (Some has been posted. A lot of complaints don't have much in the
way of evidence.) Aside from that...

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mission

...
The Fedora Project's mission is to lead the advancement of free and open
source software and content as a collaborative community.

The three elements of this mission are clear:

The Fedora Project always strives to lead, not follow.
The Fedora Project consistently seeks to create, improve, and spread
free/libre code and content.
...

Post by Gregory Maxwell
From there, it's not a huge logical step that one of the best ways to

accomplish that goals is to spread the Fedora OS to a wider audience.

Now, let's take some random stats:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Wikimedia_traffic_by_linux_os.svg

Or, to view the same data in a different way:

ENTITY Feb 11 Apr 09 Change
Fedora 2350 3257 -27.85%

Similarly, if you view https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Stats, and similar
pages, the trend is relatively flat, or downward, ever since Fedora Core 6.
(There's a slight peak around F11 or F12, but even so, it's not a drastic
jump).

If your goal is to spread the OS to a wider audience, it's a pretty fair
statement that 'business as usual' does not appear to be working, or
at least working in an obvious fashion.

So, if we take the examples where traffic is increasing in the above
wikimedia graphic:

Ubuntu:
- Desktop focus
- Usability focus
- Design driven

Android:
- Mobile focus
- Different interface paradigm compared to traditional desktop

Ergo, a reasonable direction is "a newly designed interface, focusing on
usability, with changes to some paradigms". Of course, there's room for
argument here, both as to the direction, and the decisions made during that
design. But I think it's a fairly straightforward bit of reasoning to get
from the Fedora Project principles and the current state of Linux computing
to where we are now.

Bill

Ian Pilcher

2011-04-26 02:59:55 UTC

Maybe we need fedora-gnome3 at redhat.com?

Post by Bill Nottingham
It was stated that GNOME upstream, to use the Ford analogy, have eliminated
the panel/menu/desktop-icon desktop metaphor from existence in Fedora 'by
fiat'. I find that a pretty silly argument given the choices that are
available.

Possibly a bad choice of terminology, but I stand by the specific point
I was making that Henry Ford did not make the decision to eliminate
horse-powered transport; he provided an alternative that the people/
market/whatever ultimately found to be superior.

In the case of GNOME, the developers of that project have made a
decision that effectively removes the GNOME 2 interface as an option for
many users -- the vast majority of whom do not have the time and/or
skills to build and maintain a desktop environment. We will never know
which interface would have been more successful in the FLOSS desktop
environment "market". That's unfortunate, but it's also probably
inevitable in a world of limited resources.

The two situations are simply not the same, and that's the only point I
was trying to make.

2011-04-26 03:43:55 UTC

Post by Ian Pilcher
...

...
In the case of GNOME, the developers of that project have made a
decision that effectively removes the GNOME 2 interface as an option for
many users -- the vast majority of whom do not have the time and/or
skills to build and maintain a desktop environment. We will never know
which interface would have been more successful in the FLOSS desktop
environment "market". That's unfortunate, but it's also probably
inevitable in a world of limited resources.
...

Bill,

take a look at this:
http://live.gnome.org/UsabilityProject/

"What's important is not that we can conceive the idea, but that when we
actually test it on people you discover it doesn't work... your intuition is
wrong." - Daniel M. Russell (IBM Almaden / Xerox PARC)".

That is their own motto to live by, for both Gnome 2 and 3 !

How do you feel now about your statement above regarding proven and accepted
elements of Gnome 2 DE that were eliminated ? Knowledge and experience they
themselves and others gained over many years of designing and user-testing
optimal and effective desktop environments !

Now this:
http://gnome3.org/

"A satisfying experience, whatever kind of computer you use: GNOME 3 will feel
right at home on netbooks as well as larger machines"

Really ? Like servers. workstations, PCs, notebooks ? Used by RH enterprise
customers, non-technical businesses (big and small), users who do not sleep
with their computers but use them as *tools* to accomplish their daily tasks ?

Why did Fedora decide to abandon Gnome 2, instead of offering Gnome 3 as
an experimental college-level project via a spin (as one poster here already
asked), representing a work-in-progress where geeks still learn their Computer
Science principles and skills ?

Do you know that even on Gnome 3 Shell devs (and users) list people admit that
they possibly boxed themselves into a corner and now are not willing or able
to reverse the course where things went wrong ?

It is a Fedora problem, and it will be a Red Hat problem in due time !

JB

Gerald Henriksen

2011-04-26 15:23:31 UTC

Post by JB
Why did Fedora decide to abandon Gnome 2, instead of offering Gnome 3 as
an experimental college-level project via a spin (as one poster here already
asked), representing a work-in-progress where geeks still learn their Computer
Science principles and skills ?

As much as I dislike Gnome 3 and am considering my alternatives, it is
very unfair to dump on Fedora for the problems with Gnome 3.

Fedora relies on upstream, and if upstream (in this case Gnome)
decides to release an unfinished product that possibly alienates a
significant part of their userbase then there is little that Fedora
can do about it.

Fedora doesn't have enough volunteers to achieve everything Fedora
currently wants to do, the idea that Fedora could suddenly find a
significant number of developers to continue to maintain the now
abandoned Gnome 2 code is a pipe dream.

The best thing Fedora can do is what it is doing - putting Gnome 3 out
there so that the Linux community can try it out and provide feedback
to the Gnome community. Gnome can then decide if they need to change
course or keep moving in their current direction.

Post by JB
Do you know that even on Gnome 3 Shell devs (and users) list people admit that
they possibly boxed themselves into a corner and now are not willing or able
to reverse the course where things went wrong ?
It is a Fedora problem, and it will be a Red Hat problem in due time !

Red Hat is fortunate that they can wait and see, and if necessary
evaluate the cost/benefit and if necessary allocate resources to the
issue. Fedora, as a volunteeer effort, cannot.

Genes MailLists

2011-04-26 15:52:01 UTC

Post by JB
Why did Fedora decide to abandon Gnome 2, instead of offering Gnome 3 as

Post by JB
an experimental college-level project via a spin (as one poster here already
asked),

...

Post by Gerald Henriksen
As much as I dislike Gnome 3 and am considering my alternatives, it is
very unfair to dump on Fedora for the problems with Gnome 3.

No, to be really fair - there was/is indeed an option here - namely to
use or not to use the new gnome-shell .. so indeed Fedora does have a
choice here ...

and while that choice was Gnome Shell for F15, such a choice should be
debated and decided for F16 or F17 and we should not stubbornly stick
with Gnome shell while blaming upstream for all things poopy. :-) and
simultaneously taking credit for 'leading the pack' with wonderful new
things.

It may turn out to be wonderful and beneficial, but the votes are not
in yet - its too early, in spite of bad taste from test users.

As someone earlier said, time will tell. But lets make this discussion
making Fedora better - whether it means keeping/improving Gnome shell -
or, frankly, even if it means dumping it and changing DE's - and no I
don't mean tell people to leave and go build their own distro - I mean
make Fedora better - isn't that what we want here ?

gene/

2011-04-26 20:28:28 UTC

Post by Gerald Henriksen
...
The best thing Fedora can do is what it is doing - putting Gnome 3 out
there so that the Linux community can try it out and provide feedback
to the Gnome community. Gnome can then decide if they need to change
course or keep moving in their current direction.
...

I read that:
"GNOME is more than its shell, and the rest of GNOME 3 is a clear update and
refresh versus GNOME 2, and very similar to GNOME 1 vs GNOME 2."

OK.
There is something called "escape forward".

I have a proposal to GNOME project and to Red Hat/Fedora as well.

Let's take the best from GNOME 2, its GUI, and put it on top of GNOME 3
infrastructure (without GNOME 3 Shell).
They can release the new product as GNOME 3 Classic.

It will be a gesture to a proven-and-tested standard GUI of GNOME 2, and it
will offer all the "below-the-hood" improvements (speed, responsiveness,
extensions, etc) of GNOME 3.

It will offer peace of mind to current and future customer base of Linux and
UNIX OSs/distros.

It will be an instant hit and ensure GNOME's proper place in DE space.

They may offer current GNOME 3 with its Shell as well, as a separate product,
if they wish.

JB

Rahul Sundaram

2011-04-26 20:38:09 UTC

Post by JB
I have a proposal to GNOME project and to Red Hat/Fedora as well.
Let's take the best from GNOME 2, its GUI, and put it on top of GNOME 3
infrastructure (without GNOME 3 Shell).
They can release the new product as GNOME 3 Classic.

Proposals are not very useful unless there are people willing to put in
the effort. Apparently noone is. . Use GNOME Shell for a while and if
you don't like it and can't live with fallback mode, try out other
desktop environments. That's a far more practical decision than trying
to revive a EOL'ed desktop version.

Rahul

2011-04-26 21:15:35 UTC

Post by Rahul Sundaram

I do not know why but I have a feeling that you want to see the best of GNOME 2
killed. Why ?
I do not want to sound like a conspiracy buff, but perhaps some interests have
a different agenda than the one in public light ...

Let GNOME Foundation and other parties consider the proposed scenario first.

JB

drago01

2011-04-26 21:40:50 UTC

Post by JB

Post by Rahul Sundaram

Proposals are not very useful unless there are people willing to put in
the effort. ?Apparently noone is. . ?Use GNOME Shell for a while and if
you don't like it and can't live with fallback mode, ?try out other
desktop environments. ? That's a far more practical decision than trying
to revive a EOL'ed desktop version.
Rahul

I do not know why but I have a feeling that you want to see the best of GNOME 2
killed. Why ?
I do not want to sound like a conspiracy buff, but perhaps some interests have
a different agenda than the one in public light ...
Let GNOME Foundation and other parties consider the proposed scenario first.

I can tell you the answer beforehand just a single word ... "rejected".

And please stop writing in a style where you paint your opinions as
facts it is becoming really annoying.

2011-04-26 21:54:45 UTC

Post by drago01
...
I can tell you the answer beforehand just a single word ... "rejected".

Rejected by whom ? You ?
If that's your opinion then I accept it. Done.

Post by drago01
And please stop writing in a style where you paint your opinions as
facts it is becoming really annoying.

Well, I accepted your opinion ... or was that a fact ?
You are annoying me. I do not like your tone and style.

JB

Rahul Sundaram

2011-04-26 21:55:35 UTC

Post by JB
I do not know why but I have a feeling that you want to see the best of GNOME 2
killed. Why ?
I do not want to sound like a conspiracy buff, but perhaps some interests have
a different agenda than the one in public light ...

Yes, you do sound like a conspiracy buff and a completely silly one at
that.

Post by JB
Let GNOME Foundation and other parties consider the proposed scenario first.

Foundation has explicitly no say on that matter and they are definitely
not reading this list anyway.

Rahul

2011-04-26 22:12:57 UTC

Post by Rahul Sundaram
...

Post by JB
Let GNOME Foundation and other parties consider the proposed scenario first.

Foundation has explicitly no say on that matter and they are definitely
not reading this list anyway.
Rahul

But Gnome devs and users do.
And Red Hat and Fedora do too :-)

JB

Rahul Sundaram

2011-04-26 22:21:43 UTC

Post by JB
But Gnome devs and users do.
And Red Hat and Fedora do too :-)

Not really. Some GNOME developers might but if want to revive a older
GNOME version and maintain it forward, you need a strong show of
developers willing to do so and it should be in the context of GNOME
upstream since it is not tied to a single distribution or organization.
Afaik, noone in Fedora or Red Hat is interested in doing this . The
amount of time, effort and money required to do so just makes the whole
idea just unlikely to amount to anything. If you want to persist
anyway, feel free to.

Rahul

Ralf Corsepius

2011-04-27 04:56:45 UTC

As much as I dislike Gnome 3 and am considering my alternatives, it is
very unfair to dump on Fedora for the problems with Gnome 3.

Why? I think it's appropriate to dump Fedora because of this, because
Fedora has made Gnome 3 it's default desktop and because Fedora is
actively promoting it.

Red Hat is fortunate that they can wait and see, and if necessary
evaluate the cost/benefit and if necessary allocate resources to the
issue.

Well, as others already said, the current Fedora 15 desktop is unusable
to many people. "Kool smartphone kiz" and newcomers may like it, as I
feel it's unusable for "business class use-cases" due to its GUI-design.

Post by Gerald Henriksen
Fedora, as a volunteeer effort, cannot.

It's worse. I fear Fedora will loose contributors, because Fedora is not
shipping the DE these users want.

Adam Williamson

2011-04-27 05:14:37 UTC

Post by Gerald Henriksen
Fedora, as a volunteeer effort, cannot.

It's worse. I fear Fedora will loose contributors, because Fedora is not
shipping the DE these users want.

We ship every major currently maintained desktop. Which one do you think
is missing?

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Jan Wildeboer

2011-04-27 07:06:57 UTC

Post by Gerald Henriksen
Fedora, as a volunteeer effort, cannot.

It's worse. I fear Fedora will loose contributors, because Fedora is not
shipping the DE these users want.

We ship every major currently maintained desktop. Which one do you think
is missing?

Unity ;-) *DuckAndHide*

Jan
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Adam Williamson

2011-04-27 15:03:14 UTC

Post by Jan Wildeboer

Post by Gerald Henriksen
Fedora, as a volunteeer effort, cannot.

It's worse. I fear Fedora will loose contributors, because Fedora is not
shipping the DE these users want.

We ship every major currently maintained desktop. Which one do you think
is missing?

Unity ;-) *DuckAndHide*

I know you're not serious, but I am - I've been working on it, but
someone else filed a review for a necessary package and hasn't worked on
it since I accepted it for review and requested some fixes, so now I'm
stuck, unless I try to take over that package request :(

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Rahul Sundaram

2011-04-27 15:13:23 UTC

Post by Adam Williamson
I know you're not serious, but I am - I've been working on it, but
someone else filed a review for a necessary package and hasn't worked on
it since I accepted it for review and requested some fixes, so now I'm
stuck, unless I try to take over that package request :(

You can add a comment giving a few days time and if there isn't any
response, file a new review request, close the older one as duplicate
against your review request and offer to add the person who submitted
the original review request to be a co-maintainer or hand it over after
you import the package. You shouldn't let a stalled review request
stand in your way of getting a high profile software into the repo

Rahul

Ralf Corsepius

2011-04-27 07:52:12 UTC

Post by Gerald Henriksen
Fedora, as a volunteeer effort, cannot.

It's worse. I fear Fedora will loose contributors, because Fedora is not
shipping the DE these users want.

We ship every major currently maintained desktop. Which one do you think
is missing?

Adam, please.

All of this thread is about "Gnome 3 not being a replacement for what
used to be Gnome 2",

Ed Greshko

2011-04-27 08:21:01 UTC

Post by Gerald Henriksen
Fedora, as a volunteeer effort, cannot.

It's worse. I fear Fedora will loose contributors, because Fedora is not
shipping the DE these users want.

We ship every major currently maintained desktop. Which one do you think
is missing?

Adam, please.
All of this thread is about "Gnome 3 not being a replacement for what
used to be Gnome 2",

I don't think you carefully read what Adam wrote:

"We ship every major *currently maintained* desktop."

AFAIK, GNOME 2 is no long about to be maintained.... Therefore it
doesn't meet the criteria.

I think it is clear.... The upstream folks at gnome.org aren't
interested in maintaining GNOME 2. So, if there is a body of people
wanting it, they can take it over.

Ralf Corsepius

2011-04-27 08:43:47 UTC

Post by Ed Greshko

Post by Gerald Henriksen
Fedora, as a volunteeer effort, cannot.

It's worse. I fear Fedora will loose contributors, because Fedora is not
shipping the DE these users want.

We ship every major currently maintained desktop. Which one do you think
is missing?

Adam, please.
All of this thread is about "Gnome 3 not being a replacement for what
used to be Gnome 2",

I did ... my feel Adam doesn't want to understand.

Post by Ed Greshko
"We ship every major *currently maintained* desktop."

Correct ... IMO, Gnome upstream has derailed, but Fedora is blindly
following, telling their users they are dumb and unable to learn.

Post by Ed Greshko
AFAIK, GNOME 2 is no long about to be maintained....
Therefore it
doesn't meet the criteria.
I think it is clear.... The upstream folks at gnome.org aren't
interested in maintaining GNOME 2. So, if there is a body of people
wanting it, they can take it over.

Well, there is a different perspective:

If an upstream is doing a bad job and breaking a large numbers of a
distro's users expectations, a distro should reconsider its position
towards such an upstream and can not avoid to fork.

Debian turned aways from libc, SUSE has always followed KDE, ... Many
Fedora packagers do so on the package level, when upstreams die or "go
nuts".

That said, I can't deny finding some wisdom in Ubuntu's decision to
launch Unity (we will see where this ends).

Ralf

Rahul Sundaram

2011-04-27 08:52:41 UTC

Post by Ralf Corsepius
I did ... my feel Adam doesn't want to understand.

Claiming that the other person doesn't understand whenever there is a
disagreement is just not going to fly. Fedora or any other distro for
that matter will not want to continue carrying forward a unmaintained
old version of a desktop environment and I am sure you are very well
aware of that since I see no show of hands for anyone volunteering to do
so. For smaller individual packages, one can certainly consider it on
a case by case basis but not for a whole desktop environment. Even if
one does a fork, the track record of "Trinity KDE" shows how many
developers are willing to do that type of work and how many users it
will likely have.

Rahul

Ed Greshko

2011-04-27 08:59:00 UTC

Post by Gregory Maxwell
Even if
one does a fork, the track record of "Trinity KDE" shows how many
developers are willing to do that type of work and how many users it
will likely have.

Very true....

I remember all the uproar with KDE 4 in the Fedora lists. I was just
recently reminded about Trinity and I decided to look it up.

They officially support Debian, Ubuntu, and Slackware. I suppose not
enough interest came from the Fedora list. :-)

Adam Williamson

2011-04-27 15:07:14 UTC

Post by Gregory Maxwell
Even if
one does a fork, the track record of "Trinity KDE" shows how many
developers are willing to do that type of work and how many users it
will likely have.

Looking at the Trinity site, it seems active and well maintained,
they've done two releases six months apart, and the mailing lists are
active with both questions and answers posted. Looks like a reasonably
successful project to me.

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Rahul Sundaram

2011-04-27 15:15:51 UTC

Post by Gregory Maxwell
Even if
one does a fork, the track record of "Trinity KDE" shows how many
developers are willing to do that type of work and how many users it
will likely have.

Sure but compared to all the rants about KDE 4.0 during its launch,
there isn't much talk about the fork. I have a alert set on media
reports on it and there has barely been any. Probably it has as much
users as Fluxbox. Reasonably successful but isn't competing with KDE
4.x in any way.

Rahul

Ian Pilcher

2011-04-27 15:29:26 UTC

Post by Rahul Sundaram
Sure but compared to all the rants about KDE 4.0 during its launch,
there isn't much talk about the fork. I have a alert set on media
reports on it and there has barely been any. Probably it has as much
users as Fluxbox. Reasonably successful but isn't competing with KDE
4.x in any way.

I imagine that Trinity would have gotten a ton of traction if it had
been available (or more widely known, if it was available) during the
"early days" of KDE 4.

Post by Rahul Sundaram
From my perspective, KDE 4 reached feature parity with 3.5 when KDE

4.4 brought back the middle-click window list. Others will obviously
have different perspectives, but most KDE 3.5 "refugees" with whom I've
spoken seem to have become fairly satisfied with KDE 4 around that time.

KDE 4.4 was released in February, 2010, 2 months before Trinity's first
release.

Rahul Sundaram

2011-04-27 15:38:27 UTC

Post by Ian Pilcher

I imagine that Trinity would have gotten a ton of traction if it had
been available (or more widely known, if it was available) during the
"early days" of KDE 4.

See http://exde.org for a similarly failed launch of a GNOME 2.x fork.
By the time anybody gets something like that off the ground and into the
mainstream distro repos, I expect most GNOME users would already be
satisfied by the state of GNOME 3.x and others would be using a
alternative or a distribution with a long updates cycle ( RHEL 5.x/6.x
or rebuilds for instance). In the end, I just don't see much space for
a fork of GNOME 2.x. Hey, if someone wants to prove me wrong, go ahead.

Rahul

Adam Williamson

2011-04-27 15:04:43 UTC

Post by Gerald Henriksen
Fedora, as a volunteeer effort, cannot.

It's worse. I fear Fedora will loose contributors, because Fedora is not
shipping the DE these users want.

We ship every major currently maintained desktop. Which one do you think
is missing?

Adam, please.
All of this thread is about "Gnome 3 not being a replacement for what
used to be Gnome 2",

Is any other desktop more of a GNOME 2 replacement than GNOME 3? i.e.,
would changing to another default desktop result in more continuity? I
would say not.

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Ralf Corsepius

2011-04-27 17:01:50 UTC

Post by Gerald Henriksen
Fedora, as a volunteeer effort, cannot.

It's worse. I fear Fedora will loose contributors, because Fedora is not
shipping the DE these users want.

We ship every major currently maintained desktop. Which one do you think
is missing?

Adam, please.
All of this thread is about "Gnome 3 not being a replacement for what
used to be Gnome 2",

Is any other desktop more of a GNOME 2 replacement than GNOME 3? i.e.,
would changing to another default desktop result in more continuity? I
would say not.

Agreed. Things have derailed. Now the cart is stuck in the mud

In other words Gnome and Fedora (Both projects dominated by a single
enterprise) haved decided to switch their target audience.

Ralf

Bryn M. Reeves

2011-04-27 17:13:26 UTC

Post by Gerald Henriksen
Fedora, as a volunteeer effort, cannot.

It's worse. I fear Fedora will loose contributors, because Fedora is not
shipping the DE these users want.

We ship every major currently maintained desktop. Which one do you think
is missing?

Adam, please.
All of this thread is about "Gnome 3 not being a replacement for what
used to be Gnome 2",

Is any other desktop more of a GNOME 2 replacement than GNOME 3? i.e.,
would changing to another default desktop result in more continuity? I
would say not.

Agreed. Things have derailed. Now the cart is stuck in the mud
In other words Gnome and Fedora (Both projects dominated by a single
enterprise) haved decided to switch their target audience.

I'll avoid expressing my opinion of this opinion and merely ask: if you are so
passionate about the decisions the upstream projects have made why are you not
more involved in the development and decision-making that go into them?

This isn't MS or Apple - if you have an opinion express it constructively by
getting involved and doing something positive.

Having watched numerous people start out on a hacking career by getting involved
in Gnome and then quickly become very well respected developers (I'd name names
but I don't want to make anyone blush ;) I am very well assured at this point
that the project turns on merit and not connections, conspiracy or corporate
backing.

If you really believe the direction taken is wrong check out your favourite
olde-worlde Gnome 2 branch and get going with a fork. I'm sure if it's any good
you'll soon have plenty of other users hankering for the past wanting to join
you and work on making yesterday's desktop the choice of the future.

Regards,
Bryn.

Gerald Henriksen

2011-04-27 12:16:51 UTC

Post by Gerald Henriksen
As much as I dislike Gnome 3 and am considering my alternatives, it is
very unfair to dump on Fedora for the problems with Gnome 3.

Why? I think it's appropriate to dump Fedora because of this, because
Fedora has made Gnome 3 it's default desktop and because Fedora is
actively promoting it.

Perhaps a minor point, but important.

Fedora has not made Gnome 3 its default (this implies that Fedora has
somehow actively evaluated Gnome 3 and decided that it is the best,
which hasn't happened).

What has been true since Fedora began, and is still true is that
Fedora uses Gnome as its default, and ships each release with whatever
the current version of Gnome is.

Post by Gerald Henriksen
Fedora, as a volunteeer effort, cannot.

It's worse. I fear Fedora will loose contributors, because Fedora is not
shipping the DE these users want.

If this happens, then it also means Gnome will lose contributors, and
the Gnome project will need to make an evaluation on what they with to
do. But despite all the controversy, there is the possibility that
the users of Fedora will merely shrug their shoulders and suffer with,
or even like the new desktop.

But there is little Fedora itself can do. All that matters is that
Fedora does not have the resources to fork Gnome.

Genes MailLists

2011-04-27 13:13:53 UTC

Post by Gerald Henriksen
Perhaps a minor point, but important.
Fedora has not made Gnome 3 its default (this implies that Fedora has
somehow actively evaluated Gnome 3 and decided that it is the best,
which hasn't happened).
What has been true since Fedora began, and is still true is that
Fedora uses Gnome as its default, and ships each release with whatever
the current version of Gnome is.

\
..

Post by Gerald Henriksen
But there is little Fedora itself can do. All that matters is that
Fedora does not have the resources to fork Gnome.

Is your point that perhaps Fedora community should evaluate and
choose it's default DE?

I suppose that is what Ubuntu is doing, and they are choosing to move
away from gnome shell, tho stay with gnome.

How could this be done in Fedora anyway? Its one thing to stay the
course and use gnome shell, its another to change it. Does the mechanism
even exist ? Who could in fact change the default DE in Fedora ? Is that
a FESCO thing or something else ?

Gerald Henriksen

2011-04-27 14:59:28 UTC

Post by Genes MailLists
Is your point that perhaps Fedora community should evaluate and
choose it's default DE?

Not really, my point was more that Fedora (by default at creation)
chose Gnome, not a specific version Gnome. A small difference, but an
important one.

Post by Genes MailLists
How could this be done in Fedora anyway? Its one thing to stay the
course and use gnome shell, its another to change it. Does the mechanism
even exist ? Who could in fact change the default DE in Fedora ? Is that
a FESCO thing or something else ?

No idea.

Rahul Sundaram

2011-04-27 15:23:04 UTC

Post by Genes MailLists
Is your point that perhaps Fedora community should evaluate and
choose it's default DE?

Not really, my point was more that Fedora (by default at creation)
chose Gnome, not a specific version Gnome. A small difference, but an
important one.

It doesn't change the gist of the argument you are making but as a
matter of historical record, Fedora didn't really chose GNOME actively
even at the time of creation. Red Hat Linux chose GNOME over
Enlightenment and FVWM back during the days when Red Hat Advanced
Development Laboratories (RHAD) was created in 1998 inorder to fund
GNOME development during the time when KDE was tied to a non-free Qt.
Fedora Core 1 was basically Red Hat Linux 10 renamed. Much of choices
are just inherited legacy. Fedora didn't even have its own logo until
several releases later.

Rahul

Adam Williamson

2011-04-27 15:11:02 UTC

Post by Genes MailLists
How could this be done in Fedora anyway? Its one thing to stay the
course and use gnome shell, its another to change it. Does the
mechanism
even exist ? Who could in fact change the default DE in Fedora ? Is that
a FESCO thing or something else ?

It'd be trivial, in technical terms. Stick a different live image on the
download page, and change a couple of lines in comps to make a different
desktop's package set the default for non-live installs, and you're
done.

It'd be far too late to do it for F15, of course.

It's probably a FESCo or Board decision.

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Bill Nottingham

2011-04-26 15:41:32 UTC

Post by JB
http://gnome3.org/
"A satisfying experience, whatever kind of computer you use: GNOME 3 will feel
right at home on netbooks as well as larger machines"
Really ? Like servers. workstations, PCs, notebooks ? Used by RH enterprise
customers, non-technical businesses (big and small), users who do not sleep
with their computers but use them as *tools* to accomplish their daily tasks ?

Why, yes, that would be the goal. Is there something wrong with that?
(You've essentially restated the goal without comment or data. How am I
supposed to parse that, other than just implied sarcasm?)

Well, that's a nice bit of assumption-of-stupidity invective there. Now that
you've insulted people, they will certainly all turn around to your point of
view!

(Then again, given you decided to post on upstream lists that, because you
don't like the activities design, they should start kicking the developers
responsible for GNOME 3 out of the project, I'm not sure I should be
surprised.)

Bill

2011-04-26 21:00:46 UTC

Post by Bill Nottingham

Post by JB
http://gnome3.org/
"A satisfying experience, whatever kind of computer you use: GNOME 3 will
feel right at home on netbooks as well as larger machines"
Really ? Like servers. workstations, PCs, notebooks ? Used by RH enterprise
customers, non-technical businesses (big and small), users who do not sleep
with their computers but use them as *tools* to accomplish their daily tasks ?

Why, yes, that would be the goal. Is there something wrong with that?
(You've essentially restated the goal without comment or data. How am I
supposed to parse that, other than just implied sarcasm?)

I forgot to mention that there is an opinion or stated goal of GNOME 3 that
its target should be "smart devices" (the food chain below netbooks), that's
why the new GUI of its Shell.

I do not think you can cover with one infrastructure and GUI a spectrum of
so different hardware, software, and DE requirements.

Hope this makes it clearer.

Post by Bill Nottingham
...

Post by JB
Why did Fedora decide to abandon Gnome 2, instead of offering Gnome 3 as
an experimental college-level project via a spin (as one poster here
already asked), representing a work-in-progress where geeks still learn
their Computer Science principles and skills ?

Well, that's a nice bit of assumption-of-stupidity invective there. Now that
you've insulted people, they will certainly all turn around to your point of
view!
(Then again, given you decided to post on upstream lists that, because you
don't like the activities design, they should start kicking the developers
responsible for GNOME 3 out of the project, I'm not sure I should be
surprised.)
...

I stand by that.
My opinion is that geeks are self-made "holy cows", wanting "world
domination", etc.

The reality is that they are popular movement, having a delusion that it is
enuf to know how to use a compiler and some languages to be able to "produce"
functional and modern software products.
That there is more to that proves the GNOME 3 Shell vice GNOME 2 debacle.

They are perceived as not "reliable" by many, even in their own milieu.

Geeks have to learn a lot beyond hacking. There are customer bases, people and
big and serious organizations of all kinds, who are not of geeks-kind, who pay
or are willing to pay for products that serve *their* needs.

If geeks can flip from GNOME 2 to 3 "just like that", they are basically saying
they do not give a penny about their long-term customer base, or any base for
that matter. They want to serve their own itch and ego.

That's why I say geeks who hold positions of responsibility should be held
accountable for themselves and their co-geeks. And that means they should be
removed from the projects if the results warrant.

They show that they are irresponsible, inexperienced, and plain stupid.

JB

Rahul Sundaram

2011-04-26 22:13:24 UTC

Post by JB
I forgot to mention that there is an opinion or stated goal of GNOME 3 that
its target should be "smart devices" (the food chain below netbooks), that's
why the new GUI of its Shell.
I do not think you can cover with one infrastructure and GUI a spectrum of
so different hardware, software, and DE requirements.
Hope this makes it clearer.

You seem to have misunderstood something. It is not the stated goal of
GNOME 3 to target "smart devices" with the GNOME Shell UI and that's the
not the rationale behind the design

Here are the design documents

http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design

Here is a quote from the release manager

http://geekybodhi.net/habari/interview-with-vincent-untz-at-gnome-asia-summit-2011

"KDE has a different user interface for the netbook and a normal
desktop. We don't think it's necessary. But if you go to other sizes
such as tablets or mobile phones obviously that's not the current target
of Gnome. We are not working actively on porting Gnome to those devices"

Rahul

Adam Williamson

2011-04-26 22:27:40 UTC

Post by JB
I forgot to mention that there is an opinion or stated goal of GNOME 3 that
its target should be "smart devices" (the food chain below netbooks), that's
why the new GUI of its Shell.

This is overstated. It was designed with interfaces other than 'a PC
with a monitor and a keyboard' kept in mind, which is only sensible when
such interfaces are rapidly gaining steam, but some people seem to
believe the Shell was designed exclusively for such devices, which is
transparently not the case.

The relevant statement on the GNOME site:

"Effectively works on contemporary hardware: the Shell will provide an
excellent experience on touch-based devices and will scale down to small
screen sizes. It has also been designed with wide-screen in mind"

Post by JB
I stand by that.
My opinion is that geeks are self-made "holy cows", wanting "world
domination", etc.

Looking at your posts in this context it's hard not to notice the irony,
when you make arbitrary and presumptuous demands...

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Gerald Henriksen

2011-04-26 23:07:18 UTC

Post by JB

Post by Bill Nottingham

Post by JB
http://gnome3.org/
"A satisfying experience, whatever kind of computer you use: GNOME 3 will
feel right at home on netbooks as well as larger machines"
Really ? Like servers. workstations, PCs, notebooks ? Used by RH enterprise
customers, non-technical businesses (big and small), users who do not sleep
with their computers but use them as *tools* to accomplish their daily tasks ?

Why, yes, that would be the goal. Is there something wrong with that?
(You've essentially restated the goal without comment or data. How am I
supposed to parse that, other than just implied sarcasm?)

I forgot to mention that there is an opinion or stated goal of GNOME 3 that
its target should be "smart devices" (the food chain below netbooks), that's
why the new GUI of its Shell.
I do not think you can cover with one infrastructure and GUI a spectrum of
so different hardware, software, and DE requirements.

I think the next 5 years will be very surprising to you then.

HP has announced that webOS will be running on everything:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/02/hp-webos-also-coming-to-notebooks-and-desktop-computers.ars

Apple has given hints that they are moving iOS and Mac OS closer in
the last OS presentation.

Motorola is a bit early, but clearly is demonstrating where it appears
we are heading with their Atrix phone (see webtop):
http://www.motorola.com/consumers/CA-EN/Motorola-ATRIX-CA-EN.do?vgnextoid=121bd4c5ec70d210VgnVCM10000081bbb00aRCRD

This blog post really says it all:
http://chrisfenwick.com/home/2011/4/25/what-10-years-can-do.html

Consider that since the iPhone 4 we have moved to dual processor ARM,
with quad-core ARM announced for sometime in 12 - 24 months.

It certainly appears that for a very large number of people their
phone/computer are going to become one and the same, and it is going
to be very interesting to see.

Adam Williamson

2011-04-26 23:18:15 UTC

Post by Gerald Henriksen
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/02/hp-webos-also-coming-to-notebooks-and-desktop-computers.ars

This seems to be some kind of environment within Windows rather than a
replacement for it, though, from what anyone can gather.

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Gerald Henriksen

2011-04-27 01:08:27 UTC

Post by Gerald Henriksen
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/02/hp-webos-also-coming-to-notebooks-and-desktop-computers.ars

This seems to be some kind of environment within Windows rather than a
replacement for it, though, from what anyone can gather.

I'm sure it is, because HP won't want to enter the driver nightmare
trying to support it on current PCs, and of course HP might even never
ship it.

The point however is that HP, like others, is thinking we are moving
to a new world of computing where the "phone" operating sytems rule
for everything except some specialized exceptions, even if no one is
quite sure how to get there yet.

Genes MailLists

2011-04-25 22:06:44 UTC

...

Post by Bill Nottingham
http://git.gnome.org/
http://spins.fedoraproject.org/

....

Perhaps there are different issues being discussed here - if so we
should be more clear in separating them:

(i) gnome-3

+ Pros and Cons ..
+ how can we make it better ...

The above implies its gnome not fedora making design
choices so that means there is also below:

(ii) Fedora DE -

+ What should the default DE going forward
+ If changing - then is it F16 or F17 ?
+ etc

gene/

Ed Greshko

2011-04-25 22:45:01 UTC

Post by Genes MailLists
Perhaps there are different issues being discussed here - if so we
(i) gnome-3
+ Pros and Cons ..
+ how can we make it better ...
The above implies its gnome not fedora making design

The *same* as it has been for a long time.....

http://www.gnome.org/get-involved/

The question really is....

Why didn't the folks making all the noise "get involved" earlier?

Post by Genes MailLists
(ii) Fedora DE -
+ What should the default DE going forward
+ If changing - then is it F16 or F17 ?
+ etc

I use KDE. I've been using KDE for years. I managed the move to KDE 4.

And I'm *happy* that GNOME is the default going forward....as long as it
is possible to install and switch to KDE.

Tom Horsley

2011-04-25 23:08:47 UTC

On Tue, 26 Apr 2011 06:45:01 +0800

Post by Ed Greshko
Why didn't the folks making all the noise "get involved" earlier?

For the same reason the vast majority of people are always
shocked by the open source developers: Most people have better
things to do with their time than obsessively follow every
open source project on the off chance that the developers will
decide to do something incomprehensibly silly (and, of course,
there is also the fact that once they get something silly
in their head, trying to talk them out of it and argue that
in fact nothing is the best thing to do gets you labelled
as merely a no-nothing obstructionist whom they are perfectly
justified in utterly ignoring).

http://home.comcast.net/~tomhorsley/wisdom/braindump/oss-happens.html

Jon Masters

2011-04-25 23:29:48 UTC

Post by Tom Horsley
http://home.comcast.net/~tomhorsley/wisdom/braindump/oss-happens.html

That's an excellent bookmark, thanks for the laugh :)

Jon.

Adam Williamson

2011-04-26 15:28:35 UTC

Post by Tom Horsley
On Tue, 26 Apr 2011 06:45:01 +0800

Post by Ed Greshko
Why didn't the folks making all the noise "get involved" earlier?

For the same reason the vast majority of people are always
shocked by the open source developers: Most people have better
things to do with their time than obsessively follow every
open source project on the off chance that the developers will
decide to do something incomprehensibly silly (and, of course,
there is also the fact that once they get something silly
in their head, trying to talk them out of it and argue that
in fact nothing is the best thing to do gets you labelled
as merely a no-nothing obstructionist whom they are perfectly
justified in utterly ignoring).
http://home.comcast.net/~tomhorsley/wisdom/braindump/oss-happens.html

Obsessively follow? All you had to do was install Fedora 12, 13 or 14
and hit the 'GNOME Shell' button in desktop-effects.

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Dan

2011-04-26 17:42:27 UTC

Post by Tom Horsley
On Tue, 26 Apr 2011 06:45:01 +0800

Post by Ed Greshko
Why didn't the folks making all the noise "get involved" earlier?

For the same reason the vast majority of people are always
shocked by the open source developers: Most people have better
things to do with their time than obsessively follow every
open source project on the off chance that the developers will
decide to do something incomprehensibly silly (and, of course,
there is also the fact that once they get something silly
in their head, trying to talk them out of it and argue that
in fact nothing is the best thing to do gets you labelled
as merely a no-nothing obstructionist whom they are perfectly
justified in utterly ignoring).
http://home.comcast.net/~tomhorsley/wisdom/braindump/oss-happens.html

Obsessively follow? All you had to do was install Fedora 12, 13 or 14
and hit the 'GNOME Shell' button in desktop-effects.

The only thing that you didn't think about is there a some of us that
didn't use desktop-effects or 3D on the desktop at all.
--
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Adam Williamson

2011-04-26 19:17:18 UTC

Post by Dan

Post by Tom Horsley
http://home.comcast.net/~tomhorsley/wisdom/braindump/oss-happens.html

Obsessively follow? All you had to do was install Fedora 12, 13 or 14
and hit the 'GNOME Shell' button in desktop-effects.

The only thing that you didn't think about is there a some of us that
didn't use desktop-effects or 3D on the desktop at all.

That's your decision. What I was objecting to was the odd assertion that
you had to 'obsessively follow' upstream to see what Shell looked like,
prior to F15. This simply isn't true. I never claimed that everyone did,
or should, try Shell in F12-F14; I just pointed out that it was much
easier than the characterization of 'obsessively following upstream'
made it out to be.

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Kevin DeKorte

2011-04-26 17:54:38 UTC

Post by Adam Williamson
Obsessively follow? All you had to do was install Fedora 12, 13 or 14
and hit the 'GNOME Shell' button in desktop-effects.

Adam,

The gnome-shell in F14 is pretty different than the one in F15 and on my
machine when it was running F14, gnome-shell and in fact any clutter
based app on a ATI based machine does not run unless you set
CLUTTER_VBLANK=none. Which was something that was pretty difficult to find.

I opened bugs on gnome-shell/gthumb/clutter not working on F14 and
basically the response was WONT_FIX

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=595989

Since then I have upgraded to F15 and for the most part I like
gnome-shell and will continue using it. My main concern with it actually
is the activities application launcher, which did change significantly
in F15. For a phone the interface looks like it would work great, but on
a large screen it feels like the amount of left-to-right mouse movements
to launch an app is significant. Gnome-shell also seems to have a
dependency on a keyboard to manage everything efficiently and there is a
lot of times I just use the mouse to check my email, reload a website
and walk away.

I have worked around my issues, by using AWN, but it would be nice if I
didn't have to do that.

Kevin

- --
Get my public GnuPG key from
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x7D0BD5D1

Adam Williamson

2011-04-26 19:18:02 UTC

Post by Kevin DeKorte

Post by Adam Williamson
Obsessively follow? All you had to do was install Fedora 12, 13 or 14
and hit the 'GNOME Shell' button in desktop-effects.

Adam,
The gnome-shell in F14 is pretty different than the one in F15 and on my
machine when it was running F14,

Sure, but the main bone of contention - the Overview - has been in for
ages.

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

David L

2011-04-27 04:12:24 UTC

On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 8:28 AM, Adam Williamson wrote:
<snip>

Post by Adam Williamson
Obsessively follow? All you had to do was install Fedora 12, 13 or 14
and hit the 'GNOME Shell' button in desktop-effects.

I can't speak for other people, but when I tried gnome
shell in Fedora 13, it was just completely broken
(at least on my hardware) to the point that I couldn't
really even see what I didn't like about it. And from what
I remember, it seemed a lot different from what I see
now on fedora 15 beta. At the time, I attributed the problem
to bad 3D on my hardware and the fact that is was a really
early release. It's only now that it's working well enough that
I can actually use it that I notice what I don't like about it.
Here are a few things that annoy me about gnome shell:

- The panel on the top is mostly wasted space AFAICT and
I haven't figured out how to add a custom launcher that my
5 year old is used to. Am I missing something?
- After you've started one terminal shell and you try to start
another one, it just brings you to the first one you started
unless you right click and tell it to start a new shell.
- After you finally figure out how to start a bunch of shells
(or any kind of window I suspect), switching between
workspaces is painfully slow (like a second or two). And it
doesn't have to even be switching from or to a workspace
that has a lot of windows. As long one workspace has
a lot of open windows, it's really slow.
- I have used multiple rows and columns of workspaces
for like 17 years and every Linux windows environment
I've worked with has had that capability. I don't see a
way to get many columns of workspaces in gnome shell
- related to the last point, I have a tradition of organizing
different things in different workspaces. I work
for three different companies and I dedicate rows to
each company. The right workspace is for email. The
left one is for vnc sessions into the company's server.
The next one is for browsers, etc. In addition to not having
multiple columns of workspaces, the rows don't seem
to even exist until I put a window in them. So I can't
get to row N until rows 1->N-1 exist. Am I missing
something or is it impossible get a fixed NxM grid of
workspaces in gnome-shell?
- Couldn't find an easy way to get focus follows mouse.
Ended up having to use gconf-edit.
- Wasn't obvious how to revert to fallback mode. It's
under system info... I expected system info to tell
me things like processor type, etc, not be the place
to configure 2D fallback mode.

The gnome3 fallback mode solves the speed problem
and I can get a workspace grid.

FWIW, here's the smolt profile that shows my video
card. I assume gnome-shell is much faster on other
hardware, but it's pretty slow on this system:

http://www.smolts.org/client/show/pub_eac1ae65-2436-4ef5-9caf-cf4923b716e5

Cheers...

David

Ian Pilcher

2011-04-27 12:15:52 UTC

Post by David L
- The panel on the top is mostly wasted space AFAICT and
I haven't figured out how to add a custom launcher that my
5 year old is used to. Am I missing something?

Clearly, your 5 year old is broken.

Adam Williamson

2011-04-26 15:26:53 UTC

Post by Ian Pilcher

Post by drago01
"If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster
horse.? ? Henry Ford

But Henry Ford didn't eliminate animal powered transportation by fiat.
The "people" ultimately decided that they preferred motorized transport.
GNOME users are not being given that choice.
It's as if Henry Ford had sent squads of employees out to shoot every
horse they could find.

That's just fundamentally wrong. Neither GNOME nor Fedora is going out
and removing people's installations of any of the zillions of distros
which include GNOME 2. Did Ford sell horses?

--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net

Genes MailLists

2011-04-25 16:35:29 UTC

Post by drago01
"If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster
horse.? ? Henry Ford
Horses even had a *much* longer tradition then the windows 95 style desktop ;)

o We didn't move from horse to car - we moved from horse to donkey :-)

o Or perhaps we had a car - and some were hoping for a better car ...
and then we got a donkey ? Or was it a truck or was it ... :-)

o The problem with analogies is they often don't apply. In fact they
only work when they support a rational argument - alone, analogies are
merely another form of irrational argument.

o Was cute tho' ... thanks ... :-)

Genes MailLists

2011-04-25 16:38:32 UTC

Post by drago01
"If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster
horse.? ? Henry Ford

Far more likely ... if they had been asked they would have asked for
flying vehicles like they had been reading about in sci fi novels ... :-)

So this is also argument by false premise .. :-) even more fun!

And we are OT ... me included :-)

mike cloaked

2011-04-25 16:55:32 UTC

Post by drago01
"If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster
horse.? ? Henry Ford

?Far more likely ... if they had been asked they would have asked for
flying vehicles like they had been reading about in sci fi novels ... :-)
?So this is also argument by false premise .. :-) even more fun!
?And we are OT ... me included :-)

Hmm - well after about a century since the car came into fairly common
use some people still ride horses!

Let's see what happens in terms of desktop stats this time next year?

--
mike c

Jonathan Masters

2011-04-25 16:38:24 UTC