With the advent of Gnome3 not far around the corner and with a huge array of different desktop and laptop machines with many different chipsets and graphics cards in use by the community, I wondered if there is a list of likely supported hardware that will have a reasonable chance of being able to successfully run Gnome3 when Fedora 15 is released?
I know that we have the Gnome 3 alpha test days running (as of yesterday) but presumably those running the tests have hardware that is already expected to work with the new desktop experience with 3d support. It would nice nice if a user could run a quick probe of their current hardware and then go to a list of kit that is expected would be likely to run, or definitely won't run, Gnome 3.
Is there such a list? Of course one can run commands to see if 3d support is in principle available on your own machine - but in the past having this information has not been a guarantee of getting a working 3d machine for eg desktop effects, even though 3d is "nominally" available. Clearly nouveau has been under heavy development in the past year or two, and ATI support has been accelerating too..... at what point does the experimental mesa stuff become stable enough to use for prime time?
Would be nice to know.
In the meantime it will be very valuable to see as many tests as possible being executed on as wide a set of different types of hardware as possible for the gnome 3 test days to maximise the chance that the largest number or users will be able to see a working desktop as soon as F15 is installed after release.
On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 8:02 PM, mike cloaked wrote:
In the meantime it will be very valuable to see as many tests as possible being executed on as wide a set of different types of hardware as possible for the gnome 3 test days to maximise the chance that the largest number or users will be able to see a working desktop as soon as F15 is installed after release.
Are you participating in the test days? You can use the live image. In rawhide, it should work on any system that is about 5 years old. There are some bugs/ missing acceleration support in the drivers with certain series of Nvidia cards however. Details at
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-02-03_GNOME3_Alpha
Rahul
On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 4:14 PM, Rahul Sundaram metherid@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 8:02 PM, mike cloaked wrote:
In the meantime it will be very valuable to see as many tests as possible being executed on as wide a set of different types of hardware as possible for the gnome 3 test days to maximise the chance that the largest number or users will be able to see a working desktop as soon as F15 is installed after release.
Are you participating in the test days? You can use the live image. In rawhide, it should work on any system that is about 5 years old. There are some bugs/ missing acceleration support in the drivers with certain series of Nvidia cards however. Details at
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-02-03_GNOME3_Alpha
Rahul
I have the latest live image (from 30th!) from the nightly directory - and it depends on getting a block of time to run the tests - though I will try through the weekend if possible...
On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 5:15 PM, mike cloaked mike.cloaked@gmail.com wrote:
I have the latest live image (from 30th!) from the nightly directory - and it depends on getting a block of time to run the tests - though I will try through the weekend if possible...
Now downloading the live image linked from the test day page and will use that as soon as I get a block of time to test.
On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 7:05 PM, mike cloaked mike.cloaked@gmail.com wrote:
Now downloading the live image linked from the test day page and will use that as soon as I get a block of time to test.
I did take an hour this evening to run a test on a laptop which has nVidia Corporation G86M [Quadro FX 360M] graphics and almost all the tests passed so I was quite impressed at this stage of the game! (Yes I have added a line to the test matrix)
There are some things that are no longer there that I am not enamoured with though, and one is that I have relied on for quite some time is gnome-applet-netspeed to give me an instantaneous indication of download speed when I am pulling files - since gnome applets will not be supported in gnome 3 there appears no way, that I am aware of, to get the same functionality in gnome 3 - unless someone can tell me what I have missed?
However in general gnome 3 seems pretty polished given that it is still a couple of months before it is released and also that this is running in f15 alpha - and it is good to see a large array of test results in the matrix too. From my own single machine tested I am really quite impressed! I hope that I see similar levels of performance from the other machines that I get a chance to test too!
On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 3:13 AM, mike cloaked mike.cloaked@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 7:05 PM, mike cloaked mike.cloaked@gmail.com wrote:
Now downloading the live image linked from the test day page and will use that as soon as I get a block of time to test.
I did take an hour this evening to run a test on a laptop which has nVidia Corporation G86M [Quadro FX 360M] graphics and almost all the tests passed so I was quite impressed at this stage of the game! (Yes I have added a line to the test matrix)
There are some things that are no longer there that I am not enamoured with though, and one is that I have relied on for quite some time is gnome-applet-netspeed to give me an instantaneous indication of download speed when I am pulling files - since gnome applets will not be supported in gnome 3 there appears no way, that I am aware of, to get the same functionality in gnome 3 - unless someone can tell me what I have missed?
I don't expect GNOME 3.0 to be functionally equivalent to GNOME 2.x. GNOME Shell does support extensions and I hope some of them cover the common use cases over time. Netspeed is something I depend on as well
Rahul
On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 8:03 AM, Rahul Sundaram metherid@gmail.com wrote:
I don't expect GNOME 3.0 to be functionally equivalent to GNOME 2.x. GNOME Shell does support extensions and I hope some of them cover the common use cases over time. Netspeed is something I depend on as well
Sure it is very different - though I have only used it very briefly - one facility that I regard as essential is to place an icon on the desktop to run binaries that are not part of the standard set. I did not see a place to set that up? For example I would like to have an icon to execute nightly versions of Thunderbird from an icon that would be added to the dash - is that possible in Gnome3?
On 02/06/2011 09:02 AM, mike cloaked wrote:
For example I would like to have an icon to execute nightly versions of Thunderbird from an icon that would be added to the dash - is that possible in Gnome3?
I don't know much about Gnome3, but I presume you'd do that the same way as you do now: right-click on the Desktop, select Create Launcher, and select the binary you want run.
On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 5:42 PM, Joe Zeff joe@zeff.us wrote:
On 02/06/2011 09:02 AM, mike cloaked wrote:
For example I would like to have an icon to execute nightly versions of Thunderbird from an icon that would be added to the dash - is that possible in Gnome3?
I don't know much about Gnome3, but I presume you'd do that the same way as you do now: right-click on the Desktop, select Create Launcher, and select the binary you want run.
OK - I will be running another test later - I will try that along the way and see if it works!
On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 6:20 PM, mike cloaked mike.cloaked@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 5:42 PM, Joe Zeff joe@zeff.us wrote:
On 02/06/2011 09:02 AM, mike cloaked wrote:
For example I would like to have an icon to execute nightly versions of Thunderbird from an icon that would be added to the dash - is that possible in Gnome3?
I don't know much about Gnome3, but I presume you'd do that the same way as you do now: right-click on the Desktop, select Create Launcher, and select the binary you want run.
OK - I will be running another test later - I will try that along the way and see if it works!
I had a look at gnome-shell-list - seems that is not possible! One answer was "There is no UI for it in GNOME Shell, but if you add/edit launchers in Alacarte (the GNOME 2 menu editor), Shell will pick it up." and another.... "If you create a launcher on your desktop and copy it to the hidden .local/share/applications folder inside your home directory (Crtl-H) they should get picked up"
There was a long thread about this very issue and it seems that the provision to make a simple launcher will not be there unless things have changed since about a month ago - and in addition there was another longish thread about the provision of equivalent functionality to applets which will not initially be in gnome3 but may (!) be added later as extensions. So a weather notification that we are familiar with on the taskbar will not be permanently visible in gnome3 - but there may be some weather information available for access via the calendar or similar - the is significantly different to what we have been used to in gnome 2! There is some overview information at http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/ and http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design
Since gnome3 will be the default desktop for us at the next release I felt it was pretty important to try and understand what it will and will not do, and test it now that it is starting to become functional in rawhide.
On Sun, 2011-02-06 at 18:49 +0000, mike cloaked wrote:
Since gnome3 will be the default desktop for us at the next release I felt it was pretty important to try and understand what it will and will not do, and test it now that it is starting to become functional in rawhide.
May not want to try it just yet, as gnome just upgraded again and there is a gdm problem with the latest .6 builds. Think the .4 works though.
So might want to wait a few possibly before going to rawhide.
On 02/06/2011 10:49 AM, mike cloaked wrote:
So a weather notification that we are familiar with on the taskbar will not be permanently visible in gnome3 - but there may be some weather information available for access via the calendar or similar - the is significantly different to what we have been used to in gnome 2!
As long as Screenlets will work with Gnome3, I'll be fine.
On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 2:02 AM, Joe Zeff joe@zeff.us wrote:
On 02/06/2011 10:49 AM, mike cloaked wrote:
So a weather notification that we are familiar with on the taskbar will not be permanently visible in gnome3 - but there may be some weather information available for access via the calendar or similar - the is significantly different to what we have been used to in gnome 2!
As long as Screenlets will work with Gnome3, I'll be fine.
I am not sure what you mean by Screenlets? Did you mean the kind of desktop applets you can use after installing gdesklets?
On 02/07/2011 12:02 AM, mike cloaked wrote:
I am not sure what you mean by Screenlets? Did you mean the kind of desktop applets you can use after installing gdesklets?
No, I wrote screenlets and that's what I meant: http://screenlets.org/index.php/Information
On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 6:07 PM, Joe Zeff joe@zeff.us wrote:
On 02/07/2011 12:02 AM, mike cloaked wrote:
I am not sure what you mean by Screenlets? Did you mean the kind of desktop applets you can use after installing gdesklets?
No, I wrote screenlets and that's what I meant: http://screenlets.org/index.php/Information
Is there a link that actually says how to install them and use them?
Thanks
On 02/07/2011 12:38 PM, mike cloaked wrote:
On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 6:07 PM, Joe Zeffjoe@zeff.us wrote:
On 02/07/2011 12:02 AM, mike cloaked wrote:
I am not sure what you mean by Screenlets? Did you mean the kind of desktop applets you can use after installing gdesklets?
No, I wrote screenlets and that's what I meant: http://screenlets.org/index.php/Information
Is there a link that actually says how to install them and use them?
Thanks
It's gotten a tad hard to find from the project's site, but here's a way to get it that will work for F 14: rpm -Uvh http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/leigh123linux/compiz-fusion/fedora-14/i3...
I found it, BTW, on fedoraforums.org.
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Joe Zeff -
Mike Chambers -
mike cloaked -
Rahul Sundaram