There is a paradigm shift going from Gnome2 to Gnome3 which I have not seen discussed on this list.
Gnome2 is totally mouse oriented. Everything you want to do you do by moving the mouse and clicking. Obviously I am rerring to Gnome2 itself not applications.
However, in Gnome3 a large fraction of actions have been moved to the keyboard.
This is the same difference as that of creating documents in Word and Latex. And this change in paradigm used to be a hot topic.
Does anyone out there have an opinion pro or con about this shift that will no doubt be continued into the future with Gnome?
On Mon, 2011-06-20 at 10:44 -0500, Aaron Konstam wrote:
There is a paradigm shift going from Gnome2 to Gnome3 which I have not seen discussed on this list.
Gnome2 is totally mouse oriented. Everything you want to do you do by moving the mouse and clicking. Obviously I am rerring to Gnome2 itself not applications.
However, in Gnome3 a large fraction of actions have been moved to the keyboard.
Found another can of worms to open? ;-)
It just seems another oddity. Using the mouse, or other pointing device, was seen as making things easier for the non-computer literate, who distinctly hated typing for the command line interface. Yet, now, we're going to make them use the keyboard, albeit for a command line interface in a GUI...
Linux has recently been pushed as "must get it onto ordinary desktops," but who for? (With RHEL and its ilk for corporate, Fedora (and its ilk) for home.)
Is a corporation going to want to spend $100 per graphics card per PC, so that the default Gnome 3 actually works, or are they going to continue to only want to put in the $20 graphics card? (That just won't work with the new all-singing, all-dancing, Gnome 3.) So there's the next RHEL with Gnome shot down in flames.
Likewise, the *average* home user faces the same quandary, and most people buy underpowered computers. So that's Fedora out of the question.
It's really only the die-hard computer nuts who have the expensive graphics cards, and those tend to the gamers hooked on Windows games like World of Warcraft, or whatever the current fad is. So that's virtually any type of Linux ignored.
If you do want to run flashy 3D environments on Fedora, are there any other realistic choices than ATI or Nvidia, and the proprietary drivers, to get it working? That, also, doesn't look good for Fedora.
The phrase, "shooting oneself in the foot," springs to mind.
On Tue, 2011-06-21 at 02:23 +0930, Tim wrote:
Is a corporation going to want to spend $100 per graphics card per PC, so that the default Gnome 3 actually works, or are they going to continue to only want to put in the $20 graphics card? (That just won't work with the new all-singing, all-dancing, Gnome 3.) So there's the next RHEL with Gnome shot down in flames.
Likewise, the *average* home user faces the same quandary, and most people buy underpowered computers. So that's Fedora out of the question.
I have an "underpowered" computer running integrated Intel graphics (read: the cheapest of the cheap). The open-source Intel drivers work just fine with Gnome 3/Gnome Shell. (Actually, I have more trouble with the NEWER Intel cards, like those on the Sandy Bridge architecture).
Despite how flashy things look, the Gnome folks did a really quite impressive job of limiting the hardware requirements to a very reasonable set of 3D functions that should be present on most machines built in the last four years at least.
On 06/20/2011 09:53 AM, Tim wrote:
Likewise, the*average* home user faces the same quandary, and most people buy underpowered computers.
Actually, the graphics on most computers are only underpowered if you're into hardcore gaming or you're a graphics designer. For the rest of us, the graphics are just fine for everything except Gnome 3.
On 06/20/2011 09:59 AM, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
Despite how flashy things look, the Gnome folks did a really quite impressive job of limiting the hardware requirements to a very reasonable set of 3D functions that should be present on most machines built in the last four years at least.
And for those of us with older machines that we can't afford to upgrade?
On 06/20/2011 11:53 AM, Tim wrote:
On Mon, 2011-06-20 at 10:44 -0500, Aaron Konstam wrote:
There is a paradigm shift going from Gnome2 to Gnome3 which I have not seen discussed on this list.
Gnome2 is totally mouse oriented. Everything you want to do you do by moving the mouse and clicking. Obviously I am rerring to Gnome2 itself not applications.
However, in Gnome3 a large fraction of actions have been moved to the keyboard.
Found another can of worms to open? ;-)
It just seems another oddity. Using the mouse, or other pointing device, was seen as making things easier for the non-computer literate, who distinctly hated typing for the command line interface. Yet, now, we're going to make them use the keyboard, albeit for a command line interface in a GUI...
Linux has recently been pushed as "must get it onto ordinary desktops," but who for? (With RHEL and its ilk for corporate, Fedora (and its ilk) for home.)
Is a corporation going to want to spend $100 per graphics card per PC, so that the default Gnome 3 actually works, or are they going to continue to only want to put in the $20 graphics card? (That just won't work with the new all-singing, all-dancing, Gnome 3.) So there's the next RHEL with Gnome shot down in flames.
Likewise, the *average* home user faces the same quandary, and most people buy underpowered computers. So that's Fedora out of the question.
It's really only the die-hard computer nuts who have the expensive graphics cards, and those tend to the gamers hooked on Windows games like World of Warcraft, or whatever the current fad is. So that's virtually any type of Linux ignored.
If you do want to run flashy 3D environments on Fedora, are there any other realistic choices than ATI or Nvidia, and the proprietary drivers, to get it working? That, also, doesn't look good for Fedora.
The phrase, "shooting oneself in the foot," springs to mind.
I don't agree about the graphics. I'm using a 5 year old Radeon card that came standard in this Dell. Every Enterprise-level Dell I've bought (except those for some graphic designers) uses the basic graphics card.
Gnome 3 works OK for me on this Radeon. I don't do any gaming, however.
On 06/20/2011 09:44 AM, Aaron Konstam wrote:
There is a paradigm shift going from Gnome2 to Gnome3 which I have not seen discussed on this list.
Gnome2 is totally mouse oriented. Everything you want to do you do by moving the mouse and clicking. Obviously I am rerring to Gnome2 itself not applications.
However, in Gnome3 a large fraction of actions have been moved to the keyboard.
This is the same difference as that of creating documents in Word and Latex. And this change in paradigm used to be a hot topic.
Does anyone out there have an opinion pro or con about this shift that will no doubt be continued into the future with Gnome?
I too noted the mouse deprecation in Gnome 3. Besides alienating a large group of users who simply prefer using the mouse over the keyboard when there is a choice, there is a second group also hurt by it -- people with an impairment in one hand.
I find the mouse offers the most efficient use when doing screen-wide activities -- I only switch to using the key- board when entering large amounts of text. Because I only use one hand, excessive switching between mouse and keyboard activities is very ineffecient and aggravating.
The poor support for mouse operations in Gnome 3 has probably reduced my efficiency in window management activities by 80% or more.
The biggest problem ISTM, and an over-arching one, is a design philosophy that seems to be, "we have no need for user preferences because we are going to get the interface right."
The problem is that no one size fits all. Trying to come up with a single interface that is optimal on everything from cell phones to high-def, multi-headed workstations seems a fool's errand. One size that is equally usable by mouse preferers's or keyboard preferer's...one size that works for word-oriented people and visually-oriented people... If possible (and I doubt it), Gnome 3 is not it.
To cater to different uses and users requires different way of accomplishing the same task, and different ways of displaying results. That is, provide the user with preferences and options.
Imposing the set of preferences that work for a relatively small, interacting set of developers on the much wider real world is bound to fail.
And, yes, I know there is customization via extensions. The only reason I am still using Gnome 3 is the wonderful extension at
http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/extensions/index.html
But extensions have problems. The author of the above extension says that he expects it to break with Gnome3 updates. Extensions are a separate piece of software that has to tracked, updated, re-installed. Extensions don't come with the same quality expectations that the base software has. Extension writers get new interests. Extensions often don't have the same access to the base software as the base software it self and can be limited in functionality because of it.
So would be far better if functionality like this were integrated into Gnome 3, to be optionally activated by user preferences.
On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 12:57:24PM -0600, Stuart McGraw wrote:
On 06/20/2011 09:44 AM, Aaron Konstam wrote:
There is a paradigm shift going from Gnome2 to Gnome3 which I have not seen discussed on this list.
I too noted the mouse deprecation in Gnome 3. Besides alienating a large group of users who simply prefer using the mouse over the keyboard when there is a choice, ....
Do you people actually work with Gnome 3.
If you are a versatile mouse user I suspect that you can actually work just as fast with the mouse as with the keyboard. Jab the pointer in the upper left corner, click on an app in the dash or swerve to the right and click on 'applications', click on the app you need if you see it immediately in this monstrous platoon of icons, or go even further to the right and select a category (Acessories, Games, etc) and click on an icon there to open an app. When the app is open you jab the mouse pointer in the upper left corner again, select the app with the mouse pointer and drag it to a workspace, etc. You have everything you ever had, point and click, drag and drop, just in a slightly different desktop arragement. And of course the apps themselves are just as completely mouse oriented as they ever were.
Gnome 3 is only keyboard oriented in that it lets you type (or start typing) the name of an app in the search bar (and that you can access the overview by pressing the windows key or Alt-F1).
The Gnome developers missed a great opportunity to make keyboard work easier by not implementing the use of the 'arrow keys' to navigate the icons in the Dash and the icons in the applications overview for example (like Ubuntu did with Unity which actually offers keyboard users more versatility).
Things like the use of 'Alt-F2' and other keyboard shortcuts were available a long time already.
So on the whole there is no paradigm of keyboard use and Gnome 3 is certainly not advertised as such. Read the 'Desktop Help' under the ring buoy icon and pay no attention to 'misunderstood marketing jargon and hype' and 'biased reporting of opinioted users'. Experience it honestly for yourself.
Alexander
On 06/20/2011 03:00 PM, Alexander Volovics wrote:
On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 12:57:24PM -0600, Stuart McGraw wrote:
On 06/20/2011 09:44 AM, Aaron Konstam wrote:
There is a paradigm shift going from Gnome2 to Gnome3 which I have not seen discussed on this list.
I too noted the mouse deprecation in Gnome 3. Besides alienating a large group of users who simply prefer using the mouse over the keyboard when there is a choice, ....
Do you people actually work with Gnome 3.
Yes. Been using it every day for almost two weeks now.
If you are a versatile mouse user I suspect that you can actually work just as fast with the mouse as with the keyboard. Jab the pointer in the upper left corner, click on an app in the dash or swerve to the right and click on 'applications', click on the app you need if you see it immediately in this monstrous platoon of icons, or go even further to the right and select a category (Acessories, Games, etc) and click on an icon there to open an app.
Exactly my complaint. Up to the top right corner to get the overview, click the Applications button. Then, from the left side of the screen, a wild, nearly full width traverse over to the right side to select a category, then back again to the left side of the screen to select the icon if it happens to be on the left.
Compare that to Gnome 2 where I go to the left side of the screen and click Applications, move the mouse an inch or two to select a category in the menu, move another inch or two to select the app.
Why at least couldn't the Categories list (and scroll bar) in Gnome 3 be to the left of the icons so that one encounters it "on the way"?
Same with workspaces -- up to the extreme left corner, then all the way to the extreme right side of the screen to show the WS summary. Now I'm presented with a bunch of mini-images of workspaces. Which has the window I want? Can't tell because all the windows are overlapping. Take best guess an select one. Now I can see which windows are in the WS. But damn, they are all white Terminal windows or similar that look the same. Squint and see if I can identify some familiar text.
Eventually, possibly after a couple wrong guesses I find the window I wanted.
I am not anti-Gnome 3 -- I am really making an effort to work with it. But most everything I've read here recommends avoiding the crazy back and forth mouse movements by using keyboard shortcuts and as I said that is not a preferable option for many people. And even ignoring that there are issues like finding windows in WS as described. (There are also some real WTF things like why is the "not found" message presented on the left side of the screen far from the text search box on the right side?)
When the app is open you jab the mouse pointer in the upper left corner again, select the app with the mouse pointer and drag it to a workspace, etc. You have everything you ever had, point and click, drag and drop, just in a slightly different desktop arragement.
But one that requires far more mouse motion and clicks than Gnome 2 to do the same operation.
From poking around in the Gnome 3 design docs it is
becoming clear to me that no one has actually done any real usability testing on Gnome 3 or quantitative comparisons to Gnome 2.
[...] So on the whole there is no paradigm of keyboard use and Gnome 3 is certainly not advertised as such. Read the 'Desktop Help' under the ring buoy icon and pay no attention to 'misunderstood marketing jargon and hype' and 'biased reporting of opinioted users'. Experience it honestly for yourself.
I have. And that's why I responded in this thread.
On 06/21/2011 08:38 AM, Stuart McGraw wrote:
But one that requires far more mouse motion and clicks than Gnome 2 to do the same operation.
From poking around in the Gnome 3 design docs it is
becoming clear to me that no one has actually done any real usability testing on Gnome 3 or quantitative comparisons to Gnome 2.
I don't normally use GNOME 3. But in trying it out I could not help but to think the interface is designed for Smart Phones or Tablet users. I could see how it would give my thumbs an equal workout.
On 06/20/2011 05:38 PM, Stuart McGraw wrote:
On 06/20/2011 03:00 PM, Alexander Volovics wrote:
On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 12:57:24PM -0600, Stuart McGraw wrote:
On 06/20/2011 09:44 AM, Aaron Konstam wrote:
There is a paradigm shift going from Gnome2 to Gnome3 which I have not seen discussed on this list.
I too noted the mouse deprecation in Gnome 3. Besides alienating a large group of users who simply prefer using the mouse over the keyboard when there is a choice, ....
Do you people actually work with Gnome 3.
Yes. Been using it every day for almost two weeks now.
If you are a versatile mouse user I suspect that you can actually work just as fast with the mouse as with the keyboard. Jab the pointer in the upper left corner, click on an app in the dash or swerve to the right and click on 'applications', click on the app you need if you see it immediately in this monstrous platoon of icons, or go even further to the right and select a category (Acessories, Games, etc) and click on an icon there to open an app.
Exactly my complaint. Up to the top right corner to get the overview, click the Applications button. Then, from the left side of the screen, a wild, nearly full width traverse over to the right side to select a category, then back again to the left side of the screen to select the icon if it happens to be on the left.
6 weeks with gnome3 and my left wrist is in a splint. Not going to gamble with my only other arm...
Compare that to Gnome 2 where I go to the left side of the screen and click Applications, move the mouse an inch or two to select a category in the menu, move another inch or two to select the app.
Why at least couldn't the Categories list (and scroll bar) in Gnome 3 be to the left of the icons so that one encounters it "on the way"?
Same with workspaces -- up to the extreme left corner, then all the way to the extreme right side of the screen to show the WS summary. Now I'm presented with a bunch of mini-images of workspaces. Which has the window I want? Can't tell because all the windows are overlapping. Take best guess an select one. Now I can see which windows are in the WS. But damn, they are all white Terminal windows or similar that look the same. Squint and see if I can identify some familiar text.
Eventually, possibly after a couple wrong guesses I find the window I wanted.
I am not anti-Gnome 3 -- I am really making an effort to work with it. But most everything I've read here recommends avoiding the crazy back and forth mouse movements by using keyboard shortcuts and as I said that is not a preferable option for many people. And even ignoring that there are issues like finding windows in WS as described. (There are also some real WTF things like why is the "not found" message presented on the left side of the screen far from the text search box on the right side?)
When the app is open you jab the mouse pointer in the upper left corner again, select the app with the mouse pointer and drag it to a workspace, etc. You have everything you ever had, point and click, drag and drop, just in a slightly different desktop arragement.
But one that requires far more mouse motion and clicks than Gnome 2 to do the same operation.
From poking around in the Gnome 3 design docs it is
becoming clear to me that no one has actually done any real usability testing on Gnome 3 or quantitative comparisons to Gnome 2.
[...] So on the whole there is no paradigm of keyboard use and Gnome 3 is certainly not advertised as such. Read the 'Desktop Help' under the ring buoy icon and pay no attention to 'misunderstood marketing jargon and hype' and 'biased reporting of opinioted users'. Experience it honestly for yourself.
I have. And that's why I responded in this thread.
On Mon, 20 Jun 2011 18:38:46 -0600, Stuart McGraw wrote:
On 06/20/2011 03:00 PM, Alexander Volovics wrote:
On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 12:57:24PM -0600, Stuart McGraw wrote:
On 06/20/2011 09:44 AM, Aaron Konstam wrote:
There is a paradigm shift going from Gnome2 to Gnome3 which I have not seen discussed on this list.
I too noted the mouse deprecation in Gnome 3. Besides alienating a large group of users who simply prefer using the mouse over the keyboard when there is a choice, ....
Do you people actually work with Gnome 3.
Yes. Been using it every day for almost two weeks now.
I have been working with it for approximately 2 weeks as well. I've chosen to stay in Gnome 3 for a while rather than KDE (which was my preferred environment on Fedora 14). GTK applications look really bad in KDE on Fedora 15. I haven't decided if it's the font, the theme, or a combination of both.
Also, upgrading from Fedora 14 to Fedora 15 caused my KDE menus to assume Gnome categories. There's no more "Development" category, but there is now a "Programming" category in my KDE start menu.
I'll get over it . . .
If you are a versatile mouse user I suspect that you can actually work just as fast with the mouse as with the keyboard. Jab the pointer in the upper left corner, click on an app in the dash or swerve to the right and click on 'applications', click on the app you need if you see it immediately in this monstrous platoon of icons, or go even further to the right and select a category (Acessories, Games, etc) and click on an icon there to open an app.
Exactly my complaint. Up to the top right corner to get the overview, click the Applications button. Then, from the left side of the screen, a wild, nearly full width traverse over to the right side to select a category, then back again to the left side of the screen to select the icon if it happens to be on the left.
Compare that to Gnome 2 where I go to the left side of the screen and click Applications, move the mouse an inch or two to select a category in the menu, move another inch or two to select the app.
This is one of my major complaints concerning Gnome 3. There is a lot of full screen traversal needed when opening applications or switching workspaces. I have a 1680x1050 screen, so this is quite annoying.
I am also a software pack rat. The default Gnome 3 applications display is "All". On an old Dell 8200 with a 2.8 GHz P4, 1.5 GB memory, and an NVidia 7600 GS video card the display takes several seconds to generate the first time I do this.
I am then presented with an alphabetic listing of programs (and their icons). Unfortunately a mouse-over doesn't pop up a window displaying the description of the program. Fortunately I remember what most of them do, but every now and then having a description pop up would be nice.
At any rate, having many uncategorized choices is not (IMHO) a good user interface design. Fortunately, I can slide my mouse pointer back to the right, then type in the name of the program to activate a search.
Yuck.
I've taken to using Alt-F2 a lot. If at all possible I avoid using the Applications window.
Why at least couldn't the Categories list (and scroll bar) in Gnome 3 be to the left of the icons so that one encounters it "on the way"?
Same with workspaces -- up to the extreme left corner, then all the way to the extreme right side of the screen to show the WS summary. Now I'm presented with a bunch of mini-images of workspaces. Which has the window I want? Can't tell because all the windows are overlapping. Take best guess an select one. Now I can see which windows are in the WS. But damn, they are all white Terminal windows or similar that look the same. Squint and see if I can identify some familiar text.
Eventually, possibly after a couple wrong guesses I find the window I wanted.
I usually don't have too much trouble finding which workspace I need to be on. Most of my programs are fairly distinctive on this size of screen. That plus alt-tab helps a bit since it works across workspaces. My only issue with alt-tab is when I have more than one window open for a particular program. I then have to use the arrow keys to select the right window. Also oddly enough arrow keys continue to work once they're invoked in the alt-tab sequence, but you cannot begin the sequence with alt-<arrow>.
I also like to keep certain applications together in certain workspaces. This fits my workflow. In Gnome 2 (and KDE), I would just open the application in the appropriate workspace. In Gnome 3, I have some minor tricks that work.
1. Switch to a desired window (see above for the left-right mouse dance)
2. Hit escape
3. Alt-F2 and type in the command name
This is contrasted by just choosing the desired workspace in Gnome 2 or KDE. I've not found anything that matches the activities idea in KDE 4. In KDE 4 I can define a collection of workspaces as an activity, then define applications for each workspace. By choosing a defined activity, I then launch a bunch of tools in predefined locations and I'm up and running.
I am not anti-Gnome 3 -- I am really making an effort to work with it. But most everything I've read here recommends avoiding the crazy back and forth mouse movements by using keyboard shortcuts and as I said that is not a preferable option for many people. And even ignoring that there are issues like finding windows in WS as described. (There are also some real WTF things like why is the "not found" message presented on the left side of the screen far from the text search box on the right side?)
I'm not ant-Gnome 3, however I do find the lack of configuration capabilities disturbing. However, KDE 4.0 was not the best experience either. I will be interested in seeing how Gnome 3.2 shakes out.
The mouse interactions though, plus the (lack of) software organization really drives one to use the keyboard a lot more than one did in Gnome 2 or KDE. I'm actually OK with this, since I am more of a keyboard person than a mouse person, but I imagine I'm not in the majority.
When the app is open you jab the mouse pointer in the upper left corner again, select the app with the mouse pointer and drag it to a workspace, etc. You have everything you ever had, point and click, drag and drop, just in a slightly different desktop arragement.
But one that requires far more mouse motion and clicks than Gnome 2 to do the same operation.
From poking around in the Gnome 3 design docs it is
becoming clear to me that no one has actually done any real usability testing on Gnome 3 or quantitative comparisons to Gnome 2.
[...] So on the whole there is no paradigm of keyboard use and Gnome 3 is certainly not advertised as such. Read the 'Desktop Help' under the ring buoy icon and pay no attention to 'misunderstood marketing jargon and hype' and 'biased reporting of opinioted users'. Experience it honestly for yourself.
I have. And that's why I responded in this thread.
I admit it, I'm an opinionated user. I have spent a while understanding how I work, and what facilitates my workflow. I'm a tools-oriented person, and I arrange my tools in order to help me get work done. Tool organization and workflow are highly personal, and once I've set it up I can commit it to muscle memory.
Gnome 3 so far has been getting in the way of this. I find that I have to change my workflow habits to match Gnome's view of how I should work. Some of the ideas are not bad (alt-tab through all the applications), some are annoying (mouse travel distance to operate the interface), and some are frustrating (Category All in Applications which takes several seconds to open).
The interface seems a bit slower as well. I've not done the Phoronix graphics test suite yet, but qualitative measurements put Gnome 3 10-15 percent less responsive on the same hardware as Gnome 2.
All in all, it's been a bit clumsy and slow. The speed will hopefully improve in later revisions, but I'm not as optimistic about the clumsiness.
. . . . . just my two cents.
/mde/
On 06/20/2011 11:00 PM, Alexander Volovics wrote:
On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 12:57:24PM -0600, Stuart McGraw wrote:
On 06/20/2011 09:44 AM, Aaron Konstam wrote:
There is a paradigm shift going from Gnome2 to Gnome3 which I have not seen discussed on this list.
I too noted the mouse deprecation in Gnome 3. Besides alienating a large group of users who simply prefer using the mouse over the keyboard when there is a choice, ....
Do you people actually work with Gnome 3.
I tried, but I turned away ...
This Gnome 3 isn't a replacement for Gnome 2, it is an entirely different product with a completely different target audience.
To me it's like my favorite take-away pizza store having stopped shipping pizza and now selling burgers instead.
That said, I am sure Gnome 3 will find its target audience, but it will not be the Gnome 2 users - I for one have started to evaluate other desktops and other distros.
The Gnome developers missed a great opportunity to make keyboard work easier by not implementing the use of the 'arrow keys' to navigate the icons in the Dash and the icons in the applications overview for example (like Ubuntu did with Unity which actually offers keyboard users more versatility).
Agreed, though Unity seemingly shares much of the mindset with Gnome 3 it comes with nice solutions to details (some of the superior to Gnome 3).
Experience it honestly for yourself.
;)
It's what I am trying to do ... so far "no go" for Fedora 15 and Gnome 3 for me ;)
Ralf
Around 04:47am on Tuesday, June 21, 2011 (UK time), Mark Eggers scrawled:
My only issue with alt-tab is when I have more than one window open for a particular program. I then have to use the arrow keys to select the right window.
If you install gnome-shell-extentions-alternate-tab this will revert alt-tab to the old behaviour, without the need to vertically switch when you have more than one instance of an application.
Steve
On 06/21/2011 09:39 AM, Steve Searle wrote:
Around 04:47am on Tuesday, June 21, 2011 (UK time), Mark Eggers scrawled:
My only issue with alt-tab is when I have more than one window open for a particular program. I then have to use the arrow keys to select the right window.
If you install gnome-shell-extentions-alternate-tab this will revert alt-tab to the old behaviour, without the need to vertically switch when you have more than one instance of an application.
You can also use alt-backtick to cycle between instances of the same application. It took me a little while to get used to but I'm actually quite liking it now.
E.g if I have several instances of gnome-terminal and firefox running I'll use alt-tab to select terminal or browser and then shift my ring finger up one key to cycle the instances with alt-`.
Regards, Bryn.
This might become one of those never ending discussions, if somebody does not end the thread, but I feel like having 'my' last word, so here goes:
I think it is almost impossible to design a "desktop" that the vast majority of users is comfortable with, certainly if you cannot arrange for large scale usability testing.
And when you make a (too) big break with the past you are almost certain to irritate and alienate users who have acquired certain fixed working habits and who then have to cope with an unfamiliar environment. And maybe work in a way that is not congenial to their anatomy or physiology.
As has been remarked upon Gnome3 (and Unity) give the impression of having been designed for the 'thumb swipe' and 'finger poke' habits of "smart" phone users (or the 'hand wave' of touchscreen users). Thus for people who do not have to sit for hours in front of a screen and actually work, sometimes on stressful and repetitive tasks.
For me the break with the past was not great. First of all I fell in love with the 'empty' desktop (Hurrah, NO icons!). In the second place I am "by profession" a keyboard user. Actually I almost only use an 'editor' to write (LaTeX/LyX)' a 'terminal' to compute and graph (R) and a MUA (Mutt) for mail. And I could start up all these things with keyboard shortcuts. I mostly only use the mouse to 'navigate'/'configure' the OS GUI. I hardly ever use more than one workplace, at the most two. And I do not leave windows/terminals 'open' unused. I 'close' everything behind me, even when working on more than one task. And I do not 'shutdown' with open tasks so as to be able to 'resume' easily on start up. I just 'close'/'save' everything in different 'folders' and 'restart'.
So my desktop/gui once configured I hardly need to 'descend' to the 'overview' ('hell' for some users :-)) level at all.
My complaints with Gnome3 are more with the 'aesthetics'. They make use difficult if you have bad eyesight for example the black topbar with almost unreadable spindly fonts contrasting badly with the (shiny) black border of my desktop/laptop screens or the tiny text under icons in the overview. Some things are just ugly to my taste: the monstrous array of often ugly/brash icons in the Applications compartment of the 'Overview' for example. (And this is not even logical as the same apps/icons are to be found in the sub compartments Graphics, System Tools, Accessories, etc. and not even handy/useful given the vast number of icons and the stupid 16:9 laptop screens so you have to scroll to navigate). And last but not least: the missing configuration options!
Maybe Gnome3.x will 'improve' on (some) of these things. Let us just hope they do not foist what I call the 'Unity Horror' on us. To save screen space the Ubuntu/Unity designers removed the menu bar from app windows and placed it in the topbar. This results in some nice mix ups when you have a large number of apps open as they only have place for one app menu in the topbar. If you do this, and I agree in principle, you should make it an app window option (like with gnome-terminal).
Exit Alexander
On Tue, 2011-06-21 at 07:05 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
This Gnome 3 isn't a replacement for Gnome 2, it is an entirely different product with a completely different target audience.
To me it's like my favorite take-away pizza store having stopped shipping pizza and now selling burgers instead.
But calling the burgers, "pizzas."
Seriously, you annoy all your existing users when you change something so much that it's not an improvement, but a complete change. And you have more existing users than you'll have new users.
On 06/20/2011 05:44 PM, Aaron Konstam wrote:
There is a paradigm shift going from Gnome2 to Gnome3 which I have not seen discussed on this list.
Gnome2 is totally mouse oriented. Everything you want to do you do by moving the mouse and clicking. Obviously I am rerring to Gnome2 itself not applications.
However, in Gnome3 a large fraction of actions have been moved to the keyboard.
This is the same difference as that of creating documents in Word and Latex. And this change in paradigm used to be a hot topic.
Does anyone out there have an opinion pro or con about this shift that will no doubt be continued into the future with Gnome?
I would just like to chip in and say I am using Gnome2 under F14 almost exclusively using the keyboard, and it works wonderfully :)
I am staying away from Gnome3 until F16, and guess I will have to find out the differences when I get there.
On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 02:23:51AM +0930, Tim wrote:
Is a corporation going to want to spend $100 per graphics card per PC, so that the default Gnome 3 actually works, or are they going to continue to only want to put in the $20 graphics card? (That just won't work with the new all-singing, all-dancing, Gnome 3.) So there's the next RHEL with Gnome shot down in flames.
Corporate and home users are already being expected (by that company in Redmond) to upgrade to higher end hardware for their latest offerings as well. The difference is that Fedora has fallback functionality that works without the hardware acceleration, as well as other options for the desktop.
On 06/21/2011 12:53 AM, Tim wrote:
On Mon, 2011-06-20 at 10:44 -0500, Aaron Konstam wrote:
There is a paradigm shift going from Gnome2 to Gnome3 which I have not seen discussed on this list.
Gnome2 is totally mouse oriented. Everything you want to do you do by moving the mouse and clicking. Obviously I am rerring to Gnome2 itself not applications.
However, in Gnome3 a large fraction of actions have been moved to the keyboard.
Found another can of worms to open? ;-)
It just seems another oddity. Using the mouse, or other pointing device, was seen as making things easier for the non-computer literate, who distinctly hated typing for the command line interface. Yet, now, we're going to make them use the keyboard, albeit for a command line interface in a GUI...
Linux has recently been pushed as "must get it onto ordinary desktops," but who for? (With RHEL and its ilk for corporate, Fedora (and its ilk) for home.)
Is a corporation going to want to spend $100 per graphics card per PC, so that the default Gnome 3 actually works, or are they going to continue to only want to put in the $20 graphics card? (That just won't work with the new all-singing, all-dancing, Gnome 3.) So there's the next RHEL with Gnome shot down in flames.
Likewise, the *average* home user faces the same quandary, and most people buy underpowered computers. So that's Fedora out of the question.
It's really only the die-hard computer nuts who have the expensive graphics cards, and those tend to the gamers hooked on Windows games like World of Warcraft, or whatever the current fad is. So that's virtually any type of Linux ignored.
If you do want to run flashy 3D environments on Fedora, are there any other realistic choices than ATI or Nvidia, and the proprietary drivers, to get it working? That, also, doesn't look good for Fedora.
The phrase, "shooting oneself in the foot," springs to mind.
The only machine I have tried Fedora 15 on so far is an Atom powered netbook, with the usual clunky Intel graphics. I was pleased how smoothly all the elaborate screen shuffling works. I'm not sure I'm ever going to like Gnome 3, but graphics performance seems no reason to complain about it.
Steve
On 06/21/2011 04:39 AM, Steve Searle wrote:
If you install gnome-shell-extentions-alternate-tab this will revert alt-tab to the old behaviour, without the need to vertically switch when you have more than one instance of an application.
I'd be very wary of 3rd party extensions - the API is not guaranteed to be stable and the extensions live outside of gnome core - so they may break at any time - unless they are released and tested as part of core it seems like bad advice to suggest people rely on them.
Also, how are security/privacy issues checked and managed in extensions versus gnome core - do people just trust the extension writers - or are the fedora packagers actively verifying there are no issues?
On 06/21/2011 06:28 PM, Genes MailLists wrote:
I'd be very wary of 3rd party extensions - the API is not guaranteed to be stable and the extensions live outside of gnome core - so they may break at any time - unless they are released and tested as part of core it seems like bad advice to suggest people rely on them.
Also, how are security/privacy issues checked and managed in extensions versus gnome core - do people just trust the extension writers - or are the fedora packagers actively verifying there are no issues?
GNOME Shell Extensions is a module that is in upstream gnome as much as GNOME Shell is. Extensions submitted there get reviewed and merged at
http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-extensions
Suggesting those extensions are not problematic necessarily. For other extensions, it is usually trivial amount of javascript code. Security and privacy issues are no more problematic for those extensions than any other random package in the Fedora repository. Nobody is actively reviewing code typically at the distribution level. The situation now is not ideal because extensions are new and we haven't hashed out all the details yet but there isn't a reason to be alarmed about it.
Rahul
On Tue, 2011-06-21 at 08:28 -0400, Darryl L. Pierce wrote:
On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 02:23:51AM +0930, Tim wrote:
Is a corporation going to want to spend $100 per graphics card per PC, so that the default Gnome 3 actually works, or are they going to continue to only want to put in the $20 graphics card? (That just won't work with the new all-singing, all-dancing, Gnome 3.) So there's the next RHEL with Gnome shot down in flames.
Corporate and home users are already being expected (by that company in Redmond) to upgrade to higher end hardware for their latest offerings as well. The difference is that Fedora has fallback functionality that works without the hardware acceleration, as well as other options for the desktop.
My customers (small and mid-sized businesses in Japan) are interested in Linux specifically because they can cheaply clean and refurbish old desktop hardware and save tons of money in the office. Telling them that the next big thing on the Linux desktop is a cumbersome beast which requires high end hardware the in a similar way Windows does tips the balance away from cheap (read as "harmless" or "low overhead") experimentation with Linux and back towards just sticking with Windows. And let's face it, any smart company plays with a future platform before they commit, so the cost of experimentation is a significant point to consider.
The limitation on Linux desktop adoption is not technical and it is not usability -- it is almost solely a lack of promotion and sales knowhow with regard to the non-technical business world. Gnome3 looks beautiful -- and this is overwhelmingly important to a customer who has no clue what you're talking about if you get to technicals. They understand pretty pixels and have come to expect them because that is their level of comprehension of the system (especially in the course of a one-hour executive brief). So Gnome3 = pretty, that's wonderful. On the other hand, Gnome2 is functional and can be made beautiful as well and does not require acceleration or hardware upgrades vs WindowsXP. After the executive brief or sales pitch, when numbers and projections start getting discussed in private between the boss and his accountants, the strength of the Linux position is significantly weakened if Gnome3 is being discussed as opposed to Gnome2 or XFCE based purely on hardware cost. (As a side note, some frequent-use Gnome3 keyboard shortcut functions are not possible with one hand on a Japanese keyboard which changes the picture a bit there as well.)
I am generating a significant amount of interest locally primarily because everyone is still using legacy WindowsXP applications that don't run on Windows 7 or Vista. Most of these small and medium sized companies have custom coded applications which will cost a huge amount to port forward to the new Windows environments and they are facing forced hardware upgrades associated with the upcoming WindowsXP EOL. They must change. There is no choice because the platform they are invested in dies very soon. The learning curve and investment required to move from XP to 7 is roughly the same as moving to Gnome2, but the safety inherent in the longer-term stability and self-support potential of Linux makes them feel protected against the possibility of a vendor arbitrarily forcing them to blow tons of money on new hardware, forward porting code and retraining the way the XP EOL is (this is not nearly as decisive a factor as the near-term effect of offering a low-cost alternative, as discussed below).
A Gnome2/XFCE offering fits with their current situation of being in possession of 5-10 year old hardware in the office that we can suddenly breathe new life into with minor component upgrades and refurbishment. With the leftover money in the budget they can splurge on enormous desktop displays and nice peripherals for everyone. (...which they are just realizing for the first time has an impact on productivity whereas just having a faster computer does nothing for the average office worker who has seen no truly revolutionary enhancements in office productivity software since the days of OS/2 and Windows98 despite a string of OS and software suite upgrades and associated licensing fee and hardware expenses.)
The weightiest argument I can bring to bear, particularly in an uncertain economic environment, value I can provide by leveraging old hardware. Convincing them that Linux is a reasonable desktop solution for the office does not require weird desktop features, virtualization technologies and an Android-ish 3D interface (on a non-touch screen, no less?). XFCE is plenty to get them excited, actually, because it lets them do the things they need for work without spending anything more than a few afternoons poking around the system to self-train on basic tasks (our average customer adjusts to Gnome2 and XFCE faster than OS X, and moving to OS X isn't that hard, either). More complex tasks like ERP customization and application porting are naturally a bit expensive, but the expenses would have been about the same moving to Windows7 or to Linux. The two big short/mid-term selling points come down to license fee expenses* and savings on hardware costs. Removing one of them significantly reduces the strength of the argument in favor of adoptiong of a new, unknown, scary operating system. (*Windows tech support companies charge about what we do for Linux support, so there isn't much difference here.)
The security improvement arguments and technical merits of Linux are unarguable to people who spend their days fixing cars or taking pictures or writing contracts or managing construction projects instead of building software. These sort of benefits only become apparent after a sale is made, never before. It is a pleasant surprise and almost guarantees that you won't lose the account in the future, but it is not something you can really argue during the sale because every software vendor says they have good security and great features (we are the only ones who admit to bugs, though, which actually seems to help the sale). The business security and position of power the customer inherits with open source is a long-term concern and one that becomes apparent very long after the sale, and while worth mentioning during a pitch, it is merely something which lends a bright atmosphere to the conversation and does nothing to alter what is actually being discussed (the short/mid-term economics of migration).
The financial argument is where we win big on office desktop sales to small and medium sized businesses (not big business or backend, that's RedHat's thing anyway and they do well at it) and upping the hardware requirements could act to significantly reduce one of the two irrisitible arguments we can bring to bear in sales efforts.
Obviously, as my company grows and more of our developer time winds up finding its way into projects like Fedora and upstream components our interest will, at least across the mid-term, be in either adding further polish to lighter-weight DEs or reducing the weight of DEs such as Gnome3. This is in our interest even at the expense of coolness -- though considering that there are so many layers to the Gnome3 cake that describing them as "indirection" as opposed to "abstraction" is perhaps more appropriate, there is likely a huge potential for speed enhancement and refinement in the future.
-Iwao
PS to all: A careful re-reading of the above blather hints at many of the real reasons why Linux hasn't made much headway on the desktop yet -- it has very little to do with the user experience or technicals and everything to do with the FOSS community's almost universal ineptitude at selling to non-technical people. Internally we call this having an "RMS問題" or "Stallman Problem".
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 11:56:35AM +0900, 夜神 岩男 wrote:
Corporate and home users are already being expected (by that company in Redmond) to upgrade to higher end hardware for their latest offerings as well. The difference is that Fedora has fallback functionality that works without the hardware acceleration, as well as other options for the desktop.
My customers (small and mid-sized businesses in Japan) are interested in Linux specifically because they can cheaply clean and refurbish old desktop hardware and save tons of money in the office. Telling them that the next big thing on the Linux desktop is a cumbersome beast which requires high end hardware the in a similar way Windows does tips the balance away from cheap (read as "harmless" or "low overhead") experimentation with Linux and back towards just sticking with Windows. And let's face it, any smart company plays with a future platform before they commit, so the cost of experimentation is a significant point to consider.
But does Fedora 15 "require high end hardware"? No, it doesn't. You can run other desktops, such as XFCE (which you mention as well), and still run all of the same apps.
So while Gnome 3 may require better video hardware than was available on an eight year old machine, that doesn't mean Fedora 15 itself requires that better hardware.
On 06/22/2011 01:09 PM, Darryl L. Pierce wrote:
But does Fedora 15 "require high end hardware"? No, it doesn't. You can run other desktops, such as XFCE (which you mention as well), and still run all of the same apps.
So while Gnome 3 may require better video hardware than was available on an eight year old machine, that doesn't mean Fedora 15 itself requires that better hardware.
Right; and even Gnome 3 will run just fine on older hardware - it'll just resort to fallback mode and the Gnome 2 style environment that so many people seem to miss so much.
Cheers, Bryn.
Am 22.06.2011 14:09, schrieb Darryl L. Pierce:
But does Fedora 15 "require high end hardware"? No, it doesn't. You can run other desktops, such as XFCE (which you mention as well), and still run all of the same apps.
to believe you can force users permanently switch their Desktop Environment without lose them for the whole platform is very naive!
So while Gnome 3 may require better video hardware than was available on an eight year old machine, that doesn't mean Fedora 15 itself requires that better hardware
as said above:
you can not expect that users over the long accept that their workspace is permanently changed because they run their desktop to work with it and not only for plaing with the system as some geeks do
and yes i am one of the geeks playing often with their system, but on invasive changes even for me is the fun really fast over!
On Wed, 2011-06-22 at 08:09 -0400, Darryl L. Pierce wrote:
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 11:56:35AM +0900, 夜神 岩男 wrote:
Corporate and home users are already being expected (by that company in Redmond) to upgrade to higher end hardware for their latest offerings as well. The difference is that Fedora has fallback functionality that works without the hardware acceleration, as well as other options for the desktop.
My customers (small and mid-sized businesses in Japan) are interested in Linux specifically because they can cheaply clean and refurbish old desktop hardware and save tons of money in the office. Telling them that the next big thing on the Linux desktop is a cumbersome beast which requires high end hardware the in a similar way Windows does tips the balance away from cheap (read as "harmless" or "low overhead") experimentation with Linux and back towards just sticking with Windows. And let's face it, any smart company plays with a future platform before they commit, so the cost of experimentation is a significant point to consider.
But does Fedora 15 "require high end hardware"? No, it doesn't. You can run other desktops, such as XFCE (which you mention as well), and still run all of the same apps.
So while Gnome 3 may require better video hardware than was available on an eight year old machine, that doesn't mean Fedora 15 itself requires that better hardware.
True. I was arguing against the general principle of the first statement above which made it seem that "since Microsoft forces the average home and business user to buy high-end hardware that it makes it OK for a Linux distribution to as well" if the user wants to install the default desktop.
My position is that high-end desktops are definitely worth exploring, but not as a default -- not just yet anyway. In Fedora's case this point is a bit blunted by the fact that the platform itself is purposed toward development and testing, and messiness is a big part of that (well, all the fun anyway!). What better way to find out exactly what isn't working on what hardware than to release to tens of thousands of daily users through the Fedora? In other words, screwups in Fedora and unanticipated outcomes are the norm -- which serves to permit concrete anticipation and aversion of problems in production releases such as RHEL.
My worry is the sort of thinking that pushing high-end defaults encourages, and I fear that it will seep too soon into other areas -- which is already happening to some degree. Part of Linux's uniqueness and strength is its amazing ability to adapt to a variety of hardware environments without requiring significant tweaking for the average user (granted, this is a relatively recent development, but it is a user expectation at this point).
Blah blah.
ResumeComa(Iwao);
On 20 June 2011 17:59, Stephen Gallagher sgallagh@redhat.com wrote:
On Tue, 2011-06-21 at 02:23 +0930, Tim wrote:
Is a corporation going to want to spend $100 per graphics card per PC, so that the default Gnome 3 actually works, or are they going to continue to only want to put in the $20 graphics card? (That just won't work with the new all-singing, all-dancing, Gnome 3.) So there's the next RHEL with Gnome shot down in flames.
Likewise, the *average* home user faces the same quandary, and most people buy underpowered computers. So that's Fedora out of the question.
I have an "underpowered" computer running integrated Intel graphics (read: the cheapest of the cheap). The open-source Intel drivers work just fine with Gnome 3/Gnome Shell. (Actually, I have more trouble with the NEWER Intel cards, like those on the Sandy Bridge architecture).
Despite how flashy things look, the Gnome folks did a really quite impressive job of limiting the hardware requirements to a very reasonable set of 3D functions that should be present on most machines built in the last four years at least.
Agreed, my four year old laptop with onboard intel graphics works just fine with gnome 3 graphically speaking. However I preferred compiz for looks and am still amused (and slightly irritated) that transparent consoles don't work because they show their own drop-down shadow (i.e. you CAN see behind them, right through to the black box that's being drawn beneath the window). Does G3 remind anyone else of Quicktime's (old?) interface?
OSX and Win7 have similar requirements for graphics (I'm sure someone can have a long debate about the differences, but they all want 3d accelerated hardware).
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 7:09 AM, Darryl L. Pierce dpierce@redhat.com wrote: [SNIP]
But does Fedora 15 "require high end hardware"? No, it doesn't. You can run other desktops, such as XFCE (which you mention as well), and still run all of the same apps.
So while Gnome 3 may require better video hardware than was available on an eight year old machine, that doesn't mean Fedora 15 itself requires that better hardware.
I've thus far been a lurker on this thread but now I'm curious...
One thing to think about is defining what exactly is "high end hardware"?
Unless something has changed I remember reading a thread where Fedora 15 is the first release where 512MB of memory is not enough for an install, which means unless I upgrade, my netbook is stuck at F14.
I'm not saying that most systems even 4+ years ago will not have 1GB or more, but I think it's better to talk specifics rather than generalities.
Thanks, Richard
Am 22.06.2011 15:06, schrieb Richard Shaw:
Unless something has changed I remember reading a thread where Fedora 15 is the first release where 512MB of memory is not enough for an install, which means unless I upgrade, my netbook is stuck at F14
this installer is quite dumb because he can not know for what usecase the system is installed, there are thousands of usecases where 400 MB RAM are more than enough and only for the installer and yum you need to give a virtual machine more RAM as it needs for operations
On 06/22/2011 02:12 PM, Bryn M. Reeves wrote:
On 06/22/2011 01:09 PM, Darryl L. Pierce wrote:
But does Fedora 15 "require high end hardware"? No, it doesn't. You can run other desktops, such as XFCE (which you mention as well), and still run all of the same apps.
So while Gnome 3 may require better video hardware than was available on an eight year old machine, that doesn't mean Fedora 15 itself requires that better hardware.
Right; and even Gnome 3 will run just fine on older hardware - it'll just resort to fallback mode and the Gnome 2 style environment that so many people seem to miss so much.
Only if you're lucky ... I've seen cases, where this does not apply.
Ralf
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 02:16:51PM +0200, Reindl Harald wrote:
Am 22.06.2011 14:09, schrieb Darryl L. Pierce:
But does Fedora 15 "require high end hardware"? No, it doesn't. You can run other desktops, such as XFCE (which you mention as well), and still run all of the same apps.
to believe you can force users permanently switch their Desktop Environment without lose them for the whole platform is very naive!
I never said that we wouldn't lose users over the switch. You'll _ALWAYS_ have people who will jump ship if you rock the boat even a little.
What I said is that Fedora 15 does not LOCK THEM OUT of using Fedora. They can 1) use their old video hardware with Gnome 3 (and let it fall back to working like Gnome 2), they can 2) use a similar desktop (Xfce) and still use all of the same apps or 3) they can upgrade their video hardware to something minimally more recent than what they have (since Gnome 3 will work with hardware produced within the last 4 years or so).
<snip>
and yes i am one of the geeks playing often with their system, but on invasive changes even for me is the fun really fast over!
For someone that conservative about their desktop I don't image they would be taking on an upgrade like this since it _does_ change some fundamentals.
It's equally (or even moreso) unreasonable to expect everybody to be held back on innovation by those few who can't (or won't) upgrade.
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 09:56:40PM +0900, 夜神 岩男 wrote:
But does Fedora 15 "require high end hardware"? No, it doesn't. You can run other desktops, such as XFCE (which you mention as well), and still run all of the same apps.
So while Gnome 3 may require better video hardware than was available on an eight year old machine, that doesn't mean Fedora 15 itself requires that better hardware.
True. I was arguing against the general principle of the first statement above which made it seem that "since Microsoft forces the average home and business user to buy high-end hardware that it makes it OK for a Linux distribution to as well" if the user wants to install the default desktop.
I'm sorry if I gave the impression that the above was my position. My position was more to the point of "Windows requires you upgrade to the _latest_ video hardware to use their platform: Fedora is only asking you to have something built within the past 4-6 years." ;)
My position is that high-end desktops are definitely worth exploring, but not as a default -- not just yet anyway. In Fedora's case this point is a bit blunted by the fact that the platform itself is purposed toward development and testing, and messiness is a big part of that (well, all the fun anyway!). What better way to find out exactly what isn't working on what hardware than to release to tens of thousands of daily users through the Fedora? In other words, screwups in Fedora and unanticipated outcomes are the norm -- which serves to permit concrete anticipation and aversion of problems in production releases such as RHEL.
My worry is the sort of thinking that pushing high-end defaults encourages, and I fear that it will seep too soon into other areas -- which is already happening to some degree.
I think here we have part of the confusion: Fedora is _not_ requiring "high-end defaults" with the Gnome 3 shift. You can run Gnome 3 with older (but not antiquated) video hardware just fine, or without the acceleration on other video chipsets.
Am 22.06.2011 15:29, schrieb Darryl L. Pierce:
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 02:16:51PM +0200, Reindl Harald wrote:
Am 22.06.2011 14:09, schrieb Darryl L. Pierce:
But does Fedora 15 "require high end hardware"? No, it doesn't. You can run other desktops, such as XFCE (which you mention as well), and still run all of the same apps.
to believe you can force users permanently switch their Desktop Environment without lose them for the whole platform is very naive!
I never said that we wouldn't lose users over the switch. You'll _ALWAYS_ have people who will jump ship if you rock the boat even a little.
What I said is that Fedora 15 does not LOCK THEM OUT of using Fedora. They can 1) use their old video hardware with Gnome 3 (and let it fall back to working like Gnome 2), they can 2) use a similar desktop (Xfce) and still use all of the same apps or 3) they can upgrade their video hardware to something minimally more recent than what they have (since Gnome 3 will work with hardware produced within the last 4 years or so).
<snip>
and yes i am one of the geeks playing often with their system, but on invasive changes even for me is the fun really fast over!
For someone that conservative about their desktop I don't image they would be taking on an upgrade like this since it _does_ change some fundamentals.
It's equally (or even moreso) unreasonable to expect everybody to be held back on innovation by those few who can't (or won't) upgrade.
innovation is not change everything everytime because somebody is funny look how long many unix tools and paradigms are worked well and do it now and for me there are much too peopole out there starting throwing all of them away and i bet NOTHING of the crap which is invited today will have a long-term future of 10,20,30 years
in these days is "innovation" often a phrase for developers which are too lazy or too foolish optimize existing things and thinking writinig all from scratch and start debugging again by zero is the solution, what they forget is that all the crap they produce has a lot of bugs, but most of them are worked out in the old code and often re-introduced with the "new model of dev"
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 02:21:07PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
But does Fedora 15 "require high end hardware"? No, it doesn't.
It won't even install on a machine with 512Mb, so yes it requires high end hardware by many people's measurements.
I _really_ don't consider having more than 512M on a machine to be "high end hardware". The standard for YEARS now has been for systems to come with at least a gig or more of memory.
Memory requirements are based on the intended purpose of the installation. And I'll wager that someone who's looking to use a GUI desktop on their system is not installing onto a machine with only 512M and hasn't been doing so for quite a while; i.e., F15 isn't the first release to need more memory than that for a GUI.
Quite frankly, I'd question the sanity of someone who actually was installing a full blown Fedora installation on a system with only 512M. ;)
Am 22.06.2011 15:37, schrieb Darryl L. Pierce:
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 02:21:07PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
But does Fedora 15 "require high end hardware"? No, it doesn't.
It won't even install on a machine with 512Mb, so yes it requires high end hardware by many people's measurements.
I _really_ don't consider having more than 512M on a machine to be "high end hardware". The standard for YEARS now has been for systems to come with at least a gig or more of memory.
Memory requirements are based on the intended purpose of the installation. And I'll wager that someone who's looking to use a GUI desktop on their system is not installing onto a machine with only 512M and hasn't been doing so for quite a while; i.e., F15 isn't the first release to need more memory than that for a GUI.
Quite frankly, I'd question the sanity of someone who actually was installing a full blown Fedora installation on a system with only 512M. ;)
because you are only seeing you desktop the developers seems too
and that is why "yum" is consuming soo much RAM that on a virtual machine with 512 MB RAM the kernel-OOM-killer is killing yum sometimes, and hey we are speaking abut a terminal-app
there wents something TERRIBLE wrong in the linux world not only on fedora side, they all starting to braindead waste ressources - the result is that modenr hardware is not really fast as ten years ago if you looking at the perfomrance the user gets out of it
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 03:34:48PM +0200, Reindl Harald wrote:
For someone that conservative about their desktop I don't image they would be taking on an upgrade like this since it _does_ change some fundamentals.
It's equally (or even moreso) unreasonable to expect everybody to be held back on innovation by those few who can't (or won't) upgrade.
innovation is not change everything everytime because somebody is funny look how long many unix tools and paradigms are worked well and do it now and for me there are much too peopole out there starting throwing all of them away and i bet NOTHING of the crap which is invited today will have a long-term future of 10,20,30 years
I think "change everything everytime" is an exaggeration that goes beyond the topic of this discussion. Please pull it back and stay on topic.
On 06/22/2011 02:37 PM, Darryl L. Pierce wrote:
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 02:21:07PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
But does Fedora 15 "require high end hardware"? No, it doesn't.
It won't even install on a machine with 512Mb, so yes it requires high end hardware by many people's measurements.
I _really_ don't consider having more than 512M on a machine to be "high end hardware". The standard for YEARS now has been for systems to come with at least a gig or more of memory.
Memory requirements are based on the intended purpose of the installation. And I'll wager that someone who's looking to use a GUI desktop on their system is not installing onto a machine with only 512M and hasn't been doing so for quite a while; i.e., F15 isn't the first release to need more memory than that for a GUI.
Quite frankly, I'd question the sanity of someone who actually was installing a full blown Fedora installation on a system with only 512M. ;)
There are still cases where it would be useful to install an up-to-date general purpose distribution on hardware that would be deemed "underpowered" by this definition (some of the cute little atom and other bittyboxes for e.g).
I understand that there are compromises to be made but I do think it's unfortunate if the installer will not function on this hardware. Post install you pays your money and takes your choice but if the distribution will not even install you are kinda hosed from the start.
Cheers, Bryn.
On Wed, 22 Jun 2011 09:37:17 -0400 Darryl L. Pierce wrote:
Quite frankly, I'd question the sanity of someone who actually was installing a full blown Fedora installation on a system with only 512M. ;)
Which is why I always wonder why the default ram size when installing a virtual machine with virt-manager is always 512M :-) (I always change it to 1G).
On 06/22/2011 07:22 PM, Bryn M. Reeves wrote:
There are still cases where it would be useful to install an up-to-date general purpose distribution on hardware that would be deemed "underpowered" by this definition (some of the cute little atom and other bittyboxes for e.g).
I understand that there are compromises to be made but I do think it's unfortunate if the installer will not function on this hardware. Post install you pays your money and takes your choice but if the distribution will not even install you are kinda hosed from the start.
There are other ways to install Fedora and to be clear, this is a temporary problem. Anaconda team already has patches to bring it down again which didn't get merged for Fedora 15 because the problem was discovered late in the release cycle. I am sure they would welcome any help
Rahul
On 06/22/2011 02:57 PM, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
On 06/22/2011 07:22 PM, Bryn M. Reeves wrote:
There are still cases where it would be useful to install an up-to-date general purpose distribution on hardware that would be deemed "underpowered" by this definition (some of the cute little atom and other bittyboxes for e.g).
I understand that there are compromises to be made but I do think it's unfortunate if the installer will not function on this hardware. Post install you pays your money and takes your choice but if the distribution will not even install you are kinda hosed from the start.
There are other ways to install Fedora and to be clear, this is a temporary problem. Anaconda team already has patches to bring it down again which didn't get merged for Fedora 15 because the problem was discovered late in the release cycle. I am sure they would welcome any help
That's good to hear - I kinda assumed that this would only affect the graphical installer (I tend to kickstart all my smaller boxes anyway since they are either awkward to use with a display or only reachable over the network) and that this would again be a temporary situation (it's certainly not the first time the Fedora GUI installation memory requirements have shot up briefly before being brought back down again). Thanks for the information.
Cheers, Bryn.
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 09:55:45AM -0400, Tom Horsley wrote:
On Wed, 22 Jun 2011 09:37:17 -0400 Darryl L. Pierce wrote:
Quite frankly, I'd question the sanity of someone who actually was installing a full blown Fedora installation on a system with only 512M. ;)
Which is why I always wonder why the default ram size when installing a virtual machine with virt-manager is always 512M :-) (I always change it to 1G).
I'm guessing the developer's a little on the edge there... :)
(DISCLAIMER: I'm the guy writing the TUI version of VMM <g>)
On 06/22/2011 05:16 AM, Reindl Harald wrote:
to believe you can force users permanently switch their Desktop Environment without lose them for the whole platform is very naive!
I switched from Gnome to XFCE because I disliked almost everything I heard about Gnome 3 and lost nothing. All of my old programs run Just Fine under XFCE. Why do you expect otherwise?
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 8:57 AM, Rahul Sundaram metherid@gmail.com wrote:
There are other ways to install Fedora and to be clear, this is a temporary problem. Anaconda team already has patches to bring it down again which didn't get merged for Fedora 15 because the problem was discovered late in the release cycle. I am sure they would welcome any help
Would it be possible/practical for me to create an updated install ISO with the new anaconda once it's available? All of my main machines have 2-4GB of memory but I'd like to create a USB installer for my netbook w/ 512MB.
Thanks, Richard
On 06/22/2011 01:36 PM, Richard Shaw wrote:
Would it be possible/practical for me to create an updated install ISO with the new anaconda once it's available? All of my main machines have 2-4GB of memory but I'd like to create a USB installer for my netbook w/ 512MB.
Thanks, Richard
In principal this is straightforward using mock/pungi - with the updates repo added - I've been making updated DVD's with all updates for a several years now
For some reason this works for some but not others starting in F15 (fails for me for example)
g
On 06/22/2011 09:47 AM, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 06/22/2011 05:16 AM, Reindl Harald wrote:
to believe you can force users permanently switch their Desktop Environment without lose them for the whole platform is very naive!
I switched from Gnome to XFCE because I disliked almost everything I heard about Gnome 3 and lost nothing. All of my old programs run Just Fine under XFCE. Why do you expect otherwise?
Ditto. Gnome3 was a bewildering non-starter on my old T43 and would not fall back to anything resembling the Gnome2 environment. XFCE to the rescue.
BTW, I've been using linux as my primary desktop for over 10 years. Gnome3 is ill suited to the work I have to do. Can someone explain to me the advantage of not being able to minimize an application ? It's not workable.
David Looney
BTW, I've been using linux as my primary desktop for over 10 years. Gnome3 is ill suited to the work I have to do. Can someone explain to me the advantage of not being able to minimize an application ? It's not workable.
You can still minimize apps - right-click on the title bar, and click "minimize". (Or use the tweak tool to re-enable the buttons.)
However, I use the mouse-swoosh to switch between active windows. It is quite workable, for me, and after a while it seems quite natural. I don't find that it takes any more effort than gnome2-style minimizing and panel-clicking - less, actually.
But, use whatever works for you!
- Mike
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