Developer focus for Fedora workstation

[Jiri Eischmann]

Adam Batkin píše v Čt 14. 08. 2014 v 23:37 -0400:
> Unfortunately I wasn't able to watch Langdon's video, but I watched 
> Christian's talk and read Langdon's the slides. I actually spoke with 
> Langdon at OSCON where he accurately described me as a "developer on 
> Linux" which is [usually] distinctly different from a "Linux developer".
> 
> To me, the biggest thing that I would like to see, is Gnome to be more 
> comfortable for a developer (that's why we're all here, right?). 
> Developers often spend a lot of time with their hands on the keyboard 
> (as opposed to the mouse) and are already comfortable installing 
> packages, etc... I'm sure Gnome is great for general computing users 
> (though we can debate that too) and maybe touchscreen users like it, but 
> I find it maddening. I just built a new PC though, and for the first 
> time in a long time I'm forcing myself to use Gnome instead of XFCE (I 
> tried KDE as recently as a few months ago and found it to still be 
> unstable and have really weird theme/UI interactions).
> 
> I know there are some good extensions included (yay for Alt-Tab). Some 
> defaults to enable things like Alt+Drag to move/resize windows would be 
> great, as well as sane Virtual Desktop functionality, but I fixed all 
> that locally within a couple minutes.
> 
> But there are a bunch of other "polish" things that I think also need to 
> be fixed. For example:
> * There are at least half a dozen Gnome Bugzillas that I've come across 
> around focus and window stacking issues - and I think I've encountered 
> every one of them. This is maddening. For someone who uses the keyboard 
> as much as possible, this makes the system almost unusable
> * The default theme makes it difficult to easily distinguish the Focused 
> window from all other windows - again, maddening when you have lots of 
> windows spread across multiple very high resolution monitors. Especially 
> with all the window focus/stacking issues
> * The default theme uses a lot of extra empty space around UI controls 
> and also as part of window titlebars. Sure, it's pretty, but you lose a 
> TON of useful space. Open something like Eclipse on a Mac and compare 
> with Gnome and see how much extra "stuff" you can see on the Mac (hint: 
> Apple has found a way to make the UI both pretty AND functional even on 
> screens with limited vertical pixels). Oh, and when I tried another 
> theme that had less blank space around Window titlebars, it turned out 
> that some windows use some new Gnome API which draws the titlebars 
> differently, so those windows still look like they are using Adwaita
> * Silly things like the fact that you need to drag to get rid of the 
> screensaver/blanker thing - Individually, this isn't *that* important, 
> and there's already a BZ for it, but no one seems rushing to fix it. I 
> can't think of a single case where a non-touchscreen user would WANT 
> that functionality, but there still doesn't appear to be a way to rid 
> yourself of it

I don't know what version of GNOME you're using, but I don't have to
drag anything. When I get back to my computer and want to log in to my
session I just start typing and the curtain disappears.
IMHO most of the point you mentioned are not objective flaws, but a
matter of taste. That doesn't mean I want to undermine your effort. If
that taste is shared by most users it should at least be a reason for
GNOME designers to think about it.
BTW I'm also a heavy keyboard user and I find GNOME by far the most
keyboard friendly desktop environment I've tried in the last couple of
years (I don't count all those minimalistic tiling managers).

Jiri