GNOME3 and au revoir WAS: systemd: please stop trying to take over the world :)

[Henrik Wejdmark]

> Coming out of pure lurk mode - I think Seth's observations here are true
for a
> many of the things that have gone on in Fedora recently (at the risk of
> opening wounds... eg. gnome3).  Your options are:
> 
> 1) Complain
> 2) Get involved in the development to the point where you are one
>      of those with enough clout to 'demand change' - or at least do
>      1) with some concrete technical observations as devoid as possible
>      of vitriol and anger, at which point "Complain" would no longer
really
>      be the correct term.
> 3) Quietly move on to something more suited to your needs.

Coming out of pure lurk mode here as well.

I have been with this distro since RH4 and have had a great time doing so.
Almost every upgrade has been really smooth with only a few minor setbacks
like an odd broken dependency that was easily fixed, but F15 is the end for
me. I think Karl summed it up pretty well. We can't always agree with every
decision, but as our license fees are less than substantial :) we have to
live with (semi-)democratic decisions.

I have chosen 3), not because of systemd (which I like), but GNOME3 (which I
would love on a pad device or a 10 foot device, but can't stand on a
laptop/workstation), but reading Karls comments made me think one more step.
I don't think it is beneficial for me, or for the distro, if I _quietly_
move on to something else. I didn't go for 2) as I don't have time to be an
active contributor, but the least I can do is to share the rationale behind
my decision to leave.

So here is a quick highlight of my personal thoughts on GNOME3:
1) I miss having a bar where I have an overview of my work/life.
2) Why do I get to activities first when I move my mouse to the hot spot?
I'm trying to start a new application....
3) When switching to Applications the default show all applications, which
on a phone works great but on a workstation just floods my screen.  I do
have more than 16 applications.....
4) Luckily I can still select a group of applications to narrow my search,
but why is the hot spot in the top left corner and my list of groups on the
far right side? A lot of mouse movement for a trivial, and commonly used,
task.
5) The default icon size in the application menu would work great on my TV
when I'm sitting in the sofa, but on my laptop they are gigantic.
6) Favorites are a great idea. A quick bar for access to my most commonly
used applications. So I added "terminal" immediately, but why don't I get a
new terminal when I click it the second time? Yeah, I know you can use a
two-finger approach, but first of all I open new
terminals/OpenOffice/FireFix/... all the time so it's a common task, second
it's duplicating the activities window, which is the first to show when you
move to the hotspot anyway.
7) Shutdown.... has been mentioned enough already....
8)....

My impression is that GNOME3 is trying to compete with Android and FrontRow,
but have forgotten all of us who still uses desktops/laptops. We don't have
touch screens yet....

And yes, I know a lot of things are configurable and you can always create
an extension to fix things to your likings, it's all software, right? But
I'm a fairly experienced user and I spent a full working week trying to get
around my (and my peers) complaints and failed and I, personally, don't
think you should need to spend 40 hours to understand a user interface in
2011.

GNOME3 might be the right decision for Fedora, but it is not the right
decision for me and my users.

//Sincerely
     Henrik