my impressions of F19A, from Radeon testing day

[DJ Delorie]

> > "Welcome" dialog is on rightmost monitor, not main monitor (the black
> > Gnome menu is on main monitor).
> 
> We don't really have any way of knowing what the main monitor is, in a
> multiple monitor setup. I think X just goes with enumeration order until
> you specify it somehow...

I don't know enough about xrandr to say, but it did figure out which
monitor to put the black menu on :-)

The odd part was that the welcome dialog and the menu were on
different monitors.

> That's a GNOME design, I remember finding it a bit confusing at first
> but now I just hit Esc. The idea is that it's a 'shield' in front of
> your desktop, which you swipe away.

I did hit Esc, it didn't work.

> > No options in keyboard layout window - it brought up a blank list and
> > made me "pick"  one.
> 
> Sorry, not quite sure what you mean here? Which 'keyboard layout window'
> is this?

The first Welcome thing you get after the white intro movie, just
before you're asked to create a user account.  Maybe it was an "input
methods" window?  It was a blank dialog, I had to press next, I
couldn't figure out what its purpose was.

> No, that's not the idea. The integration between anaconda, initial-setup
> and gnome-initial-setup just isn't entirely done yet. I think if you
> create a user in anaconda it's an admin user by default, but I'm not
> 100% sure. It should probably give you the option.

IIRC it was the other way around, anaconda's user was the non-admin.

> Clearly, your keyboard is broken. I'd return it. ;)

They didn't have a Windows key in 1984, and I'm NOT returning my Model M :-)

> I've never quite got the 'being proud of having a keyboard with no
> Super key' thing. It's a handy key. But anyway, this is a general
> introductory video to GNOME aimed at very new users; if you're geeky
> enough to have gone out and carefully sourced a keyboard with no
> Super key, you are not the target audience of the video, so that
> doesn't really seem to be a problem.

You call it a Super key, but you show a Windows logo (you hide it but
it's obvious) in the movie.  And you can ask the keyboard how many
keys it has.

> > Resizing firefox is VERY slow - about 2-3 FPS.
> 
> Try booting with slub_debug=- . Pre-Beta builds of Fedora use debug
> kernels, which are much slower than release kernels.

Yeah, I know about that.  Nothing else was that slow though.

> > analog 5.1 "test speakers" emits no output to subwoofer (the other 5
> > speakers worked fine)
> > 
> > Digital spdif output does not have options for surround sound *at all*
> > (the hardware is known-good under F17).
> 
> Where did you look?

Er, the gnome sound settings dialog.  I currently (F17) use the
pavucontrol app to switch between analog stereo (gaming headset) and
digital surround (movies) but I was going for the "eat the dogfood"
option.

> > Xrandr settings should be site-wide, not personal (esp, they're
> > ignored for the greeter screen).  The greeter is hard to use because
> > you can't keep track of where the cursor is due to the misconfigured
> > screens.
> 
> What do you mean by 'xrandr' settings exactly?

Layout and rotation of monitors.  It seems silly that the physical
layout of the monitors should be a per-user setting when the hardware
doesn't change between users.  Each time I choose "switch user" all
the monitors revert to their "unconfigured" setting and I have to
re-run the Display settings thing for each user.

In F17 I manually configured the monitors in xorg.conf so they apply
right away and for everyone.

> tool, I think it's planned to have an 'apply systemwide' option in
> future, but it's not done yet.

That would be a good solution.

> Such settings shouldn't be made systemwide by default, as multiple
> users on a multi-user setting don't necessarily all want the same
> settings...

In my case, monitor layout isn't a preference, it's a hardware
configuration...

> > Xrandr changes turn the screen to random garbage for a few seconds
> > before reconfiguring.
> 
> That sounds like it might be a driver issue (none of the things above
> are). The driver devs would probably need more details or a video or
> something, though.

Yup.  Others already reported it as such.

> I don't know if there's been much testing with that many monitors. Two
> is a much more common case. This is not likely driver or
> Fedora-specific, you're probably best off filing an upstream GNOME bug
> on it, with more details and maybe a video.

If I can find time ;-)

> I believe the app tries to render things so you have enough space to put
> all the displays in a vertical stack - i.e. it's just giving you enough
> space for every possible arrangement. It's just that in your case - when
> you have four monitors, several of which are vertically oriented - this
> gives kind of a bad result, since the 'vertical stack' configuration
> would be so tall. Again, I suspect the devs/designers haven't
> necessarily seen a case like yours, which is kind of an edge case; it
> may be worth filing this upstream also.

Perhaps, but even given the above, they're still WAY too small.

> > At some points, gnome brought up a light-grey-on-lighter-grey themed
> > dialog, which looks like a disabled dialog and is hard to read.
> 
> Not quite sure what you're referring to here. Did you take a screenshot?

Nope.  I don't recall which one it is, either, I'm going from my
notes.

> There are notifications, if you wait long enough. You will also see an
> 'Install updates and restart' option in the user menu when updates are
> available; this is the 'offline updates' feature from F18.

Perhaps I'm impatient then, but the testing instructions said "update
your software" and I couldn't find a way to do that through the GUI.

> > totem segfaults running NET_MAN.ogg  (known bug)
> 
> Yeah, I think we have about 50 reports of that one now :P

I didn't bother filing another one ;-)

I would have tried vlc, which is what I usually use, but it wasn't in
the core repos.  I have a HD/DVR that totem doesn't support.

> > 0ad isn't playable - the "ok" button to start the game is drawn on a
> > spot on my desktop that doesn't map to a monitor, so I can't click it.
> 
> You should probably file bugs for these.

Perhaps, but I don't have time to try *every* app to see if it works,
where do you draw the line?  I only tried these because they were
listed in the test plan, I'll never run them again for my own
purposes.  If I can find the time, I'll document my findings as you
suggested.

> Well, be fair here: it's not like the only two possible cases are 'four
> large monitors in a pretty unusual setup' or 'tablet'.

IMHO the screensaver thing is clunky on a single large monitor.

> You are an edge case. Edge cases get to have all the fun. =) I think
> you're the only person I've ever heard of using four monitors on a
> fairly 'regular' desktop (i.e. not some sort of special case - video
> wall, camera monitoring or whatever). I use GNOME on a more
> 'typical' two-monitor setup and it's fine. Though I don't play games
> on it.

My setup is the "typical" three-monitor setup that was the recommended
setup for a 30" monitor, plus a fourth for movies.  One big main
monitor, flanked by two smaller portrait monitors for documents, gives
you a solid 4960 by 1600 workspace without a black bar down the
middle.

http://www.delorie.com/wood/desk/photos/img_1986.html

The fourth monitor is supposed to be *above* the main one, but I
haven't built the mounting shelf for them yet.