my impressions of F19A, from Radeon testing day

[Adam Williamson]

On Fri, 2013-04-26 at 00:51 -0400, DJ Delorie wrote:
> 
> > > "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.

That's odd. Works fine here, on multiple systems, metal and virt.

> > > 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.

That...doesn't match how I've seen it in all my testing. The 'initial
setup' stuff comes before you see the intro movie - the intro movie
happens after you actually log in. Maybe this is affected by creating a
user in anaconda somehow. I don't recall seeing any empty dialog.

> > 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.

It's not about being one or the other 'way around'. We don't actually
intend for you to see the g-i-s user creation step if you already
created a user in anaconda. The various user creation methods are meant
to be *alternatives*.

> > 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.

Careful with that 'you'! I don't work on GNOME. Sure, they could make
two different introductory videos and write some heuristic for counting
keys and then have all the fun of dealing with bugs in that for the rest
of eternity (because you just *know* hardware is never simple, and
there'll be some oddball keyboard with 101 keys and a Super key, and
some oddball keyboard with 105 keys but no Super key...). Or they could
just make one video, and show it, and the 1% of people without a Super
key could just somehow manage to move forward with their lives =) I
mean, sure, you could view this as a 'bug'. It just doesn't seem like a
very important one. I have a Model M too. I saw the video and went 'eh'.

The movie actually shows two common forms of Super key: the Windows key
and the Command key that is found on Mac hardware.

>   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.

Try it with pavucontrol. If you see the setting there but not in GNOME's
control panel, file a bug on gnome-control-center.

> > > 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...

In your case, sure, but it is not in all cases.

> > > 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.

That's probably just a bug in the calculations then, I guess. On my
two-monitor display, that looks to be how it works: the vertical size of
the rectangles is just right so that I could stack them one on top of
the other, with a bit of padding space.

> > > 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.

It could be a bit better. They haven't really entirely finished the
transition from 'online updates' to 'offline updates'; I've been bugging
them about it.

> > > 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 think this is because it's impossible to build a non-patent-infringing
version, but IMBW.

>   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.

Sure, thanks.

> > 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.

Yeah, you're not the first to complain about it. I think it's one of
those things you figure out and then kinda forget about. I think they
added the arrows after the first round of feedback, but maybe they need
to make it even more clear somehow.

> > 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.

Yeah...'typical for four monitors' is still pretty edge case, y'know =)
I don't think I could fit four monitors on my desk.

-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net