Impressions of F15 so far [Archive]

smr54

28th February 2011, 03:08 AM

As Dan's thread at http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=259442 is, in theory, about Gnome 3, thought I'd start this one for folks to give their general impressions.

My own;
Still very buggy. Unfortunately, the majority of bugs will be one timers. (I've done several installs on VirtualBox, and a couple on unimportant laptops.)

I tried the default installation. Gnome 3 wouldn't work on Vbox (expected) nor on a laptop with an integrated Intel card. It used the Gnome fallback. Things I noticed.
The printing config tool wouldn't let me add a network printer.

On one install, it wouldn't let me log in, just kept repeating the Gnome dialog--glad this only happened on one install, I'm not even sure how to describe it, let alone file a bug--when I went to a console, I saw that I had about 30 gdms.

On one LXDE live, put on a USB, it wouldn't get past log in on an NVidia. (Not unexpected, that was just a test to see if Noveau worked with that particular card.)

My usual method is to do a minimal installation, then add X and fluxbox. This went more smoothly--the netiso doesn't require me to put in a URL---I don't remember if that's a new improvement or if I haven't used the netinstall iso for awhile, as opposed to boot.iso.

The first TC used the new ethernet labling of pci#2 or something similar. My thought was that using # in a device name might cause problems down the road, but the RCs seem to have stopped that.

One install, on console, would echo the password--that is, I would get the log in prompt, log in, then get the password prompt. The password would show up in clear text, and the keyboard seemed a bit odd--that is, ctl+L wouldn't clear the screen, tab completion didn't work. However, using ctl+alt+F2 to get to a new terminal, all worked as it should.

On another couple of tests, in fluxbox, the keyboard was a bit odd--I would be typing something in X term and it would suddenly seem to stop accepting input.

So, lots of little odd bugs, to be expected in an alpha.

One thing that they may not consider a bug is that networking seems to be expecting NetworkManager to be installed. If one looks in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts, NM_CONTROLLED=yes was consistent across all tests. As I don't use it, I changed this to no, ran chkconfig network on and all was fine.

On the positive side, I see that /etc/inittab, though no longer used, has very clear instructions on how to set the run level--this makes sense to me, putting these instructions in the spot where the people who change their runlevel would look.

Printing was easily configured with cups and hplip. My only problem is that if one uses a minimal installation, to have scanning work on HP all in ones, one has to install libsane-hpaio (thanks to marriedto51 for that tip), but that's a known issue and I believe the developer is getting it fixed. (It is fixed if one uses system-config-printer, but I think that was upstream.) Japanese input works with either anthy or the newer mozc.

All in all, I think once the bugs get ironed out, there won't be any bad surprises.

Dan

28th February 2011, 03:15 AM

The recycling logins are nothing new. <..:rolleyes:..>

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=1425860

smr54

28th February 2011, 03:53 AM

Ah I should have mentioned, as one of the bugs, sudo isn't working. (I've only done it by group, rather than user, but a user of the wheel group is unable to use sudo.)

recycling logins--thanks for putting a name to it for me. Your pragmatic solution made me chuckle.

bob

28th February 2011, 11:26 AM

leigh123linux

28th February 2011, 01:00 PM

bob

28th February 2011, 01:18 PM

Leigh, sorry to say but you've got a good idea there. I doubt that there will be any last-minute decision to halt the juggernaut of Gnome3, any more than the Art department had on the default wallpaper. There are times when I wonder if the devs are really were interested in how the users feel.

Dan

28th February 2011, 01:27 PM

Uhm ... in a word? No. It sure doesn't look like it. Downloading Scientific now.

smr54

28th February 2011, 01:51 PM

Ok folks, who ever thought I'd be the one defending some Fedora changes. :)

If you folks look at the testing list, you'll see Adam, as usual, busily working on behalf of the users, dealing with some of the broken stuff being released. The Gnome desktop that you folks like will still be available as far as I can tell. At present, as some of us have noted, Gnome 3 won't even run on our hardware.

Fedora and Ubuntu (and Mint, I reckon) seem to be the main desktop oriented distributions, at least in the US. Keep in mind that SL is going to be, in a year or two, more like using CentOS now.

(Not sure what Mint is going to do-- especially if the Gnome folks themselves wind up more or less abandoning the current Gnome for Gnome 3.)

BTW, anyone see Gnomeo and Juliet? Kind of cute, but the Japanese that was in it had such a strong English accent that neither my wife nor CentOS' toracat, both native speakers, could figure out what was being said without repeated listenings. :)

bob

28th February 2011, 02:07 PM

Thanks to AdamW for all he does on our behalf and to you too for that tidbit about Ye Olde Legacy Gnome still being an option. I'd have liked to play with Gnome3 but my hardware won't allow it and I'm not about to plunk down $500 for the pleasure.

In the meantime, I'll play with Scientific to see if it's a real option.

smr54

28th February 2011, 02:09 PM

Note that I'm not 100 percent positive about Gnome legacy, but I know they definitely have the fallback. (Actually ,that wasn't the specific thing, as far as I know, that Adam is working for on our behalf, it had to do with something else that got pushed out that shouldn't have.)

LightDot

28th February 2011, 02:15 PM

I don't mind testing Gnome Shell, but I don't want to use for my everyday work just yet. If Fedora 15 provides a fully fledged Gnome Panel, as it is now in Gnome 2.32, than ok...

If Gnome Panel isn't there, I'll stick with Fedora 14 for a while longer and than switch to either CentOS 6 or Scientific Linux 6. If later Fedoras, such as 16 or 17, prove to be on the right track again, I might switch back. Gnome 3 should be a bit more mature by then.

Just as a side note, I've been lurking on the CentOS devel list for some time now and things there seem a little bit odd to me. I mean, community wise - or lack of a such thing. That's what makes me consider Scientific Linux more and more... As far as I can see, they have made SL 6 much closer to stock RHEL 6, when compared to the previous version. That was my main reason for choosing CentOS over SL.

(edit: typos)

smr54

28th February 2011, 04:12 PM

Ok, the whole CentOS thing is, as you say a bit odd, but there's long history of it being odd. Despite that, it keeps getting out the door eventually. There is hope that it will open a bit after this batch of releases (6.0, 5.6, and 4.9).

As far as I know, SL6 is still not as close to RHEL6 as CentOS 6 will be. And, of course, there's Oracle 6. I was looking forward to using it, as we have purchased licenses from Oracle, but, as of Feb 22 anyway, when we did the installation, Oracle support told us they did not support Oracle Database 11G on Oracle Linux 6. :)

(They said it would be soon, but they had no time frame. )

AndrewSerk

28th February 2011, 06:11 PM

F15, it's still to early to say for sure, but we still have a good 8-10 months before F14 goes EOL. By then, RHEL 6.1 should be out and ported to the clones, rpmfusion should have the RHEL 6 packages worked out, and we will have to make the decision what to use.
As of now, I plan on switching my machines that now run CentOS to SL, and for the computers I now have Fedora on, well I will have to wait and see where gnome ends up before I make that decision.

Time will tell

vallimar

28th February 2011, 08:08 PM

As things currently stand, classic gnome or legacy gnome or whatever they call the fallback mode is
only somewhat a resemblance of Gnome2. You still only have the lacking configuration options of
gnome-shell, are stuck without a nautilus desktop browser, are also stuck with the presently non-
existant options for gtk3 themes, not that there is a gui to change them even if there were.

You really only get back the old menu, panel and panel-applets, what remains of them anyways.
You can get some metacity theme-ability back by hand tweaking gconf settings but it's not friendly.

---------- Post added at 03:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:56 PM ----------

I'm currently running F15 with most gnome-bits from F14 and it works pretty well. Also just updated to
latest Nvidia 270.29 drivers and the fresh Xorg 1.10 from F16. Also, on a lark, I rebuilt the old gdm 2.20.11
(last with the gdmsetup/theme code) with a few patches and it seems to work. No plymouth support or smooth
transitions since it never supported those, but it works otherwise though I didn't test the session switching
stuff yet. An enterprising coder could probably backport some of the eyecandy fluff but that is beyond my means.

I like to keep fairly up-to-date with packages, so not sure another distro would work for me. I may
just have to proceed with rebuilding all the gnome2 stuff myself and bumping the epoch so upstream
won't try to clobber them.

smr54

28th February 2011, 09:18 PM

@vallimar, thank you for clarifying. At Bob, apologies for false information. I don't use Gnome myself, so didn't realize how different fallback is from what people are used to using.

bob

28th February 2011, 09:33 PM

Okay. So that was what I was seeing before I was frozen and booted out of F15 by my selfish attempt to include Firefox on both the panel and desktop. OTOH, after installing Scientific 6.0 on an available partition, I'm pleasantly surprised how closely it resembles F14 and how full-featured it is. Not a bad option, although I'll work with some DM on Fedora as long as I can.

Adunaic

1st March 2011, 02:53 AM

I have been upgrading some of our machines recently to SLC5 (SLC6 is not finished yet) and even though 5 is an old version its still going strong. Swapping over is definitely a good idea for those that find themselves not liking gnome 3. (Although I can imagine a lot of you will get bored since you don't need to do a reinstall every year :D.

I will be curious to see what happens when SLC7 comes out. I cannot imagine them wanting to upgrade the machines just to run gnome 3. I also cannot imagine that they would be happy with the current fall back.

Perhaps RedHat/SLC will swap to a different default desktop?

tox

1st March 2011, 03:21 AM

DBelton

1st March 2011, 05:02 AM

I to am very disappointed in Gnome3. I have been using RedHat and then Fedora ever since RedHat 4.1 back in 97, and now I too am looking for an alternative linux distribution if Gnome3 is the way things are going :(

The only promising thing I saw in the live image of F15 that I just now tried is that FINALLY it supports my wacom tablet without me having to load the linuxwacom kernel module like I have had to do since F11.

Sounds about par for the course, though. When it finally supports my hardware pretty well, something major gets screwed up and makes me think about looking for an alternative OS :(

tox

1st March 2011, 07:13 AM

I am going to move to Scientific Linux release 6.0 as there isn't a suitable replacement for Gnome in Fedora (LXDE doesn't run stable here and XFCE sucks).
Gnome3 is just a plaything IMO and isn't up to the needs of a production system (I used Fedora since FC5 for production without any issues till now).
I think F15 here will be limited to a minimal VM install just to test the packages that I maintain (this is less because I dumped AWN as it mainly a gnome based system IMO)

you'll have to get the Scientific Linux Logo to display near the Browser ,

Dr.Diesel

1st March 2011, 11:42 PM

I am going to move to Scientific Linux release 6.0 as there isn't a suitable replacement for Gnome in Fedora (LXDE doesn't run stable here and XFCE sucks).

I am also Distro shopping. Gnome 3 is horrible, the worst part is they have crippled it on purpose, can't understand why.

Just one example of many, why on earth should I have to open a console window to reboot or shutdown?

Very sad for me, been working Fedora since Core 1.

bob

1st March 2011, 11:47 PM

Dr.Diesel

1st March 2011, 11:49 PM

Wayne

2nd March 2011, 12:07 AM

Yep, best to try all the options and be prepared before time runs out and the Gnome 3 abomination is foisted upon you. I've already moved to KDE 4.6. I found myself doing the same thing when IBM were getting ready to announce end of support for OS/2 Warp 4 and I started exploring Linux. I'd already been dual booting for a while before end of support and was prepared to wipe my OS/2 partitions away already!

SwampKracker

2nd March 2011, 03:22 AM

Wow. Gnome 3 is that bad? I am using Gnome Shell with F14 and like it. Guess I can always use Mint again if I have to, not that it was bad the last time :p

John the train

2nd March 2011, 08:11 AM

Dr.Diesel, I've taken advantage of spare space on the drive to install the other DM's available for F14 and to spend some time checking how I can stick with Fedora and replace Gnome. Actually, many are better-featured than I'd remembered and decent options. I'll keep working with them for now.

I'm trying LXDE, which seems nice and stable on my box, at the moment it looks as if I may go with the LXDE spin for F15. The only thing I'm really missing compared to Gnome is desktop launchers for individual apps. Desktop effects are showy but non-essential, and I can live without the weather applet, as my local weather is only a couple of clicks away.

tox

2nd March 2011, 08:17 AM

leigh123linux

2nd March 2011, 08:47 AM

well i'll be on Gnome3 Alpha soon as its released, probably thinking, why i dont install a release candidate,? i just prefer to wait for a official Alpha. but i love Gnome3, it just takes you a awhile to get used to it, but those people that Crave for compiz i can understand why they wouldnt like Gnome3, whereas iv'e never really been a compiz fanboy as it just sucks system resources like no tomorrow
That statement is complete ****, get your facts right and don't bother posting any links to phoronix as he is full of **** as well.

http://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/beware-the-benchmarks/

Gnome shell uses just as much resources as compiz.

tox

2nd March 2011, 09:36 AM

That statement is complete ****, get your facts right and don't bother posting any links to phoronix as he is full of **** as well.

http://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/beware-the-benchmarks/

Gnome shell uses just as much resources as compiz.

thats a rather old statement by smspilliaz which was probably based on the comment that Phoronix did which was from compiz 0.8.x , i havent seen any compiz0.9.x benchmarks yet, if you have any, please share. however when i get them i will post :)

leigh123linux

2nd March 2011, 09:42 AM

thats a rather old statement by smspilliaz which was probably based on the comment that Phoronix did which was from compiz 0.8.x , i havent seen any compiz0.9.x benchmarks yet, if you have any, please share. however when i get them i will post :)

IMO any compositing system ie: Kwin, compiz or mutter will use roughly the same amount of resources.

tox

2nd March 2011, 09:55 AM

IMO any compositing system ie: Kwin, compiz or mutter will use roughly the same amount of resources.
that's your opinion and your entitled to that but i dont have to agree with it. anyway i dont wanna steer this off subject any longer.

kjamc1982

6th March 2011, 03:36 AM

I just recently install F15 and I like what is going on with Gnome 3. It is a radical change in my opinion from Gnome 2. I do think it is easier to use if you are more keyboard centric person. I like how I can press the 'Super' key and type in the program I want to open. The only thing that is bad is mutter is crashing from time to time. However, it is quickly back up and running again. I am running this on my Dell Inspiron 1545 with no real problems. Might have to stay with Fedora.

jonathan47

6th March 2011, 04:51 PM

I'd vote for Fedora including a Gnome 2 alternative to Gnome 3. Or I can see a Fedora spin based on Gnome 2 getting a lot of takers.

PsychoTrauma

7th March 2011, 03:25 AM

I'd vote for Fedora including a Gnome 2 alternative to Gnome 3. Or I can see a Fedora spin based on Gnome 2 getting a lot of takers.

I know I would be a fan of that. I played around with gnome 3 and I can't stand it what so ever in its current state. I like my gnome the way it is and I do not think they should reinvent the wheel. I use arch linux on a few of my boxes and I will just fully switch if fedora doesn't give me the option of which version of gnome to use.

tox

7th March 2011, 03:35 AM

sorry to say this but, as i have said before an i will say it for the final last time, Gnome2.0 wasnt very nice when it came out, how long did it take to get better? the same thing will happen with Gnome3. even KDE4 still has some KDE3.5.x in it

DCOH

7th March 2011, 05:25 AM

Detox from what I've seen running F15 with Gnome3 you can use it and the rest of us will use something else. So enjoy using it.

SwampKracker

7th March 2011, 05:34 AM

Fear not, Detox. I will brave the waters of Gnome 3 with you. We do not need to follow the masses. There will be a day when the masses will be following us. :cool:

tox

7th March 2011, 07:48 AM

Detox from what I've seen running F15 with Gnome3 you can use it and the rest of us will use something else. So enjoy using it.

im not gonna sit here an force you to use Gnome3, i dont care what you use but people forget Gnome2.0 wasnt the best looking release either. when SL6 is end of life, what will you users do? run to Ubuntu Unity? or come back to Microsoft windows

AndrewSerk

7th March 2011, 03:52 PM

when SL6 is end of life, what will you users do?

Hopefully by then gnome 3 will be more "usable" for everyday use. I am sure gnome 3 will end up being a great DM in time. I expect that by the time REHL 7 is released gnome 3 will be a widely used, matured DM.

ovadyah

7th March 2011, 09:07 PM

I really like f15 with gnome 3, at least on my machine that has ati graphics. :cool:

I don't like any of F15 on my fx5200 nvidia - for the moment - no install works well enough to use since the weekend updates. :Y
Will wait on the fixes to come down for that. Just had to go back to F14. :rolleyes:

Dan

8th March 2011, 07:44 PM

Well ... Just tried the i686 version in a couple of laptops. The first, an HP Pavilion ze5170 (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpost.php?p=680947&postcount=6) which wouldn't even boot the LiveCD.

The second was an HP Pavilion dv4217cl (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpost.php?p=680969&postcount=9) series which booted about as well as I expected. It really is a fairly bulletproof little laptop. Results as follows:

For the first time in a Linux distro, the wireless on/off light actually functions! This was a pleasant surprise.

Gnome3 Gnome Shell loaded in full mode (Intel Graphics card) ... and still pretty much sucks.

Nautilus crashed the first time I closed a file manager window.

Assesment: It was really neat to see that wireless light. However, the plain truth is, beauty may be only skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone. I had the distinct displeasure of working on a ten year old laptop loaded with Windows XP Home® SP-1 this morning, and as much as I hate to admit it, I found the dinosaur Redmond GUI far more user friendly and configurable than Gnome3.

Not good, folks. Not good.

Dr.Diesel

8th March 2011, 11:32 PM

Assesment: It was really neat to see that wireless light. However, the plain truth is, beauty may be only skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone. I had the distinct displeasure of working on a ten year old laptop loaded with Windows XP Home® SP-1 this morning, and as much as I hate to admit it, I found the dinosaur Redmond GUI far more user friendly and configurable than Gnome3.

Not good, folks. Not good.

Very well put, I feel like a trader but must agree.

glennzo

9th March 2011, 12:59 AM

After 5 minutes of using Fedora 15 Alpha my impression is wow! This impression will be subject to change if I so desire. However, Gnome 3 aside, the installation on my 4 year old Core 2 Duo Toshiba laptop was extremely painless and flawless.

tdockery97

9th March 2011, 03:35 AM

First time Fedora user here, and first experience with Gnome 3. I have always used Debian based distros (Linux Mint in particular), so this is really a new frontier for me. I have to say I am pleased that the installation of Fedora 15 Alpha 1 went quickly and without a hitch. So far I have spent about 5 hours with Gnome 3, and for someone like myself who does not use their computer for work, it is an interesting interface.

As far as the F15 Alpha1 is concerned, I initially had a few minor crashes, but once I applied the 261 updates it settled down a bit. I managed to get everything I use daily installed after doing a little research. This included necessary codecs, flash, Google Earth, XChat, and so on. Google Earth gave me a little trouble, but I was able to track down the needed dependencies just fine.

Regarding Gnome 3 itself, I think it is mostly a matter of getting used to the interface. After a while I was able to quickly move from one thing to another, open several things at once and move between them fairly quickly, and using it has actually been kind of fun. I'll have to see how it goes as time goes by.

An additional note on my laptop specs: HPG61 laptop, Sempron M100 processor, 2GHZ, 3GB DDR2 RAM. Gnome 3 is running very smooth.

SwampKracker

9th March 2011, 03:43 AM

Regarding Gnome 3 itself, I think it is mostly a matter of getting used to the interface. After a while I was able to quickly move from one thing to another, open several things at once and move between them fairly quickly, and using it has actually been kind of fun. I'll have to see how it goes as time goes by.

Psst....here's the $100 I promised you. Good job. ;)

OK. Now, before anyone goes off the deep end, I was just kidding.

bob

9th March 2011, 12:25 PM

Tdockery97, by your specs I should not have issues with Gnome3 failing. Think I'll give it another try once we get closer to Final, however I'm currently working in KDE to see if I can live with this option.

glennzo

9th March 2011, 01:37 PM

A few posts back I said "wow!" and that "wow!" was subject to change. Now I've experienced the same thing as Dan. Gnome 3 Shell worked (Intel Graphics) but Nautilus crashed. Did a round of updates after getting past some dependency issues. Now I can't log in upon reboot. Wireless worked (has since Fedora 7) but this time I was able to easily set up and use wireless during the installation.

So, since I wasn't able to log in I booted to runlevel 3 and was able to log in as "glenn" and then startx. That worked but I was relegated to "fallback mode".

Once Gnome shell is "perfected" I think it will be a nice change, even if I am happy with the current Gnome and even if I did state that "it reminds me of Ubuntu". The biggest problem with the shell is that it's different and we all resist change.

tdockery97

9th March 2011, 04:50 PM

Once Gnome shell is "perfected" I think it will be a nice change, even if I am happy with the current Gnome and even if I did state that "it reminds me of Ubuntu". The biggest problem with the shell is that it's different and we all resist change.
That's true. I admit to being guilty of resistance to change. But as the Borg say, "resistance is futile"

AndrewSerk

9th March 2011, 06:00 PM

I decided to put F15 to metal (I have been using F15 in a VM) last night. Wow what a difference between the VM and metal install. F15 on the metal install boots straight to gnome shell without issue. I used the shell about a year ago, so not something completely new to me.
I continued to use the shell, found my way around to the things I needed and decided to update the sys. I update (with a little dependency fanagling ) > reboot and my user passwd fails at the gui login. No big deal, I thought maybe I made a mistake so open a VT and reset the user passwd = still a no go. I thought humm, I'll set it to boot to runlevel 3, so from a VT I install nano and go to edit inittab. :doh: inittab is no longer used, but has instructions in it for the new way of creating a ln. I tried to create the ln to runlevel 3 but get a error returned. No big deal, I thought, I will just put a 3 at the end of the kernel line. I edit grub.conf and put a 3 at the end of the kernel line and reboot but it reboots to runlevel 5. :doh: Back to the VT and issue init 3 , No go, telinit 3, No go, init 1 takes me to single user mode.

I am sure most of this is probably my fault, having not read the systemd man pages yet.

I have been using Fedora since FC6 and have no plans to leave. I'll read the appropriate man pages/docs and give it a try again tonight.:rolleyes:

EDIT: I solved the login issue. Info here: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpost.php?p=1450143&postcount=15

tuxor

9th March 2011, 07:22 PM

Since I can't stand the new functions of the gnome-shell, I'm using the forced fallback option. But this doesn't bring back the old Gnome 2.32-experience:
- when right clicking on panels context menus do not appear
- desktop doesn't work: the "Desktop" folder seems to be useless now and I'm missing useful desktop shortcuts
- no gnome-appearance-properties to change theme and icon theme

would be great, if somebody could provide a solution :)

tdockery97

9th March 2011, 08:22 PM

My understanding is that the Gnome desktop emulation (the "fallback" mode) is just as resistant to configuration as the Gnome Shell. I'm actually beginning to feel comfortable with the differences in the Gnome Shell. I really like some of the features, such as moving the cursor to the upper left "hot spot" and it brings up actual images of your minimized windows. Nice touch. I've not had any crashes for a good while now. The only real nagging irritant now is that you cannot select reboot/restart from inside the Shell. The only way to reboot from inside is to open Terminal and issue a cli command to reboot. For GUI you have to log out, then on the login screen in the upper right corner is the shutdown button that gives you an option to restart.

The big mystery to me is that the Shell works great on my HP laptop with ATI Radeon HD4200 graphics (pretty low-end), and so many others are having difficulties with it. If that cannot be fixed, Gnome 3 is liable to be a big fail, as many people use Linux because it can easily be run on lower spec systems.

Fenrin

9th March 2011, 08:24 PM

I installed F15 alpha via USB stick. It didn't work via "liveusb-creator --reset-mbr", but worked then via livecd ("git clone git://fedorahosted.org/livecd" and then "./livecd/tools/livecd-iso-to-disk.sh --format --reset-mbr /path/to/ISO /dev/USBpartitionname").

I used the gnome shell as long as I was able too, but login in via GDM didn't work after the third reboot (GDM appeared but after entering the right password it looped back to the login) and when I logged into gnome-session via console it said that my environment is not able of all gnome functions, so I have to use the forced fallback option.
I would prefer the gnome shell over the old menu style. In the few hours I used it, I got accustomed to it and liked it after a while.

Other issues: suspend didn't work, unable to change language, sound worked a while but stopped working. System specs: Radeon HD 3200, AMD780G+SB710 chipset, soundcard: Asus Xonar D1.

Edit: If I want to remove pulseaudio, I would have to remove gnome-panel and gnome-shell too. I don't like that :(
In Fedora 14 pulseaudio depends on much less.

Edit2: gnome shell+gdm login+sound works again and language change works too

tuxor

9th March 2011, 08:55 PM

But I have those 6 or 7 applications I use extremely often. And in gnome-shell there doesn't seem to be an option to reach shortcuts to those applications as easily as those starter-shortcuts in the good-old gnome panel.
Furthermore I miss the notification bar. When moving the mouse pointer to the top left, I get a notification area in the bottom right. But the icons there don't seem to work properly and since they are not always present, this doesn't seem to fulfill the requirements of a proper "notification" area.

bbfuller

9th March 2011, 09:21 PM

Just to prevent this becoming a Gnome only thread, I've just installed F15 on my Samsung NC10 netbook from the KDE LIVE CD and this post is from it..

Apart from two small and one larger problem most seems very polished so far.

Problems encountered are that panel autohide wouldn't work until all the updates were applied.

The touchpad was not able to be configured from the KDE Control Centre. Changes made in the touchpad module weren't written to the configuration file. That didn't alter after the updates. Just fine after a manual edit though.

Desktop effects won't work at the moment, though they do in F14. Installation complains about system being too slow. Probably sort itself out when debugging code is removed.

This time round, even the screen brightness works from the keyboard!

A pretty creditable effort for a alpha I thought.

edhplus2

9th March 2011, 10:17 PM

Thank you to all for the reviews, information and opinions. The Live CD, Fedora 15, would not boot up on my HP Pavilion dv6809 Laptop, which is about 2 years old. It froze as the Fedora logo finished displaying.
From what I am reading about the Gnome desktop, I will not be in any hurry to install it: no desktop functionality, difficult to find the reboot option, panel icons gone, minimize/maximize buttons gone, and I assume keyboard shortcuts like Alt-F2 gone.
It sounded pretty though, and I was willing to give it a try, at least on a Live CD.
About a week ago I switched to LInux Mint Debian Edition to escape Unity/Ubuntu, and I set the repositories to "squeeze" (stable), so I will wait out the various storms there.

bruce89

10th March 2011, 03:25 AM

I find it odd how people dismiss all change as evil, without questioning whether the old functionality was in fact required. How often have we heard of instances of uproars over every single change? Pidgin's auto resizing, removal of icons from buttons and menus, nautilus changing from and to browser mode. The fuss about gnome-shell is nothing new.

But I have those 6 or 7 applications I use extremely often. And in gnome-shell there doesn't seem to be an option to reach shortcuts to those applications as easily as those starter-shortcuts in the good-old gnome panel.

That's what the "dash" on the left hand side of the overlay is for.

Furthermore I miss the notification bar. When moving the mouse pointer to the top left, I get a notification area in the bottom right. But the icons there don't seem to work properly and since they are not always present, this doesn't seem to fulfill the requirements of a proper "notification" area.

The notification area is in the bottom right, move the pointer to that corner.

[rant...]and I assume keyboard shortcuts like Alt-F2 gone.
You assume incorrectly.

kurtdriver

10th March 2011, 06:47 AM

I find it odd how people dismiss all change as evil,

Who wrote all? It can't go on laptops, as it has no pointer capture applet. I'm using that now in F14 on a laptop. Without it my pointer would bounce all over the place.

I've got it on a desktop computer and I can tell you I must click more often that I do in F14, mostly due to the lack of applets on the panel.

Isn't the search thing supposed to be how you access files and programs? It just takes me to google in firefox. No added utility there, I can open Firefox by clicking on the applet (one click) and typing into the browser's google searchbox.

At the end of the day, it either makes things easier than Gnome2, or it doesn't.

edhplus2

10th March 2011, 01:55 PM

@bruce89
Thank you for correcting my assumption about the keyboard shortcuts in Gnome 3. I hadn't seen a review that covered them specifically and, as mentioned, couldn't run it here. I didn't mean to sound like a rant -- I was more upset that it wouldn't run.
If I can get the final release Live CD to boot up I will give it a fair chance. It is hard to tell what it is like from other people's experiences.
As for change, I just got into the habit of using panels and using the desktop as a work area when I switched to Linux about 1 1/2 yrs ago. I never used them in Windows, 3.1 through Vista, and there weren't any in Dos or on the Commodore 64.

tuxor

10th March 2011, 03:31 PM

That's what the "dash" on the left hand side of the overlay is for.

Unfortunately, it's not as simple to reach this "dash" as it was to reach a starter in the panel... And it's not possible to place favorite folders in the "dash"

bruce89

10th March 2011, 07:25 PM

Isn't the search thing supposed to be how you access files and programs? It just takes me to google in firefox. No added utility there, I can open Firefox by clicking on the applet (one click) and typing into the browser's google searchbox.

At the end of the day, it either makes things easier than Gnome2, or it doesn't.

Interestingly, gnome-shell has google and wikip(a)edia search integrated into the search interface. I suspect others could be added at a later date (it uses OpenSearch).

@bruce89
Thank you for correcting my assumption about the keyboard shortcuts in Gnome 3. I hadn't seen a review that covered them specifically and, as mentioned, couldn't run it here. I didn't mean to sound like a rant -- I was more upset that it wouldn't run.

I'm sorry I ranted at you, that wasn't fair of me.

Unfortunately, it's not as simple to reach this "dash" as it was to reach a starter in the panel... And it's not possible to place favorite folders in the "dash"

Yes, something I'd like to see would be an option to have the dash on the normal screen at all times. However, that would look a bit too much like OS X for my liking. Perhaps an extension could do this?

dragonbite

10th March 2011, 08:11 PM

As mentioned in the other thread, my hardware (ASUS K8V-MX mobo, AMD Sempron 2600; 2 gig Ram, Nvidia GeForce 6200 , twin 80 gig HD's) apparently doesn't come up to F15's demands and I'm now booting to nothing but the wallpaper and a stall at "starting Display Manager". Might give it another try when we get closer to Final, but I'm seriously thinking of KDE (shudder) or a lighter DM.

I've been running KDE 4.5 on Fedora 13 for a while now, and it runs pretty nicely. Out of the big-3 (Fedora, Ubuntu and openSUSE) it is the only distro that handles desktop effects with my Intel graphics. The others (Ubuntu 10.10 and openSUSE 11.4) will "work" but not with any desktop effects turned on.

I may have to try installing openSUSE 11.4 and hope there's an update of some type, but since it just came out ... uh... a few hours ago I am not very hopeful.

Fedora 13 is running well on my 1.6 GHz Pentium M w/1GB of Ram, Intel i855 graphic video, Broadcom wireless detected out-of-the-box (openFWWF?).

I'm afraid to move to Fedora 14/15 because 13 works just fine and I don't want to mess with that.

i cant see that happening, Redhat has been a Gnome Centric distro for a long as Redhat6 hedwig http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=redhat . i dunno what the Default was prior to that, plus redhat sponsors Gnome so does or did Novel

Novell does do some sponsoring of Gnome, but otherwise SUSE/openSUSE is more of a KDE distro though they are very open to Gnome.

From what I've seen, people looking to move off of Gnome and KDE, but want to keep a lot of the original look & feel go to:

Gnome => Xfce
KDE => LXDE

Of course there is always the (Ubuntu) Unity option. The advantage of that is Unity has a 2D version as well, which was all I could get running on my laptop (see mention above about how Fedora is the only one able to provide desktop effects).

I am curious what Red Hat does about Gnome 3. It is such a drastic change.

tuxor

10th March 2011, 08:58 PM

Yes, something I'd like to see would be an option to have the dash on the normal screen at all times. However, that would look a bit too much like OS X for my liking. Perhaps an extension could do this?
This would use way too much space on the screen. The dashboard is too big. The starter icons should be sensibly placed in the upper panel.

By the way, what is intolerable at the moment, is the following:
First, I have to admit, that Fedora 15 boots really fast. I used to have Fedora 13 and booting time was okay there. But Lovelock is nearly twice as fast. The problem now is, that this advantage in speed is completely compensated by the fact, that it takes extremely(!) long, until the gnome-shell started after login. Sometimes more than 40 seconds (!!).

dragonbite

10th March 2011, 09:01 PM

By the way, what is intolerable at the moment, is the following:
Fedora 15 boots really fast. I used to have Fedora 13 and booting time was okay there. But Lovelock is nearly twice as fast. The problem now is, that this advantage in speed is completely compensated by the fact, that it takes extremely(!) long, until the gnome-shell started after login. Sometimes more than 40 seconds (!!).

Hmm... makes me wonder how fast KDE would boot, and if 15 would be significantly faster than 13 is... how long until 15 is released :D

Dr.Diesel

10th March 2011, 09:54 PM

First, I have to admit, that Fedora 15 boots really fast. I used to have Fedora 13 and booting time was okay there. But Lovelock is nearly twice as fast. The problem now is, that this advantage in speed is completely compensated by the fact, that it takes extremely(!) long, until the gnome-shell started after login. Sometimes more than 40 seconds (!!).

BTW, this delay is now fixed.

tuxor

10th March 2011, 10:50 PM

BTW, this delay is now fixed.
imho, I'm fully updated, look at this:
[me@fedora ~]$ sudo yum check-update
Geladene Plugins: langpacks, presto, refresh-packagekit
gdm.x86_64 1:2.91.93-2.fc15 updates-testing
gdm-plugin-fingerprint.x86_64 1:2.91.93-2.fc15 updates-testing
xorg-x11-server-Xorg.x86_64 1.10.0-2.fc15 updates-testing
(the three listed updates are broken)
and the delay still persists for me.

By the way, I can't log out from a gnome-session any more: "Command not found: gnome-session-save"

bruce89

10th March 2011, 11:45 PM

This would use way too much space on the screen. The dashboard is too big. The starter icons should be sensibly placed in the upper panel.

Yes, I don't think I'd personally want it, certainly not visible all the time. Maybe it could appear if you move the cursor to the left hand side of the screen.

BTW, this delay is now fixed.

Yes, it doesn't start now here!

tdockery97

11th March 2011, 05:05 AM

Well, I've backed off of Fedora 15 for the time being. After a few days of using the Gnome Shell, I decided I'd rather go with KDE. In order to stay with Fedora (I am way more impressed than I expected), I've installed Fedora 14 KDE. It is absolutely rock solid and runs beautifully. As soon as Fedora 15 final is released I'll upgrade to that. I will definitely continue using Fedora. I'll keep track of this thread so I can follow the progress up to final release.;)

Wayne

11th March 2011, 05:47 AM

After using KDE 4.6 for a while I don't think I could ever go back to Gnome :C

Tried a couple of Gnome distros on my test machine and it seemed so lacking.

tox

11th March 2011, 07:18 AM

After using KDE 4.6 for a while I don't think I could ever go back to Gnome :C

Tried a couple of Gnome distros on my test machine and it seemed so lacking.
i have tried to like KDE but it just feels to bloated, i do not like KOpete its rubbish IMO, i know you can use pidgin but IMO doesnt work the same in KDE than it does in Gnome i'd prefer e17 than KDE

tuxor

11th March 2011, 08:58 AM

Today in the morning I successfully applied all available updates (including xorg* and gdm*) but still have a 40 seconds delay until gnome-shell starts after login...

SwampKracker

11th March 2011, 09:03 AM

Today in the morning I successfully applied all available updates (including xorg* and gdm*) but still have a 40 seconds delay until gnome-shell starts after login...

Unless you login many times per day, a 40 second delay seems to be a minor annoyance.

tuxor

11th March 2011, 09:37 AM

To do some tests, I'm rebooting quite often at the moment. So 40 seconds ARE annoying. And I don't know why I should accept such a senseless delay...
Btw, another issue is, that the userlist sometimes doesn't list my user name, so that I have to chose "others" and type in my user name manually.

katastrophal

11th March 2011, 10:43 AM

Btw, another issue is, that the userlist sometimes doesn't list my user name, so that I have to chose "others" and type in my user name manually.

as far as I know, that's a known bug. After last night's updates, gdm works here... sometimes...

dragonbite

11th March 2011, 01:46 PM

quackers

11th March 2011, 06:50 PM

Btw, another issue is, that the userlist sometimes doesn't list my user name, so that I have to chose "others" and type in my user name manually.

I'm seeing this too since I updated accountsservice and gdm. Not a major problem.

arowana

12th March 2011, 01:37 AM

i have tried to like KDE but it just feels to bloated, i do not like KOpete its rubbish IMO, i know you can use pidgin but IMO doesnt work the same in KDE than it does in Gnome i'd prefer e17 than KDE

Was using KDE F14 for two weeks just to see if it could replace gnome for me and felt the same. Went back to Gnome 2.

As F15 is still under development, here is my solution for an awesome F15 desktop experience:
1. Just hand over the whole KDE desktop to the current gnome 3 design team. They would make an outstanding job to remove "distraction" there.
2. Make sure to take it away before they finished their work, to have a chance there is still something left to click on.

tdockery97

12th March 2011, 03:33 AM

Now this is just one old fogey's opinion, so don't get mad. In my opinion Gnome 3 is a fun toy to use as a playtime/hobby desktop environment. But in all honesty I cannot for the life of me picture RHEL using Gnome 3 Shell on tens of thousands of workstations. I mean, how productive could you be using Gnome Shell in an office environment? I'm afraid RHEL may be jumping into a scary support situation. And soon it will have progressed beyond the point of no return. So if Gnome 3 fails, what does that leave to provide to all the paying customers out there?

tox

12th March 2011, 03:40 AM

AndrewSerk

12th March 2011, 05:40 AM

Well, I am starting to warm up to F15.
If you consider that Fedora is a test-bed for a enterprise distro that just had a major release and F15 is still in Alpha, I would say it is looking pretty good. F15-Alpha is the best running F-Alpha in the past few years that I can remember. With all the changes for F15 and the Alpha working as well as it does, I think that says a lot about the effort that went into F15.

I'm not ready to use it for everyday, but pretty impressive for a Alpha release.

quackers

12th March 2011, 05:44 AM

I like it too :-) It's modern looking and when it reaches full functionality it's what I'll be using full time. I've been using Unity for a while and I like that, but I find myself preferring Gnome3/Gnome Shell.

kurtdriver

12th March 2011, 06:34 AM

I have to say , F15 is fast. I'm getting to know it a touch, and while it continues to lack the usefulness of Gnome 2, it does work, even if it does make you do many things the hard way.

arowana

12th March 2011, 08:38 AM

by the time RHEL7 comes out im pretty sure Gnome3 will be pretty much complete as in user friendly and easy to work with.

But what about customers with older hardware that does not meet Gnome3s system requirements? Will they pay to use fallback mode?

RahulSundaram

12th March 2011, 01:43 PM

Hi

I don't think anyone else have to worry about that. Red Hat customers don't typically upgrade RHEL within the same hardware. They sync their hardware refresh cycles to their software refresh cycles. Remember that RHEL is supported for 7 to 10 years and there is no reason to rush to upgrade. It is a very conservative and slow process.

dragonbite

12th March 2011, 03:18 PM

I know Fedora has it, but does RHEL ever use KDE?

jpollard

12th March 2011, 03:24 PM

Sure.

It depends on whether it is installed or not, and whether the user prefers it.

That said, RHEL is designed to be a server system, not a desktop, though it can function as one.

smr54

12th March 2011, 03:49 PM

If I understand the question, yes, it's available during installation.

As jpollard says, RH is, in theory, designed to be a server system, despite deprecating or crippling various text or curses mode programs in favor of the GUI.

IIRC, KDE, Gnome, and twm are the only ones available by default, though one can install fluxbox, openbox, or other window managers made available by 3rd parties, such as rpmforge.

buckyb

12th March 2011, 05:56 PM

Without compiz, flash videos play in the background behind my browser when I go into fullscreen. I have to minimize the browser to view the video. Oddly enough, youtube videos don't have that problem, it's only videos from other websites. Does anyone know how the problem can be fixed in F15 without compiz?

tox

13th March 2011, 12:05 AM

well i had to remove Gnome3 unfortunately as it was a bit crashy . one package crashed on me gnome-settings-deamon , so im on KDE and rather like it. , maybe when Beta comes out i'll reinstall then

DokterW

13th March 2011, 01:26 AM

Tried Fedora 15 Alpha LiveCD for just a few minutes on my 1000H Eee PC this other day. I like the new UI. It is very different, but it is nice and minimalistic. Unfortunately GNOME 3 didn't work that well on my 701 Eee PC. I haven't looked into why, but I can only assume that it's because of system requirements.

I don't expect everyone to like GNOME 3, but this is the beauty with Linux and open source. If you don't like the direction the new version is heading, get the source and fork it. Like they did with OpenOffice, creating the fork LibreOffice.

jonathan47

13th March 2011, 01:42 AM

As a Fedora fan, I looked forward to F15 -- especially the new, faster kernel -- until I tried Gnome 3. Its user interface is a jarring and unsatisfactory change. Maybe it's pretty to some. But after clicking "Activities". too many unneeded times to gain entry into more options to get ordinary things done, it became clear Gnome 3 is not for me. Specifically, the lack of any meaningful panel, dock, etc on the desktop is a non-starter for me.

I'm not against change. I'm trying LXDE, KDE, and XFCE. They provide efficient ways to get work done. I'd choose any of them over Gnome 3.

I'd prefer that F15 offer Gnome 2 as an alternative. I understand that Ubuntu, despite pushing Unity on its users, is making Gnome 2 as an alternative in its Alpha.

I prefer to stay with Fedora due to its outstanding developers, innovation, and community. So I'll give Gnome 3 credit for one important change: it has inspired me to try the Fedora Spins.

RahulSundaram

13th March 2011, 05:21 AM

Hi

Ubuntu is providing the GNOME Panel + Metacity as a fallback option and that's the case with Fedora 15 as well. It is not GNOME 2.x however.

glennzo

13th March 2011, 03:56 PM

I've had several days to play with Fedora 15 / Gnome 3 and am starting to warm up to it. Now that there's been a few updates things are starting to come around. There are a few things that I'm not thrilled with.

* Firefox 4 seems much faster than any 3x version but where's the minimize button?

* There is no bottom taskbar. I used that constantly to switch between apps but now it appears that I need to click on "Activities" in the top panel to switch apps?
Activities? Heh! Sounds like something we use to keep 3 year olds content.

* On my desktop box with NVidia graphics I can only use "fallback mode". !!!!????!!! Shame.

That's all for now. We're getting there. I'm sure everything will be OK in the end.

ovadyah

13th March 2011, 04:31 PM

* Firefox 4 seems much faster than any 3x version but where's the minimize button?

* There is no bottom taskbar. I used that constantly to switch between apps but now it appears that I need to click on "Activities" in the top panel to switch apps?
Activities? Heh! Sounds like something we use to keep 3 year olds content.

* On my desktop box with NVidia graphics I can only use "fallback mode". !!!!????!!! Shame.

I too am finding Gn3 better the more I use it. It works really well on my ati box, but I am really having problems on this Nvidia box, it keeps going to black - a second or so, then back to normal?

I found that right clicking up by the button to close firefox one can mimimize and all sorts of things, there are short cuts listed as well.

The other point is that you do not have to click on activities if you push the cursor up to touch the screen corner by Activities you get a new view of all running windows....etc

Fenrin

13th March 2011, 04:48 PM

An alternative to switch between applications is alt+tab.

About the missing control buttons is here (http://www.mail-archive.com/gnome-shell-list@gnome.org/msg02527.html)something to read. Haha they removed it because a few people don't use it and designers don't want them :doh:

RahulSundaram

13th March 2011, 04:57 PM

Hi

Recommend going through

https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Tour
https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet

glennzo

13th March 2011, 06:42 PM

Hi

Recommend going through

https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Tour
https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet

Thanks Rahul. I'll have a look see. Bet I'll learn a thing or two. Matter of fact, I'll bookmark the pages.

Dan

27th March 2011, 06:37 PM

Now, This is a pleasant surprise!

Even though I like Gnome3 about as much as a hen likes sharp cornered eggs, I gave it a bare metal install in a back-up HDD in my business laptop. It cost me my Elive, F7 and Debian Etch installs, only two of which were intentional. I had wanted to keep the Debian partition in dual boot configuration.

Dang! Anaconda strikes again. The partition is still there, but it won't boot any more. Ah, well. At least the data is intact ... I think. What more could a guy ask for? <..:rolleyes:..>

First up, a bare metal install of Gnome3 is still an ugly stepchild, but not as stunningly useless on the HDD as on the LiveCD. After updates, some things are working better. It still strikes me as being the GUI equivalent of the double action automatic pistol. A damn fine solution ... to a non-existent problem.

All that being said, the laptop I poured this toxic mess into was an HP Pavilion dv4217cl laptop (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpost.php?p=680969&postcount=9). It's a 32 bit machine that also included a itty-bitty remote control stuck into the side of it for Windows® multimedia use. Now ... as a whole, that concept never quite made a lot of sense to me. It's a 15" diag. screen, with two teeny-weeny Altec Lansing excuses for speakers built in. Not exactly something I'm going to get far enough away from that I'd need a remote control.

Therefore, I've only half heartedly attempted to use the dang thing a half dozen time since I got the laptop, and in each case, it failed to do anything in Linux. So I stabbed it back into it's slot and forgot about it. Until this morning. On a lark, I ejected the thing from it's cave, and fiddled with it more out of boredom than anything else.

Whoops! No sooner did I poke the [POWER] button on the remote, than F15 promptly shut itself down in business-like fashion, and powered off the laptop.

WTH?!?

Reboot: Experiment time!

Volume up - check.
Volume down - check
Mute - check
Movie player - check
CD/music player - check

Well, I'll be a jiggered ... whudda ya know! It actually WORKS!

<..:eek:..>

<..:)..>

If we can ever get this Gnome3 thing squared away ... F15's gonna walk the dawg!

Ulli

27th March 2011, 09:39 PM

F15? Well, I can't get it to boot from USB, and preupgrade failed, but after pulling my system up to F15 with yum, it's running pretty much great! (And no complaints - with an alpha, you have to know what you're getting into!)

Except for the boot, which I hope will become a bit faster once the non-debugging kernels ship, I'm amazed how fast the system is.

And Gnome3? AWESOME! When I tried gnome-shell on F14, I was completely underwhelmed, and first gtk3-sightings didn't appeal to me at all, but now I'm really pleasantly surprised. As someone who's tried almost every modern window manager and desktop system there is out there (whatever that's worth), let my say: Gnome3 rules!

I think it'll take a year or so until it matures enough for "ordinary users" to use+love, but I already dig it as it is. (and compared to how long it took Windows NT to become good: til 2009, or Mac OS X: til 2004, or KDE: I still don't like the UI, but I'd say starting with 4.5 you could call it good, Gnome3 is coming along great and is already usable).

Dan

28th March 2011, 12:12 AM

Update:

On the bright side, I did recover my Debian partition. Just your normal everyday Anaconda Grub-flub.

megaloman

28th March 2011, 12:56 AM

My personal $0.02:

I don't hate Gnome 3, I was really looking forward to it. Though I am somehow disappointed. I've installed Fedora 15 Alpha on my spare laptop and I am trying to use it. My previous desired experience was Gnome 2.x + tailored compiz to my needs. Gnome 3.x unfortunately falls way behind my expectations.

* on dated dual core laptop with intel graphics Gnome 3.x is not as sleek as compiz was - while I would expect an improvement, as G3 has less fancy effects
* top bar - for me, without applets it's a waste of space - what I need it for are applets - I used to have there hamster, temperature, system monitor, weather, dropbox, etc... - I do understand the point of “visual identity”, but I don't get it why applets were banned in G3.
* Applications & Places & System - thanks to them I had an easy and quick access to my applications, folders and system settings - in G3 I am spending way too much time on looking for my app
* Gnome-do was super fast (with docky) way of accessing my open applications - new activities overview is fine, but yet I need to click two times to switch my app, while with docky I could just click once
* usb drives are not shown on the desktop, nothing shows up on the desktop - some people don't like messy desktops, some do, some people like their desktop full of app launchers - Gnome 3 doesn't give any choice
* usability wise - everything takes longer to achieve - opening a folder, running an app
* wow factor - at first it looks nice, then you find out it's very limited, in fact it has just little wow factor
* usability wise - it's not customizable at all - at the moment it does not even respect font hinting settings

In my humble opinion, Gnome 3 is a very interesting concept, yet not ready to go in to production. Usability wise it may be good for newbies, but for power-users it's going to be difficult. I can't see myself working on Gnome 3 - I have tried it and it's painful. Gnome shell should be delivered as an option, not as a default.

Unfortunately Scientific linux is looking very good and I might be switching to it, when Fedora 14 reaches it's retirement age.

Dan

28th March 2011, 01:08 AM

... (snip) ... Unfortunately Scientific linux is looking very good and I might be switching to it, when Fedora 14 reaches it's retirement age.Once again, just because a particular fedora release hits EOL, doesn't mean it automatically breaks. I still had a very nice and very functional FC6 system in daily use when F10 was mid-way through its lifecycle.

That being said, I must agree with several other points you raised. See these threads for more on Gnome3, and the reaction of power/production users.

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=259779
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=259442

Wayne

28th March 2011, 01:15 AM

Yes, if I wanted a "toy like" interface I'd buy a Mac.... Oh, I already did! :p

Dan

28th March 2011, 04:46 AM

Well, I'll be dipped in luke warm ... gook.

Suspend also works trouble free!

It's gettin' better!

kraekan

28th March 2011, 05:15 AM

I'm quite enjoying using gnome-shell having stuck with it for a while now. At first, like a lot of others, I was taken aback by the changes but it kept me coming back which doesn't happen when I try anything but fedora and gnome 2. Still a lot of room for improvement but I don't want to go back to gnome 2 any more.

Couple of things I'd like to see is a Places overview along with the Windows and Applications overviews. i find my self typing home to bring up Nautilus and would like an overview on the desktop to go to sub folders and media folders. It could have a home folder category, media category and a system category perhaps.

The other is I'd like the Applications view to remember the last category selected like it did originally. All apps at once is a bit much though I've seen an article how to reduce the size of the icons back to smaller setting originally used in the alpha release.

Other than that I'm happy with it now.

Someone mentioned the date I think. I found a tweak for it.

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.clock show-date true

DBelton

28th March 2011, 05:32 AM

thanks a bunch, kraekan! It was me that was wondering how to put the date up there.

That looks much better now :)

kraekan

28th March 2011, 05:36 AM

thanks a bunch, kraekan! It was me that was wondering how to put the date up there.

That looks much better now :)

No worries. It annoyed the hell out of me so I went looking for a fix.

Dan

28th March 2011, 05:42 AM

Thanks from me too!

DBelton

28th March 2011, 05:44 AM

I was getting around to looking more into totally changing gnome before too long, but have been too busy the past few days digging into systemd and spent the entire day today making and welding rails onto my trailer.

Gnome is my next victim, though! Mwaaahahahahaha! :p

Ulli

28th March 2011, 06:50 AM

@Megaloman: you don't have to click twice for anything. Just slide the mouse into the "hot corner" and then onto your app launcher of choice. Or even better, if you're a keyboard user: hit the Win key and let the other hand point the mouse to a launcher.

I like that Gnome3 keeps my screen large and clean (not cluttered with app launchers) and (like the good old (since XP) Windows start menu) gives me a large clicking area to click on my app launchers. Plus it combines with the Exposé-like effect. It's like the combination of the best features of all major Desktops around right now.

The only thing I miss are applets (including quick access to common folders or the desktop) and maybe minimized windows (yes, they still work, sort of).

megaloman

28th March 2011, 10:14 AM

@Megaloman: you don't have to click twice for anything. Just slide the mouse into the "hot corner" and then onto your app launcher of choice. Or even better, if you're a keyboard user: hit the Win key and let the other hand point the mouse to a launcher.

Yeah, I can move mouse pointer or hit the Super key, yet - it still takes time. Animation is slow and buggy (on intel powered laptop) and there is no way of using Super key as an accel for other actions - ie. I had Super+Space set up for Gnome-Do's Docky - unfortunately, I cannot use Gnome-Do thanks to Gnome3 :-( Gnome-Do was way faster in responding to super+space and my typing.

I like that Gnome3 keeps my screen large and clean (not cluttered with app launchers) and (like the good old (since XP) Windows start menu) gives me a large clicking area to click on my app launchers. Plus it combines with the Exposé-like effect. It's like the combination of the best features of all major Desktops around right now.

I do like my desktop clean, that's why I use gnome-do - from usability point I can keep on Docky my fav apps and have quick access to other apps. I do like menus either, as they kept all apps in groups, so I could easy find what I wanted, plus I had an easy access to my folders and bookmarks through Places - Gnome 3 makes it difficult to access my files, not to mention mounting and safely removing memory cards and usb drives. I don't like Exposé-like effect - I don't find it attractive in any way, it was available with compiz and was the very thing which I disabled, when installed compiz.

The only thing I miss are applets (including quick access to common folders or the desktop) and maybe minimized windows (yes, they still work, sort of).

I also miss the Wow factor, compiz has added to my desktop. Gnome 2.x was very good for day-2-day work, with compiz it's usability has massively improved (when tailored to your needs). I am trying Gnome 3 on my spare laptop since Fedora 15 Alpha came out and still cannot get used to it. It may be good for newbies or people who just need a browser and IM, but it's completely unusable for power users who expect more from their Desktop.

---------- Post added at 10:14 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:11 AM ----------

Once again, just because a particular fedora release hits EOL, doesn't mean it automatically breaks. I still had a very nice and very functional FC6 system in daily use when F10 was mid-way through its lifecycle.

That being said, I must agree with several other points you raised. See these threads for more on Gnome3, and the reaction of power/production users.

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=259779
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=259442

Thanks for the reading links.

Yeah, I know I can keep Fedora 14 on my desktop and I will probably do so, as Fedora 15 is a release to skip for me. I miss a couple of features related to colour management, which will included in Fedora 15, but not in Fedora 14. Hopefully Gnome devs will follow the same route, as pidgin ones - first denial, then wait, then do what your users want ;-)

troyatlarge

28th March 2011, 04:41 PM

I like Fedora 15 A thus, including Gnome3. It makes me sad seeing so many of the standard names around here putting down Gnome3, but I guess to each his own.

In the few days I've had F15A it has improved greatly - which is not a big shock given its Alpha state. People who come over are very impressed with the Gnome3 cell phone type thing going on to such an extent I seriously wonder just how big a hit with will be with the public - I'm expecting it will be very well received from what I've seen around here.

With respect to productivity, I find it hard to believe they will hang out to dry the productive folks - the features and usefulness have greatly improved just in the few days I've run it, and I have no reason to believe, at all, that such improvements will stop.

tox

28th March 2011, 10:58 PM

smr54

29th March 2011, 01:01 AM

My typical installation is to do a minimal, then add X, then add openbox, sometimes fluxbox.

However, the issues they're having with systemd at present make it take too long to boot or error out.

This is fine (not so sure if systemd will be fine--but I assume once the bugs are somewhat ironed out, I'll figure out how to list what's running and turn off what I have to), but at present, being pretty busy, no real time to play with it.

It's gone downhill a bit with the upgrades--at first, it was working quite well for me. Again, nothing that shouldn't be fixed soon--I note they're aware of the systemd issues on the testing list, and, as always, Rahul is trying to whip the documentation for it into shape.

I know that to the majority, gnome 3 is going to be the issue, but as I don't use it, it's going to be another of those big changes that just fly over my head. :)

When btrfs gets a bit more mature, that's something that will probably affect me more, because it's almost sounding as if it can replace LVM, though I haven't read/tried it enough to be sure of that, with somewhat simpler commands to resize. (Again, that's a really vague impression.)

My main concerns are what will make it into RH--for example, if/when systemd does, that will make my job a bit harder. One assumes that by the time it gets to RH, it will be working smoothly, but it will just be one of those things where I'll have to learn the syntax to list and shut off services. These are the things that affect my work. One assumes that it won't do things like it did recently, refuse to boot the system because logging didn't start, or that if it does continue to do things like that, RH wouldn't put it in their version. It doesn't really strike me as offering much that is of use to me, but let them have their fun, as long as it doesn't get in my way very much.

So, I'm sure by the time it gets out the door, it (F15), will be more workable. It does seem that QA has improved, probably largely thanks to Adam (and of course, others, but he's the one I see most often organizing tests on the testing list.), and one doesn't dread a new release the way one used to.

For you Gnome fans who hate Gnome 3, I reckon it's another story, but for me, it's basically irrelevant.

Dan

29th March 2011, 02:03 AM

... For you Gnome fans who hate Gnome 3, I reckon it's another story, but for me, it's basically irrelevant.
<..:Y..> -- Pbpbpbpbpbpbpbbp!

... I know that to the majority, gnome 3 is going to be the issue, but as I don't use it, it's going to be another of those big changes that just fly over my head. And may the big bluebird of paradise, carrying a sick Yak in it's talons, productively sneeze whilst it flies over your head!

<..:p..>

smr54

29th March 2011, 03:52 AM

I guess you're one of those who doesn't like it. :) (You might even remember, this thread was begun as an offshoot to your anti-Gnome 3 thread.).

However, all kidding aside, by doing my usual minimal install, using network rather than NM, and avoiding Gnome, I avoid around 85-90 percent of the problems I see on these forums. I run into my own, as I have to work around the defaults, and it gets harder all the time, but still, since pulseaudio started working without me having to do more than add myself to audio, it's been pretty straightforward.

Dan

29th March 2011, 04:11 AM

Wayne

29th March 2011, 04:17 AM

So, what impressions has F15 done so far? :p

tox

29th March 2011, 04:19 AM

H*ll, I can't remember my own name from one day to the next. You expect me to remember a week ago?!

All kidding aside here, I've been hanging in there and giving Gnome3 a decent trial, and I can see where it may prove popular in some circles, but if I had to lose Dan's F11 (many more thanks again to Dave) I can see the green, green grass of a MINTY fresh install in my future. After they switch over ... I dunno. Maybe by then Gnome3 will have learned some manners. Right now, after the last stunningly rash act of updating ... I can't even get it to boot to GUI.

so your having the same problem as me you cant get Gnome-shell;l to come up after the updates? im back in KDE but i'll give it some thought and i may head off to Debian6 , no way will i go near that Brown Unity riddled distro. ( wont even boot for me anyway ) i think Gnome3 has along way to go before it becomes usable

Wayne

29th March 2011, 04:22 AM

I'm going back to OS/2

Dan

29th March 2011, 04:40 AM

So, what impressions has F15 done so far? :pAfter the last update, it's doing a pretty good job of impersonating a mime in an inescapable make-believe box.

<..:rolleyes:..>

... i think Gnome3 has along way to go before it becomes usable. Kinda looking like it. But they've got a little while to iron the bugs out. We shall see.

tox

29th March 2011, 04:57 AM

After the last update, it's doing a pretty good job of impersonating a mime in an inescapable make-believe box.

<..:rolleyes:..>

Kinda looking like it. But they've got a little while to iron the bugs out. We shall see.

i think its also systemd thats at fault also. who knows what they'll decide to do by the final of F15, they may decide to pull it an go back to Upstart like they did in F14

fibster

29th March 2011, 05:10 AM

Glad for all the testers, I will stick with 14 for now to the final is out. I agree I would love to see Gnome 3 be really sharp, maybe it is just too much of a change for me.

troyatlarge

29th March 2011, 05:17 AM

Last set of updates loaded and did great on my computer ..... everything is looking and acting better daily - rock on Fedora 15!

If you hit the windows key, then, any typing you do will type into the search bar thereby getting you at least to your recently used documents fast, general with only one or two letters of the documents name typed in. If your really anti-mouse you can then get to it via the up and down arrow keys.

I do hope they will get a little faster access to ones home folder and the contents in there - I stuck the link in my "dash" (which seems more like a pipe than a dash, but whatever).

I was thinking it would be nice if arrow to the lower corner simply opened ones home folder - and then, to keep up the theme, it opened it with an active search bar so again typing in a few letters would icon view all the contents in your home, recent or not, whose name starts with such letter - but then, I like that feature quite a lot.

It will be a lot of fun to see it progress, and fun to see how the darker corners of config files and such change too.

The downfall, to me, is a certain feel of loss over compiz. There are some, even here, who put in a great deal of work on compiz and Gnome 3 sort of leaves them it the dark it seems - although I don't know the future of that. What I am sure of however, is that a new level of compiz type thinking can be had here too - its the nature of the beast - like so many have said of science itself, your whole life's work can simply be replaced, yet certainly we would not stop so that it isn't replaced.

RahulSundaram

29th March 2011, 07:50 AM

my impressions of Gnome3 so far.

its great when it loads/works but when it doesnt why doesnt the fallback mode fallback automatically? be prepared to see a slip in the final F15 for a few weeks longer.

It should. Have you filed a bug report? We are probably running into some bugs with the automatic fallback and those are likely hardware specific.

tox

29th March 2011, 07:57 AM

It should. Have you filed a bug report? We are probably running into some bugs with the automatic fallback and those are likely hardware specific.
Rahul, i have filed a few bug reports, 1 on pino . the other on Epiphany, but with saying this i think 1 of the bugs will be fixed in 2.91.93 however we shall see. but as you may see even Dan cant get the shell to load with all his updates done. i know my hardware is fine, the fallback mode worked fine previously, just isnt working now

RahulSundaram

29th March 2011, 08:02 AM

tox

29th March 2011, 08:07 AM

Hi

Have you filed a bug report on the fallback mode not working? If not, do so. Same goes for Dan's problem.

Pino is under very slow development upstream and unlikely to get fixes soon. Only one developer seems to be working on it and he is the middle of a major rewrite now.

Rahul

i have even tried Gwibber and doesnt work either, but no i havent filed a bug on the no fallback yet, i will get to that

RahulSundaram

29th March 2011, 08:10 AM

Hi

Yes. Gwibber development has slowly down too. I heard the upstream developer changed platforms is going to hand over maintenance to someone else.

tox

29th March 2011, 08:20 AM

Hi

Yes. Gwibber development has slowly down too. I heard the upstream developer changed platforms is going to hand over maintenance to someone else.

ok thanks, i wont bother using either 1 then :)

kraekan

29th March 2011, 08:22 AM

If you hit the windows key, then, any typing you do will type into the search bar thereby getting you at least to your recently used documents fast, general with only one or two letters of the documents name typed in. If your really anti-mouse you can then get to it via the up and down arrow keys.

I do hope they will get a little faster access to ones home folder and the contents in there - I stuck the link in my "dash" (which seems more like a pipe than a dash, but whatever).

I'd really like to see a Places overview in the same vein as the Windows and Applications overview. Typing home in the search bar brings up an icon for the home folder so I would assume it's technically possible to do.

Looks like the dependency issues got sorted.

tox

29th March 2011, 08:33 AM

actually Rahul

if Pino isnt getting much love upsteam anymore, why does Fedora continue to install it as default?

Dan

29th March 2011, 12:11 PM

Hi

Have you filed a bug report on the fallback mode not working? If not, do so. Same goes for Dan's problem.

Good morning, Rahul. 691738

rockdoctor

29th March 2011, 12:52 PM

I'm liking F15 (although it should be noted that I'm running LXDE). As of right now, everything seems to be working.

RahulSundaram

29th March 2011, 01:28 PM

actually Rahul

if Pino isnt getting much love upsteam anymore, why does Fedora continue to install it as default?

Hoping it would reach a usable state before the general release of Fedora 15 since a Alpha got release recently

http://pino-app.appspot.com/

If it doesn't get any better, we will drop it off the default I think.

smr54

29th March 2011, 01:29 PM

By the way, on behalf of all we Fedora users, THANK YOU to those who are taking the time and energy to do the serious testing and file bug reports. As I've mentioned, at present, time being very little, I just throw it on, see if it works, then go back to waiting.

You folks who suffer through things while the bugs are shaken out have my respect and thanks for taking your valuable time to do help the rest of us.

troyatlarge

29th March 2011, 09:42 PM

motnahp00

30th March 2011, 04:23 AM

And may the big bluebird of paradise, carrying a sick Yak in it's talons, productively sneeze whilst it flies over your head!

What a majestic scene. :p

Dan

30th March 2011, 03:15 PM

Gotta love fedora alphas! When I went to bed last night, I had an F15 system which produced regular crashes in Gnome Shell, Network Manager would not hook up to my (open) wireless. Instead opting for an extremely weak passworded WEP and WPA network of some other poor soul in the neighborhood -- and steadfastly refused to be told "no," greeting me with 20 or 30 requests for authorization before I could get it turned off. And a completely disfunctional shutdown sequence.

It also would not update once I got a CAT-5 jacked into it. It seemed to think it was just peachy-keen fine.

Meh. That's normal for a fedora alpha. Usually the next day there are some new updates that fix the stuff the last batch broke. <..:rolleyes:..>

And so it seemed this morning. Packagekit was still pretty much oblivious, but Yumex managed to locate a pile of updates.

Oh, yeah. You can already see this one coming, can't you? <..:p..>

I never got to see whether the updates finished correctly or not. I'm pretty sure they did. But I defy you to make anything useful or informative out of this.
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/picture.php?albumid=218&pictureid=890

Naturally ... I poked the power button after waiting for all disk activity to stop. That'll shut it off and I can re-boot.

Not.

It promptly suspends. Unrecoverably. Gee! That's neat. <..:dis:..> It took both hands, but I finally got it shut down ... and then rebooted -- to this.

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/picture.php?albumid=218&pictureid=891

The first thought that went through my mind was ... "Ayup. Mac envy!" The second was wondering about the present location of my other HDD containing a working copy of F13. Well, lookey there! It's right here and handy!

<..:C..> <..:D..>

leigh123linux

30th March 2011, 03:24 PM

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/picture.php?albumid=218&pictureid=891

The first thought that went through my mind was ... "Ayup. Mac envy!" The second was wondering about the present location of my other HDD containing a working copy of F13. Well, lookey there! It's right here and handy!

<..:C..> <..:D..>

Nice informative error screen :rolleyes: , the dev's are giving users the mushroom treatment :( ( feed them sh** and keep them in the dark :p ) .

dragonbite

30th March 2011, 03:31 PM

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/picture.php?albumid=218&pictureid=890

I thought that was a new feature for Fedora 15: Magic Eye Wallpaper. If you look at it cross-eyed just right you'll see the 3D picture pop out at you!! :C

doh :doh:

Dan

30th March 2011, 03:43 PM

That's the sort of a thing I'd expect out of nouveau, on an nvidia 7xxx series chipset. In fact, I've already got one of those doing this. My HP dv9904ca looks like this on F15 Alpha (nouveau)

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/picture.php?albumid=68&pictureid=871

But the one I've been testing on has an Intel chipset. I always thought those were really pretty bulletproof.

smr54

30th March 2011, 04:16 PM

Heh Leigh, I'd never heard that phrase before.

I see on the testing list, there's a new Test candidate iso. (Sorry don't have the link handy at present.) Will have to give that a shot and see how it's going.

dragonbite

30th March 2011, 04:54 PM

But the one I've been testing on has an Intel chipset. I always thought those were really pretty bulletproof.

I've been less enamored by the Intel chipsets since the i855 issue last year caused distributions to freeze up completely during bootup! Fedora 13 has handled it the best since the issue was discovered so I've been hopeful for 14 and 15.

I guess I'll have to proceed with caution.

mkudro

30th March 2011, 07:03 PM

On the note of testing and bug reports, I'm clearly new at it and need advice as to how to be more effective. Example, I filed a report and a person came back asking me to run the following:

$ G_SLICE=always-malloc valgrind evolution &>log.txt

Although I had no idea what it did, I ran it and it sat and blinked at me for a good half hour. After looking at it for awhile I came to realize whatever else it did, it looked like it piped it to a log file. Found the file only to find valgrind was a program I didn't have - got it put on and ran again, but only after a days updates - now the original problem doesn't replicate.

This brought up questions - are there a basic set of tools we should have, like valgrind, that are common in relation to filling bug reports? What other little items of use should we have in order to be good at filling bug reports?
My experience is as follows. When i embark on testing alpha/betas first what i do is install all debug packages. This is crucial when you attempt to collect information on why program crashed for example or plain don't work. Information collected from debugging and submitted to bug report is almost always sufficient for developer to get clear picture what went wrong and how to fix it.

smr54

30th March 2011, 07:23 PM

Well, just did a default install from the new TC1, and it went quite smoothly. Everything worked save Gnome 3--this is on VirtualBox, I think it's expected that Gnome 3 won't work. This one was just out of curiosity to see Gnome 3, usually I do minimal and add X afterwards.

Honestly, it seems to be quite nice. I'm not sure how systemd may affect production RH/CentOS machines in the future, but won't have to worry about that for awhile. Various changes they've made over the year still strike me as regressions, but how much of that is old man curmugeon stuff, I don't know.

One interesting change to me. I think they're almost automating sudo. (Not sure and would need several more installs to be sure. However, what happened here was:

When I added user on first boot, I choose to add said user to admin group. It turned out user was put in wheel group.

In /etc/sudoers, the line that allows members of wheel to perform all commands was uncommented by default, the first time I've seen that in a RedHat based distro--usually, one uncomments it if they want to do it that way.

tox

30th March 2011, 10:36 PM

the link to it http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-March/098384.html

---------- Post added at 08:36 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:32 AM ----------

http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/stage/15-Beta.TC1/Fedora/

smr54

31st March 2011, 12:37 AM

Just did another test install on my netbook, letting it do defaults to see why Dan dislikes Gnome 3. I like the wallpaper. It all seemed to work pretty well for me, save system-config-printer, but running hp-setup -i <ip_address worked easily.>

It seems pretty solid. I'm not a Gnome user though, so, all slings and arrows aside, I wasn't able to really see what people dislike about it. I see that things are in different places, but that seems (to me, a non-Gnome user) something that folks would get used to after a little while.

When I do use Gnome, such as helping my wife with her Ubuntu, I just F2 and open a terminal most of the time--that's what I did here too, so, of course, it's hard for me to understand what people who are used to that particular desktop environment are finding so aggravating.

(As opposed to mild aggravation about things being moved.)

Anyway, in my so far limited experience, TC1 is a big jump over the alpha. Next will be doing what I usually do for my own installs, and seeing how it goes. It's probably ready for my second hard drive on my work workstation, meaning that it's probably something I'll be able to, very shortly, use in production (which means, basically, that I need a browser that won't crash, terminals, and flux or openbox.)

Wayne

31st March 2011, 09:54 AM

tox

31st March 2011, 10:39 AM

Has this pre-release of F15 been more problematic than previous releases or is it a lot more people are testing this version, for various reasons, including GnomeS-hell so we're seeing a lot more bugs flying :eek:

Swat... Swat!!! :doh: Whoops, one landed on my head!

Gnome3 i think has been more problematic butt KDE has been pretty straight-forward, the only problem with KDE is that it doesnt have good NM0.9 in it so far i dont think apart from that it works great

DBelton

31st March 2011, 01:56 PM

I believe there are a few different levels of problems, some not appearing in a lot of the previous releases.

1: the problems with people just not liking the new gnome 3 shell and the features it has taken away.

2: The actual bugs in the gnome 3 shell, with it being a major rewrite, then more bugs will appear than previous releases have had.

3: Bugs introduced into other packages due to the major changes in the gnome 3 shell. Even applications that have been running smoothly for several release cycles are getting broken.

And then finally just the normal bugs cropping up when putting together a release.

And I didn't even mention the ongoing development of things like nouveau, which also is going through big changes.

So, yes, I would have to say that there are actually more bugs than in some of the previous release cycles,

That being said, I found this handy dandy bug swatter looks like it's made specially for gnome :D

dragonbite

31st March 2011, 02:01 PM

Has this pre-release of F15 been more problematic than previous releases or is it a lot more people are testing this version, for various reasons, including GnomeS-hell so we're seeing a lot more bugs flying :eek:

That is a good question. More people seem to be looking at Fedora and it could very well be an influx of testers (and whiners :rolleyes:).

williamove

31st March 2011, 02:21 PM

For myself I came to Fedora specifically looking for Gnome 3. I have been watching Gnome 3 and looking forward to using it. I am by no means a power user. I like to write and I like to draw. I use gedit, Inkscape, Shotwell and Epiphany. Things like system monitors do not interest me and if I never had to open a terminal or edit a boot line I would be very happy. I want to have easy access to my files, but am more than content if that whole mechinism remains transparent.

I am enjoying my experience with Fedora 15 Alpha and Gnome 3. Progress seems steadily forward and I find the new UI a delight to work in. I do realize this is all beta and I have learned not to complain too much when things get broken.

bill

GoinEasy9

31st March 2011, 08:57 PM

I finally have good impressions of F15. Since the dependency problems have been resolved, I've been able to re-install using the Beta iso and KDE. (Screenshot below). I must admit, I'm a lot less cranky knowing I'll be able to continue using fedora.

Dan

1st April 2011, 02:25 AM

Ooooookey dokey!

Just updated. As expected, it required the enforcing=0 append to the kernel line in order to boot. This was not a surprise. Finding that all the adjustment/customizations I have painstakingly wedged into Gnome 3 over the last week have been sent into the intergalactic bit-bucket, and Network Manager still will not hook up to an open but hidden network, then promptly crashes when you try to teach it some manners via the network dialogue ... which will still not accept input, was unexpected, but not entirely surprising.

Having both dconf and dconf-editor both segfault when attempting to start them from the terminal was a rude surprise.

So ... what I'm left with here, as far as I can tell, is one T-totally duck-flubbed install. Having had no feedback from the numerous and varied bug reports I've filed against this jolly mess indicating anyone actually wants further input to solve these issues, and being heartily sick swapping HDDs in and out of this laptop ... it's come to that time.

At this juncture, there is no way I can do any serious work now on adapting or attempting to adapt Gnome 3 into something that I can and would be willing to put to personal or business use in this install. Things are still just a bit too dicey for that.

Perhaps I will try again when this gets closer to release. In the meantime ... Dream Linux has a beta out. We shall see what that has to offer.

F15 Alpha ... Adieu.

kurtdriver

1st April 2011, 05:46 AM

Brasero still produces coasters. A hearty thanks to the good people behind K3b.

Dan

1st April 2011, 06:14 AM

Perhaps I will try again when this gets closer to release. In the meantime ... Dream Linux has a beta out. We shall see what that has to offer.

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/picture.php?albumid=158&pictureid=894

Not bad. Not bad at all!

DBelton

1st April 2011, 06:29 AM

Is that an icon I see on that desktop, Dan?

I may be checking dreamlinux out myself :)

Wayne

1st April 2011, 06:37 AM

Isn't that beta from last year? Nothing seems to have happened since then and it looks like there's been very much action in the forum recently..

http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=06159

What about Foresight?

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=foresight

JamesNZ

1st April 2011, 06:54 AM

I'm surprised Apple hasn't got a lawsuit on DL considering how Mac-like it is:p

Dan

1st April 2011, 06:56 AM

Is that an icon I see on that desktop, Dan?

I may be checking dreamlinux out myself :)
Ayup. Them's icons! And they work too!

Of course, one might expect that out of an XFCE distro Beta. I hid the Home and Trash icons for the screenshot. Popped them right back with the desktop setup dialog.

Wayne is right, however. This beta is about a year old. I'm not sure how active the distro is at this point. 3.5 Stable was Gnome based. I don't know if they'll go down that road with this one now.

Wayne, I looked into Foresight back when I was still looking at a mini-PC style. As I recall, there were some ugly issues with updates.

Wayne

1st April 2011, 08:57 AM

Err, is it an April fools joke that the Gnome 3 release has been postponed till September?

SwampKracker

1st April 2011, 09:01 AM

Well, if true, that throws a monkey wrench in Dan's plans. :rolleyes:

tox

1st April 2011, 09:03 AM

Err, is it an April fools joke that the Gnome 3 release has been postponed till September?
september? got any links to verify that statement . but it wouldnt surprise me, i dont think its ready

---------- Post added at 07:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:01 PM ----------

still says April on there release schedule http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointNinetyone

SwampKracker

1st April 2011, 09:06 AM

http://www.gnome.org/press/releases/2011-04-gnome-3.0-rescheduled.html

Wayne

1st April 2011, 09:06 AM

Look on the front page of the link I gave above

tox

1st April 2011, 09:30 AM

doesnt surprise me if it is delayed, as i said, its not ready and im sure i said about 7 or so months ago dont be surprised if there is a 2.34 release

---------- Post added at 07:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:13 PM ----------

i wouldnt take it as a Joke though, if you have been looking on Koji there has been 2.91.93 and 2.91.94 releases which means its not ready , question is, what will we see, a Gnome3 gnome3-panel with gnome2 as final? i gues time will tell

---------- Post added at 07:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:18 PM ----------

if it is true, this could put Fedora's beta in Jeopardy

---------- Post added at 07:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:25 PM ----------

nore do i think SystemD is ready primetime for Gnome3 yet either

---------- Post added at 07:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:29 PM ----------

GDM still needs work, cause i get " other " instead of my username popup

tuxor

1st April 2011, 09:40 AM

GDM still needs work, cause i get " other " instead of my username popup
Has been a known issue for quite a long time now:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=678236

twohot

1st April 2011, 12:13 PM

GDM still needs work, cause i get " other " instead of my username popup

Hmmm, I've learnt to overlook that and type in my username <enter> pwd <enter> .... I mean, its Linux right? :p I was actually expecting the 'neat/cool' GDM greeter design they posted during the mock-ups. The present one has no visual connection with the graphics that follow after login.

Dan

1st April 2011, 12:30 PM

Hmmmmm.

What day is it?

jpollard

1st April 2011, 12:50 PM

leigh123linux

1st April 2011, 12:56 PM

jpollard

1st April 2011, 01:02 PM

Missed that... And I read the archives just yesterday afternoon.

troyatlarge

1st April 2011, 01:54 PM

You could read the thread about it :(

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2011-March/150031.html

I read your link - and it seemed to make sense to me to some degree as to why they created /run. However, I must admit, why exactly this would be a political issue is completely beyond me - by all means, lets hear a bottom line explanation.

Loaded Beta, ran fine until after the update and then would not load as pointed to above in various post. I choose to go into /etc/selinux/config and change the selinux setting. It intrested me to discover it would not load if I disabled, but would in permissive. This ran a bell in my head about one of the biggest Linux exploits ever wherein the worst and most exploitable stance was having selinux=permissive (I'm sure some of you recall those few days). Hopefully it will be fixed soon, although i have yet to see any updates today.

dragonbite

1st April 2011, 02:07 PM

My vote is that it is a joke. Who, in their right mind, would make such an announcement on April 1rst? If it were genuine, I would wait just that ONE day (or hours at this point).

RahulSundaram

1st April 2011, 02:38 PM

My vote is that it is a joke. Who, in their right mind, would make such an announcement on April 1rst? If it were genuine, I would wait just that ONE day (or hours at this point).

It was announced yesterday and change was made a day before that. No joke.

RahulSundaram

1st April 2011, 02:40 PM

I read your link - and it seemed to make sense to me to some degree as to why they created /run. However, I must admit, why exactly this would be a political issue is completely beyond me - by all means, lets hear a bottom line explanation.

Old time unix people certainly tend to oppose anything new in /. This change was agreed upon by all the major distros and core software developers. So it has been given careful consideration and hence opposition is practically non existent.

Evil_Bert

1st April 2011, 02:57 PM

That's one of the most clearly explained changes I've seen. If only they were all that clear and straightforward.

DBelton

1st April 2011, 04:28 PM

Old time unix people certainly tend to oppose anything new in /. This change was agreed upon by all the major distros and core software developers. So it has been given careful consideration and hence opposition is practically non existent.

I also agree that the change is a very valid and good change. even if it does open up a flame war and it does break something that I have been using for the past 10 years or so.

I have been noticing the increasing use of /dev as a dumping ground for things that shouldn't be in there and this change is the perfect opportunity to get /dev cleaned out.

mwesten

1st April 2011, 04:59 PM

I read your link - and it seemed to make sense to me to some degree as to why they created /run. However, I must admit, why exactly this would be a political issue is completely beyond me - by all means, lets hear a bottom line explanation.

Same here...

And kiss goodby to kiosk mode and read-only root, and live CDs - ass all three will now require a rw root with that /run garbage. There was a REASON /var was created - a read/write area not on the root filesystem, and systemd evidently isn't capable of handling mounts properly if it requires /run to be on the root filesystem.

I'd also like to find out more about these implications in particular.

Thanks! :)

kiddokun

1st April 2011, 05:30 PM

April Fool's. Here are some hints:

From http://www.gnome.org/press/releases/2011-04-gnome-3.0-rescheduled.html:
The recent announcement that the Mozilla project would discontinue support for embedding has cast doubts on the technical underpinnings of the new GNOME shell.

This alone should be enough to convince you. The Shell uses no part of Firefox/Gecko. And if anything, in the past two years, every app under the sun has been migrating from Gecko to Webkit.

The release team is also concerned about the possible near-future release of GTK4

...come on :)

The release is being delayed for a full 6 months to avoid scheduling problems for our downstream distributors. During this 6 month period, we will reopen module proposals in the usual way. We are particularly encouraging module proposals from alternate desktop shells, which will be given careful consideration.

A nice jab at Canonical not shipping GNOME3 anyway :rolleyes:

The level of the quality of the code is at the highest that it has ever been and there is no doubt that we will easily have the best desktop on the planet by September 2011

The tone says everything.

The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. GNOME is a standard part of all leading GNU/Linux and Unix distributions, and is popular with both large existing corporate deployments and millions of small business and home users worldwide.

Emphasis mine. At least they're honest and can laugh at themselves ;)

Need more proof?
André Klapper's post on planet gnome today is titled "Моё судно на воздушной подушке полно угрей!"

jonathan47

1st April 2011, 08:02 PM

It was announced yesterday and change was made a day before that. No joke.

There are 2 contradictory 4/1 messages from Vincent Untz to the Gnome mailing lists.

First, he announced the delay to 9/1 and linked to Gnome's press release.
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/devel-announce-list/2011-April/msg00000.html

Second, a minute later, he confirmed the release of Gnome 3 on 4/6 in calling for tarballs.
"Tarballs are due on Monday April 4th before 23:59 UTC for our first
GNOME 3 release ever, GNOME 3.0.0, which will be released to the world
on Wednesday April 6th."
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/devel-announce-list/2011-April/msg00001.html

And the release calendar shows 4/6 release of Gnome 3 stable.
https://live.gnome.org/TwoPointNinetyone

I guess they're generating April Food's Day publicity for Gnome on Linux-related blogs. This is my favorite, a double-spoof that quotes Vincent Untz as denying the delay and then reveals the denial is a spoof.
http://www.muktware.com/blogs/01/2011/944/gnome-release-manager-denies-delay-gnome-3-release
Be sure click the hyperlinked "I approached Vincent and he told me."

In any event, F15's KDE 4.61 is working nicely for me.

katastrophal

1st April 2011, 08:31 PM

April Fool's. Here are some hints:

From http://www.gnome.org/press/releases/2011-04-gnome-3.0-rescheduled.html:

This alone should be enough to convince you. The Shell uses no part of Firefox/Gecko. And if anything, in the past two years, every app under the sun has been migrating from Gecko to Webkit.

errr. it uses the javascript engine, doesn't it? I mean there's a bug in redhat bugzilla about linking gnome-shell against a standalone version instead of xulrunner...

fpmurphy

1st April 2011, 08:39 PM

It uses Gjs which is a wrapper around SpiderMonkey and the GObject introspection framework. See https://live.gnome.org/Gjs/.

katastrophal

1st April 2011, 11:43 PM

yeah, that's nothing new to me. I still don't get it: It uses Spidermonkey, which is a part of the xulrunner package, but not a part of the gecko engine. It will still be possible to build a seperate Spidermonkey package, but just not a seperate gecko package. Did I get this right?

And how about Jaegermonkey? The new shiny js-engine? Will Gjs eventually switch to that (I've heard it's faster).

minor point: they also remove gtkmozembed from their codebase. Sad stuff...

RahulSundaram

2nd April 2011, 09:34 PM

There are 2 contradictory 4/1 messages from Vincent Untz to the Gnome mailing lists.

I was referring to the /run change in Fedora. Not the delay thingy which is a joke.

RahulSundaram

2nd April 2011, 09:37 PM

And kiss goodby to kiosk mode and read-only root, and live CDs - ass all three will now require a rw root with that /run garbage. There was a REASON /var was created - a read/write area not on the root filesystem, and systemd evidently isn't capable of handling mounts properly if it requires /run to be on the root filesystem.

You evidently aren't reading the mail in full which answers why /var isn't being used. In short. a number of core software including udev, madam, dracut and systemd have been using hidden files under /dev because they need some place to store the run time data BEFORE /var is even mounted. So this is the reason, all major distributions have agreed to such a change. This isn't about just systemd. far from that.

jpollard

3rd April 2011, 02:19 AM

And yes, I missed the very first message as it wasn't linked to in the announcement.

To me that just looks like a shortcoming of systemd.

NOTHING should need to be written until after filesystems have been checked, verified by security, and mounted.

Writing things into tmpfs is just... odd, unless you plan to discard them when things get reasonable. And if they are going to be discarded, why write them in the first place. And tmpfs can take space away from filesystem checking/rebuilding... again not the best idea.

Is that why systems with less than 512M are unbootable? (I've only started playing with F15, and haven't pushed it yet, but I have seen reports).

Fedora SHOULD run in about 128MB, (possibly less) though not with gnome. The minimum system ought to be easily around 64MB or so (without X).

But that is just my opinion. I have worked with smaller servers.

marko

3rd April 2011, 03:24 AM

Is that why systems with less than 512M are unbootable? (I've only started playing with F15, and haven't pushed it yet, but I have seen reports).

No, I think that's so preupgrade can be used (preupgrade uses a lot of space in /boot
for the install of the next Fedora version... actually a bit less but 512Meg was to allow people to partition now and not have to repartition in the new future if the image needs to grow more)

DBelton

3rd April 2011, 04:31 AM

no, if you have only 512 MB of RAM, you can't boot a Fedora install. I tried it on my system after leigh123linux reported his wouldn't boot in a VM with only 512MB RAM allocated.

I pulled all but 512MB of ram out of my box.. tried to boot. nope.. no go. Put the memory back in and it booted fine. Leigh said he had to bump his memory allocated up to 700-something. I forget the exact number.

Edit:

This was before systemd was changed to mount /run as a tmpfs, too. So the memory requirement to boot may have increased since then.

RahulSundaram

3rd April 2011, 05:03 AM

And yes, I missed the very first message as it wasn't linked to in the announcement.

To me that just looks like a shortcoming of systemd.

.

Udev and several other software have been writing hidden files in /dev long before systemd was even created. Take sometime to read up on why core software programs have been writing hidden files in /dev and why distributions which are not even using systemd are still adopting /run.

And no, this won't have any material impact on RAM usage because the data that is written into /run takes up trivial amount of space. On my latest Fedora 15 system,

#du -sh /run
3.0M /run

Dan

4th April 2011, 12:29 PM

*Sigh!*

This isn't good. Fedora 15 Beta TC1 (DVD) BSODs during the media check. <..:(..>

Process kswapd0 (pid:22) is not a happy camper.

bob

4th April 2011, 12:50 PM

smr54

4th April 2011, 01:39 PM

Anaconda is one of the more fragile installers I know. The vast majority seem to be able to give you the option to skip a particular package and continue if there's an error. Anaconda will die if one, usually unnecessary package, won't install .

twohot

4th April 2011, 06:52 PM

Well, thanks to the Beta (Test) Live CD, I've actually gotten to see and work with Gnome3 for a bit, plus ALMOST getting it installed before an unrecoverable error popped up. Not a fan, by any means, but I'm up for a challenge so rather than grouse about things, I'll try to embrace it.

You can always expect a mature outlook to things from a '65-year' old Fedorian :D
I'll be standing in line ... and not just embracing it, pushing for better and more effective changes. You get results when you're part of the process. Making suggestions and evaluations from the outside makes users look so removed from the developer's stresses. That's why Linux rocks ... the gap between the devs and the end-users is shorter.

Dan

4th April 2011, 07:01 PM

Hmmm.

Just tried the Net Install CD. Wireless fails to connect. Kinda tough to do a net install ... with no net.

*Sigh!* Bug filed.

soundfreely

5th April 2011, 02:34 PM

Thus far, I like this release more and more but I am also a total linux noob - so my opinions aren't of a veteran with established work-flow. Systemd has my laptop booting faster than ever. I like the direction that Gnome Shell is taking but I think it either needs more refinement or I need to grow with it more. I am still toying with Gnome 3's config XML to get the desktop more to my liking. It's odd that the shell yields an opportunity to free up a lot of screen real estate but the default window padding and text is gigantic.

I had an issue last week with SELinux putting the brakes on bootup somewhere. I got around it by adding "selinux=0" in the kernel line of Grub then got the updated policy. On the first attempt, I couldn't log into my desktop. I then ran "fixfiles onboot" followed by a reboot and the rebuilt policies let me in without issues. One of these days, I will find the time to really get a handle on SELinux - for now, I just get things working via "happy accidents."

As I learn more, I hope that one of these releases I can start reporting bugs or something useful. For now, I feel as though I am still in the "user error" camp and shouldn't be reporting any nonsense that's likely attributed to my "noob-ness." On that note, I haven't had any issues outside of the SELinux problem I mentioned already.

smr54

5th April 2011, 07:52 PM

Such feedback is probably useful to the Gnome developer types, as it seems they aim a lot of it towards new users.

There's definitely truth to the fact that those who are used to something are more likely to object to change than those who are coming to it for the first time.

mmix

5th April 2011, 08:07 PM

I had tried unity in ubuntu 11.04, now i am using gnome3 on F15.
IMHO, gnome3 is much better and easier usage to me. it works flawlessly. Thanks to F15 team and user.

Dan

5th April 2011, 08:15 PM

... those who are used to something are more likely to object to change than those who are coming to it for the first time.Ya know ... if you think about the concepts behind that statement for too long, the term, "Stunning grasp of the obvious," springs to mind. <..:p..>

soundfreely

5th April 2011, 08:42 PM

There's definitely truth to the fact that those who are used to something are more likely to object to change than those who are coming to it for the first time.

For me, Gnome 3 seems to be more customizable than 2.32. It may be my ignorance, by it seems like I can very easily maximize my screen real estate by changing a few values in an XML file. I have no idea how to accomplish the same with 2.32.

I also don't see the drawing issues I would occasionally get with Compiz. Mutter hasn't left me with the disappearing screen draw issue that Compiz would pull off.

Out of curiosity, what aspects of 2.32 would most of you miss in Gnome 3 and its shell? Also, what other major changes in Fedora 15 are bothersome and why? I see there's some contention around /run but me being newer Linux, I don't see why it's an issue (/run makes more sense than /var/run to my less familiar logic).

DBelton

5th April 2011, 11:03 PM

the contentions around /run are more geared towards an app sticking something in / (root). I totally agree with the concept of systemd creating and mounting a tmpfs early on in the boot cycle. It's a change that has been needed for quite awhile. (Some apps were sticking some of thier tmp files in /dev because it was available and the other tmp filesystems weren't. /dev shouldn't be used for tmp files that aren't devices.)

Even though I encountered some problems with their decision to use /run (I have some applications that also use /run), my case is unique and due to some bad program design by some idiot over 10 years ago. I totally agree with the reasons systemd creates the /run and mounts it as tmpfs

And yes, /run would make much more sense than /var/run does. to get /var/run mounted that early in the boot process took some funny stuff with using bind mounts because it was having to be used before /var was mounted. And since /var itself isn't tmpfs... well, you know that old chicken/egg story.. :D

My biggest problem is with the gnome 3 shell, though. To me, it is a total piece of trash unless you are wanting the ipod/touchscreen thing going on on your desktop machine. For someone using their machine to surf the web and stuff, it's not too bad. But for someone that really uses their machine to try and get some work done, it's a pain in the butt.

I do believe the configurability of gnome will get better as the devs get out of the design/creating phase and more into the maintenance phase after it's released.

I really hate that they took away the menus and put it all into those wacked out icons that take up the entire screen. Before, I could pull down one menu that took only a small corner of the screen, make small mouse movements to select what I wanted, then it would disappear..

Now it's move all the way up to the upper left corner of the screen to pull up those wacky icons.. then over all the way to the right hand side of the screen to select what category I wish.. then who knows where on the screen to start the application.

Plus, they have decided for me that I don't want to use the desktop to drop a file on to, or use it to keep application launchers on, or shortcuts on. In gnome 2, I could line my drive icons up the left hand side of my screen and have 1 click access to any drive on my system. Not any more. now it takes about 4 or 5 clicks to open up a drive. (I can't even put them all into my favorites on the machine I am currently running F15 on. I believe 13 is the max icons in favorites and I have 10 internal drives and 5 external drives on this box then my network drives)

twohot

5th April 2011, 11:45 PM

Plus, they have decided for me that I don't want to use the desktop to drop a file on to, or use it to keep application launchers on, or shortcuts on. In gnome 2, I could line my drive icons up the left hand side of my screen and have 1 click access to any drive on my system. Not any more. now it takes about 4 or 5 clicks to open up a drive. (I can't even put them all into my favorites on the machine I am currently running F15 on. I believe 13 is the max icons in favorites and I have 10 internal drives and 5 external drives on this box then my network drives)

Com'on DBelton, Some people think they helped them prevent Desktop Cluttering. Anyway, you can always enable that functionality through dconf-editor.

Dan

6th April 2011, 01:26 AM

Com'on DBelton, Some people think they helped them prevent Desktop Cluttering. Anyway, you can always enable that functionality through dconf-editor.

You're kidding! Right?

Seriously?!

Methinks if someone really needs that kind of help to avoid desktop clutter, that's an individual problem to solve -- through therapy if need be. The rest of us enjoy the choice.

But you are correct that the means of fixing that little piece of social engineering is already being addressed ... as it well should be.

soundfreely

6th April 2011, 02:57 AM

I suppose the real test for me is when I do actually try to work with Gnome Shell. As of now, it's installed on my "test" partition on my laptop and has been used for little more than just playing around. I am also attempting to allow myself to transition into it. For my typical work-slow/style, I don't think it will hurt. I like hitting the "super" key and typing the first few letters of what I need (but I suppose Gnome-do would do that too without disrupting everyone's idea of gnome).

pforsell

6th April 2011, 09:04 AM

Has anyone who complains about Gnome3 actually ever measured the time they spend in the DE during a typical work day? I mean, I am an oldskool old fart, but most of the time I couldn't care less about the DE. I do all my work in applications and I switch between them with alt-tab.

Without formal measurements I'd say I spend about 99.9% of my computer time inside applications and I start my apps with Gnome-Do. I don't never ever customize my desktop environment with window decorations, wallpapers, shortcut icons, weather applets, clocks or bling bling because that is utter waste of time and resources. I have on my desktop whatever was the default when I installed the OS (or perhaps some random settings or whatnot, cba to even check.)

I rather spend my free time playing with with my kids than customizing my desktop. Perhaps a shrink could determine what's wrong with me :cool:

I happen to like the very Maclike Gnome3 and will have zero problems adapting to it. My apps will work the same they always have and I will not see much of the DE anyway, nor am I particularly interested in it.

Just my 2 cents.

DBelton

6th April 2011, 02:18 PM

Com'on DBelton, Some people think they helped them prevent Desktop Cluttering. Anyway, you can always enable that functionality through dconf-editor.

This is one option that can't be enabled through the dconf-editor.

While there is an option I found someplace to have filemanager control the desktop, Try enabling it, then open a folder on your desktop. That folder then becomes your desktop and there is no way to close it or even get to a different folder.

So, no... You can't enable it through dconf-editor.

Edit:

just to see if they did anything else on this.. I started up the dconf-editor, looked through the gnome settings and found one that was "Show icons on desktop"

Thinking it looked promising, I checked it...

nothing happened.. sooo.. thinking I may need to restart gnome for the change to take effect, I did so..

well, I lost the desktop wallpaper, just a black desktop now.. and no icons.. :(

Guess it's still in the very very early development stage, if it's even being implemented at all.

twohot

6th April 2011, 03:48 PM

Edit:

just to see if they did anything else on this.. I started up the dconf-editor, looked through the gnome settings and found one that was "Show icons on desktop"

Thinking it looked promising, I checked it...

nothing happened.. sooo.. thinking I may need to restart gnome for the change to take effect, I did so..

well, I lost the desktop wallpaper, just a black desktop now.. and no icons.. :(

Guess it's still in the very very early development stage, if it's even being implemented at all.

I did work for me sometime ago ... now I can't even access dconf-editor. It just crashes like nothing I've ever seen (core dump). Some vital apps crash here, Control-Centre is guaranteed to crash if I attempt to access Mobile Broadband settings. I'm still using the Updated Alpha. Might have to endure until Lovelock is officially released

Dan

6th April 2011, 04:00 PM

F15 Alpha was born under a bad sign. After hitting all of those roadblocks and more, I finally blew it back into magnetic chaos and installed the Beta TC-1 LiveCD. Much better manners! But still ... a bit of a bad dog. SELinux and I are no longer on speaking terms (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=261121).

twohot

6th April 2011, 08:05 PM

ovadyah

6th April 2011, 08:34 PM

Already grown tired of SELinux issues long ago. It generates as many as 100+ AVC alerts a session. Its unhappy with nearly everything.

Strange, I have no more SELinux issues on either install.

jpollard

6th April 2011, 09:59 PM

The last SELinux alert I read about was the improperly labeled /run directory.

Personally, I haven't had any alerts (I only started F15 testing after that).
I'm still figuring out if it works properly with KVM as that is where I'm running it. Audio doesn't work, but I'm not sure how KVM handles audio.

Audio does work on the host system (F14) just fine.

mmix

6th April 2011, 10:56 PM

me too, zero selinux error. F15 is really stable.

DBelton

7th April 2011, 03:00 AM

I am having an issue with audio, but it's a selinux issue..

Apr 6 20:28:02 tower11 setroubleshoot: SELinux is preventing /usr/bin/pulseaudio from open access on the file c189:128. For complete SELinux messages. run sealert -l 8dfc375c-f180-4ef1-a029-70922471eea9
Apr 6 20:28:02 tower11 setroubleshoot: SELinux is preventing /usr/bin/pulseaudio from open access on the file +sound:card0. For complete SELinux messages. run sealert -l 8dfc375c-f180-4ef1-a029-70922471eea9

That was right after doing a complete selinux relabel to see if I had some files mislabeled. I did, but it didn't fix my pulseaudio issue.

RahulSundaram

7th April 2011, 08:49 AM

Dbelton,

Check bugzilla too or report issues there. I already indicated, here is the bug report

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=693247

DBelton

7th April 2011, 04:07 PM

Dbelton,

Check bugzilla too or report issues there. I already indicated, here is the bug report

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=693247

I saw that, and it looks like they have already found the problem and have put a change in systemd to correct it.

I'm getting the systemd update now, (I think it's the one with this change in it, I'll check to be sure) ald will see if that resolves my issue.

tsinik

8th April 2011, 10:53 AM

kraekan

8th April 2011, 11:07 AM

I think Fedora just use the default Gnome with little in the way of tweaking. I presume that is why they are using Gnome3.

dragonbite

8th April 2011, 01:41 PM

Fedora 14 will be my last Fedora version that I will have in a production system. The decision for Fedora 15 to choose Gnome 3 seems to me very bad.

What would be their other choice? Xfce? KDE? LXDE? Fedora, I don't think, would be using an unsupported Gnome version and regardless of what people are saying, Gnome 3 is the future, Gnome 2 is going bye-bye. Plus Fedora is sort-of a showcase for Gnome, including a lot of the un-customized/modified newer Gnome stuff that the other distros watch and wait to include.

Could they have fought Gnome 3 and pushed Gnome to keeping ver. 2.x? Possibly but they probably didn't any more than openSUSE, Ubuntu, Debian and all the other distros involved with its development.

So if using Gnome 3 is inevitable why prolong the agony? People will complain with 15, grumble with 16 and totally forget this controversy by 17. If they held on to Gnome 2 it would just mean add +1 version to the above steps 16/17/18).

soundfreely

8th April 2011, 02:31 PM

The more I use Gnome 3 and Gnome Shell, the more I really like it. Trying some of the extensions from http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=261189 have demonstrated its extensibility.

I also very much like the easier to read javascript extensions. While I never worked with javascript, I can read through it well enough and see that it wouldn't be too much of a task to make extensions or customizations of the desktop.

All in all, Gnome 3 needs to be given a chance by the naysayers. It's a step in a very good direction - even if it still needs some refinement to meet different people's ideas of a good DE.

bruce89

8th April 2011, 11:56 PM

Fedora 14 will be my last Fedora version that I will have in a production system. The decision for Fedora 15 to choose Gnome 3 seems to me very bad. I feel that it was based on some managerial point of view and has nothing to do with the needs of the community. It's a pity to see a great distro take a wrong turn. I am now looking for a new distro where I am going to be the owner of my systems and not a point-and-click user.

Fedora = First.

Could they have fought Gnome 3 and pushed Gnome to keeping ver. 2.x? Possibly but they probably didn't any more than openSUSE, Ubuntu, Debian and all the other distros involved with its development.

So if using Gnome 3 is inevitable why prolong the agony? People will complain with 15, grumble with 16 and totally forget this controversy by 17. If they held on to Gnome 2 it would just mean add +1 version to the above steps 16/17/18).

Yes, the same goes for GNOME 3.0 itself. If it was delayed again and so on.

mpelletier

9th April 2011, 03:06 PM

I think the negative vibes here are blown a bit out of proportion. While I think it is true that they could have waited even longer for gnome 3 to come out to fill out the feature set, it is not as bad as everyone is making it out to be. I am slightly conflicted, though, in that I think it looks elegant and polished, but some design decisions seem to have been dictated more by how they look than how functional they are.

Case in point, the new gnome-shell departs from the preview shell that was available in F13 and F14, by leaving out the "recently used documents" and replacing the launchers with a dock. I like the look better, but a "recently used documents" widget is far easier to use than to have to think about the name of the document you were working on and then type to retrieve it.

Yet another missing function that was available in the previous gnome-shell is the mounted drives area. Currently, if you have CD/DVD in your drive you have to open the file manager to eject it! This is incredibly counter-intuitive. Furthermore, having quick access to your shortcuts (as the previous gnome-shell had) is very intuitive. Now there is an additional step to do this.

Now, in spite of all of this, there are some positives with the new gnome-shell. Quick access to system preferences (although for some reason the screen saver configuration is missing entirely from this menu), universal access settings, etc. is a welcomed improvement. In my opinion (I know, "everyone has one and they all stink...") the way gnome 3 handles VD's (that's virtual desktops guys... get your mind out of the gutter!) is more useful than the previous iterations of gnome shell. There is, however still considerable room for improvement here. Above all, the underlying theme design makes a lot of sense (e.g. css and the like).

I suspect in gnome 3.0.2 or some (quick follow up) will rectify most of our issues. If we can recall KDE 4, we will remember that it was barely even usable when it was first released. It was buggy and unstable. Now the KDE guys love it! By contrast, Gnome 3 is stable and elegant (looking). The features (or lack thereof) that cause us to moan in Gnome 3 will be a distant memory a year from now (if not 6 months from now). I am actually looking forward to writing some great addons.

Just wait and see... Before long we will be in love with Gnome 3.

jpollard

9th April 2011, 03:13 PM

Kind of hard to see it when it doesn't work in a VM for testing.

and none of the standalone systems have the newest video, so the gnome shell aborts.

Dan

9th April 2011, 03:32 PM

Sorry about this one, guys, but the uptick in hardware required for Gnome 3, and the current stability and popularity issues brought the following to mind:

In a music bed with lots of brass fanfare and to be spoken enthusiastically - by a professional radio announcer - preferably one who also moonlights for Friday Night Wrestling:
Welcome to Fedora 15, featuring Gnome Three! Just like Vista's Aero® ™ ...

...

only for Linux.

And in the typical low, breathless, fast-talking lawyer-ese disclaimer style:
Maynotworkonallsystemshardwareupgradesmayberequire dtooperatesomefeaturesavailabletoolsmaybelimitedcu stomizationmaybedisabledbydesign nowarrantiesexpressedorimpliedifitbreaksyou'rebasi callyonyourownbutyougettokeepbothpiecesandrebateof fersarevoidwhereprohibitedbylaw-Ifanysideeffectsoccurseekmedicalattentionimmediate ly-Gnomedevelopersarenotresponsibleforanyseethingfrus trationorpsychologicaltraumainducedbyuseofthisprod uct.

<..:p..>

<..:D..>

pforsell

9th April 2011, 04:03 PM

Now this one's actually genuinely funny :D

Evil_Bert

9th April 2011, 04:08 PM

I think the negative vibes here are blown a bit out of proportion. While I think ...

... I am actually looking forward to writing some great addons. Just wait and see... Before long we will be in love with Gnome 3.
You are making far too much sense. Your post is logical, reasonable and complimentary.

This just won't do at all!!

Posts regarding Gnome 3 must be knee-jerk, derogatory and incoherent. I'm sure that's in the rules. :p

Wayne

9th April 2011, 04:14 PM

I agree, it does look good, it is clean and elegant. There is a LOT of functionality and customisability missing and some may appear in the months ahead... BUT... It does not work the way I work. I'm not changing my habits on the whim of a developer and being told to like it or lump it and to stop whining because the developers know best. Only I know what's best for me and right now Gnome 3/Gnome-Shell ain't it and may never be.

bruce89

9th April 2011, 04:35 PM

Case in point, the new gnome-shell departs from the preview shell that was available in F13 and F14, by leaving out the "recently used documents" and replacing the launchers with a dock. I like the look better, but a "recently used documents" widget is far easier to use than to have to think about the name of the document you were working on and then type to retrieve it.

Something should be in 3.2 along these lines.

Now, in spite of all of this, there are some positives with the new gnome-shell. Quick access to system preferences (although for some reason the screen saver configuration is missing entirely from this menu), universal access settings, etc. is a welcomed improvement. In my opinion (I know, "everyone has one and they all stink...") the way gnome 3 handles VD's (that's virtual desktops guys... get your mind out of the gutter!) is more useful than the previous iterations of gnome shell. There is, however still considerable room for improvement here. Above all, the underlying theme design makes a lot of sense (e.g. css and the like).

Agreed, the workspace thing is by a long way my favourite aspect of the shell.

Screensavers are gone for some reason.

BUT... It does not work the way I work. I'm not changing my habits on the whim of a developer and being told to like it or lump it and to stop whining because the developers know best. Only I know what's best for me and right now Gnome 3/Gnome-Shell ain't it and may never be.

Nothing could ever change then.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if they'd carried on with the panels like 2.x. Also, I wonder what the reaction would have been if it was a *complete* clone of OS X/Windows 7/Unity.

leigh123linux

9th April 2011, 04:46 PM

Kind of hard to see it when it doesn't work in a VM for testing.

and none of the standalone systems have the newest video, so the gnome shell aborts.

My fermi aborts as well :(

mpelletier

9th April 2011, 07:47 PM

You are making far too much sense. Your post is logical, reasonable and complimentary.

This just won't do at all!!

Posts regarding Gnome 3 must be knee-jerk, derogatory and incoherent. I'm sure that's in the rules. :p

My apologies... But I did try to temper the sense with a bit of non-sense, hence the VD reference and the "opinions are like ...holes" comment.

Going along with the VD reference, it seems like so many things are missing in some places of Gnome 3 that it's kind of like a nice looking woman that used to be a dude. The analogy works well if you are a genuine misogynist... e.g. the ugly guy that was gnome 2 was so useful and got the job done, but the beautiful gnome 3 is just nice to look at, but doesn't really do anything particularly well.

I hope this is better in terms of non-sense. Let me know how I can improve the verbal diarrhea (sp?).

---------- Post added at 01:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:42 AM ----------

I just thought of a huge positive with F15. My AMD video card works brilliantly. I routinely had screen artifacts and bitmap corruption in F14 using the open source radeon driver. The proprietary fglrx driver worked well and had a good frame rate, but gnome-shell had loads of tearing and was unusable using the fgrlx driver, so I was stuck using the open source driver with all its problems.

F15, on the other hand has been great. The radeon driver has no artifacts so far (after more than a week) and even Stellarium works the way it is supposed to! So, at least as far as AMD(ati) graphics go, F15 is a huge leap forward!

Sorry, I realise this is break from the thread topic, but it is in line with the thread title. I figured we could use a break from the moaning about Gnome 3.

smr54

9th April 2011, 09:03 PM

Actually, this was a supposed to be a thread about other than Gnome 3. Dan had started an I hate Gnome3 thread (though he called it something else), and this was supposed to be about other things. Hrrm, that worked out well. :D

Dan

9th April 2011, 09:25 PM

Hey, now! With the possible exception of post 203, I've been all about f15 here. But talking about F15 Alph thru beta ... and not dealing with Gnome 3 ... is a lot like trying to embrace a scruffy but loveable stray dog without noticing the fleas, ticks and smell infesting it.

<..:eek:..>

<..:D..>

sonoran

9th April 2011, 10:43 PM

Well, GNOME is certainly not Fedora, so why should Fedora be GNOME?

There are those of us who prefer to create our own experience rather than just consuming what the GNOMEs try to feed us. And beware in particular that Kool-Aid they're passing out.:Y

Dan

9th April 2011, 11:07 PM

Well, with so many core Gnome/fedora developers also spending their compensated quality time over at Redhat ... the relationship between them is certainly interrelated .. if not weirdly incestuous. <..:p..>

And with that being plopped on the table, I guess I'm not so much concerned about the Kool-Aid as I am the simple pragmatism of two concepts. The first being that against all common sense, I use fedora for production, and I really do like it.

The second also being purely selfish, too. Due to the previous fact, I have a bit of a vested interest in the continued success of the project and the product. Were I to start distro-hopping, I would land in MINT country with both feet, and they are also deeply dipped in the Gnome experience.

Therefore it's in my best interest to hold my nose and somewhat patiently wade through formative years of the next incarnation of the Gnome desktop environment. And I don't worry a helluva lot about the uglier aspects of the thing as it is now. The community will soon find ways to make lemonade of it all. Looking back at the desktop experience I've had on this box, It's educational to notice that this (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/picture.php?albumid=169&pictureid=685) certainly doesn't look, smell nor feel like a naked Gnome 2 workspace.

dd_wizard

9th April 2011, 11:40 PM

Now that compiz works, I can start fixing the other things that seem to be broken after updating from F14 to F15 with yum. For some reason, my old /etc/fstab entries that mounted /tmp and /var/tmp in a tmpfs are borked in systemd. I'll have to do some reading to see if the syntax has changed.

I wanted to take a screen shot of compiz/AWN, but gnome-screenshot has disappeared from /usr/bin. Pressing the print screen key puts this in ~/.xsession-errors:
$ grep screenshot ~/.xsession-errors | uniq
/bin/sh: gnome-screenshot: command not found
Now that I have a normal notification area, it would be nice to see the volume control applet in it. However, I get this from the cli and in ~/.xsession-errors instead:
$ gnome-sound-applet
Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "pk-gtk-module"

The second problem looks like a bug, but the first one looks like the developers might have removed another distraction?

dd_wizard

---------- Post added at 03:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:37 PM ----------

Oh yes, and how the heck do I turn off kerberos, and why is it enabled by default? And what happened to the old start up gui that used to be in System Tools, or maybe it was Preferences?

dd_wizard

RahulSundaram

10th April 2011, 12:29 AM

Hi

gnome-screenshot is installed in my system. I do get "Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "pk-gtk-module" but it works nevertheless. Kerberos - That one is a bug. For modifying startup programs, use gnome-session-properties. A bunch of programs are not listed in the menu which is a bug as well.

katastrophal

10th April 2011, 02:01 AM

I love options, that do not work.

Today I was playing around with the shiney new dconf-editor (it looks and feels the same as ye olde gconf-editor) and stumbled over "autosave_session". After activating it, gnome-shell wouldn't run, until I installed compiz-gnome, booted in classic gnome and unticked it again. So be careful playing with that thing :P

Dan

10th April 2011, 02:18 AM

mpelletier

10th April 2011, 02:52 PM

...the new gnome-shell departs from the preview shell that was available in F13 and F14, by leaving out the "recently used documents" and replacing the launchers with a dock. I like the look better, but a "recently used documents" widget is far easier to use than to have to think about the name of the document you were working on and then type to retrieve it.

Yet another missing function that was available in the previous gnome-shell is the mounted drives area. Currently, if you have CD/DVD in your drive you have to open the file manager to eject it! This is incredibly counter-intuitive. Furthermore, having quick access to your shortcuts (as the previous gnome-shell had) is very intuitive. Now there is an additional step to do this....

Well, apparently these things are already underway in development: http://seilo.geekyogre.com/2011/04/zeitgeist-work-towards-gnome-3-2/

DBelton

10th April 2011, 03:01 PM

Hmmm.

Speaking of such things, in the file manager preferences dialogue, the selection for open with one click is already checked, but is not applied. In order to get it to work, you have to click back to "Double click" then re-click, "Single Click". Then it will apply your preference.

Also, as mentioned in a different thread, in the dconf-editor dialogue, you can get nautilus to draw the desktop, giving you active clickable shortcuts and directories, BUT (and this is important) you MUST also unclick (turn off) the "Draw Desktop Background" selection, or things will very shortly get frustrating and ugly. If you choose to do this, you will also have to use the standard Gnome 3 file icon to run Nautilus the first time after rebooting before nautilus will draw icons and activate that function.

See the WRONG way to do this here (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/picture.php?albumid=218&pictureid=904). <..:p..>

Turn the bottom one off and life will be much simpler.

Dan, you can get the desktop icons when you start Gnome by adding an entry to run nautilus when Gnome starts instead of having to run nautilus manually.

Here is what I did on mine.

I created a file in ~/.config/autostart and named it nautilus.desktop with this in it:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Type=Application
Exec=nautilus --no-default-window
Icon=nautilus
Terminal=false

Comment=nautilus desktop manager
Name=nautilus desktop manager

GenericName=Start desktop manager

Categories=System;
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Name[en_US]=Nautilus Desktop Manager
Comment[en_US]=Nautilus Desktop Manager

ksousa

10th April 2011, 03:25 PM

I'm a Linux user since three year's - Linux Mint and Ubuntu - it's the first time i tried Fedora and i'm real surprised with his perfomance, beauty (Gnome-shell is fantastic) and for a alpha, his stability.
Tahnks for all the programers and for the comunity.
One question, how can i disable dock extension in gnome-shell, i don't like it (except if it can autohide it what i think is not possible).
Sorry for my english.

leigh123linux

10th April 2011, 04:53 PM

Dan, you can get the desktop icons when you start Gnome by adding an entry to run nautilus when Gnome starts instead of having to run nautilus manually.

Here is what I did on mine.

I created a file in ~/.config/autostart and named it nautilus.desktop with this in it:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Type=Application
Exec=nautilus --no-default-window
Icon=nautilus
Terminal=false

Comment=nautilus desktop manager
Name=nautilus desktop manager

GenericName=Start desktop manager

Categories=System;
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
Name[en_US]=Nautilus Desktop Manager
Comment[en_US]=Nautilus Desktop Manager

There is a easier way ;) , just add nautilus to the requiredcomponets ie:

gedit /usr/share/gnome-session/sessions/gnome.session[GNOME Session]
Name=GNOME
Name[af]=GNOME
Name[ar]=جنوم
Name[as]=GNOME
Name[ast]=GNOME
Name=GNOME
Name[be@latin]=GNOME
Name[bg]=GNOME
Name[bn]=GNOME
Name[bn_IN]=GNOME
Name[br]=GNOME
Name[ca]=GNOME
Name[ca@valencia]=GNOME
Name[crh]=GNOME
Name[cs]=GNOME
Name[da]=GNOME
Name[de]=GNOME
Name[dz]=ཇི་ནོམ་
Name[el]=GNOME
Name[en@shaw]=·��
Name[en_GB]=GNOME
Name[eo]=GNOME
Name[es]=GNOME
Name[et]=GNOME
Name[eu]=GNOME
Name[fa]=گنوم
Name[fi]=Gnome
Name[fr]=GNOME
Name[fur]=GNOME
Name[fy]=Gnome
Name[ga]=GNOME
Name[gl]=GNOME
Name[gu]=GNOME
Name[he]=‏GNOME
Name[hi]=गनोम
Name[hr]=GNOME
Name[hu]=GNOME
Name[id]=GNOME
Name[it]=GNOME
Name[ja]=GNOME
Name[ka]=GNOME
Name[kn]=GNOME
Name[ko]=그놈
Name[lt]=GNOME
Name[lv]=GNOME
Name[mai]=गनोम
Name[mk]=GNOME
Name[ml]=ഗ്നോം
Name[mr]=GNOME
Name[nb]=GNOME
Name[nds]=GNOME
Name[nl]=Gnome
Name[nn]=GNOME
Name[oc]=GNOME
Name[or]=ନୋମ
Name[pa]=ਗਨੋਮ
Name[pl]=GNOME
Name[ps]=ګنوم
Name[pt]=GNOME
Name[pt_BR]=GNOME
Name[ro]=GNOME
Name[ru]=GNOME
Name[sk]=GNOME
Name[sl]=GNOME
Name[sr]=Гном
Name[sr@latin]=Gnom
Name[sv]=GNOME
Name[ta]=GNOME
Name[te]=GNOME
Name[th]=GNOME
Name[tr]=GNOME
Name[ug]=GNOME
Name[uk]=GNOME
Name[uz]=GNOME
Name[uz@cyrillic]=GNOME
Name[vi]=GNOME
Name[zh_CN]=GNOME
Name[zh_HK]=GNOME
Name[zh_TW]=GNOME
RequiredComponents=gnome-shell;gnome-settings-daemon;[B]nautilus;
IsRunnableHelper=/usr/libexec/gnome-session-check-accelerated
FallbackSession=gnome-fallback

Both these methods break the gnome-shell file-browser launcher

DBelton

11th April 2011, 03:09 AM

good info there, leigh :) I'll try that and see which way seems to work the best (translated: which way breaks fewer things :D )

AdamW

11th April 2011, 06:20 PM

any time you manually edit a packaged file that is not a declared config file (as a rule of thumb, anything outside of /etc) it will get overwritten any time the package gets updated. So it's usually best to use a method which doesn't involve doing this. I think gnome-tweak-tool lets you enable desktop icons, doesn't it?

Dan

11th April 2011, 06:27 PM

It does. However, there are some issues with it. Please see this post. http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpost.php?p=1460017&postcount=237

And again, here. http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=261272

Dan

20th April 2011, 01:39 PM

Hmmmm.

This is the third day without a vunderbork update. Or any updates for that matter. Whussup with that?! This is a fedora beta. Surely there's got to be something else we can break today?! <..:confused:..>

<..:D..>

RahulSundaram

20th April 2011, 02:04 PM

Updates are on hold during the beta freeze period. It should start flooding again soon.

Dan

20th April 2011, 02:10 PM

Ahhhhh! Good! I was fixin' to get bored. <..:p..>

DBelton

20th April 2011, 02:25 PM

:p

I still have the ntfs-3g update on hold since it won't install with testdisk installed. Sooooo.. I have one in reserve if I get too bored over here :p

bob

20th April 2011, 02:29 PM

Okay, since this thread's about impressions, I've had a chance to play a bit and might as well add my initial ones.

First of all, if I hadn't been trying KDE for the last few weeks, Gnome3 would have been a major shock. The pristine desktop with the favorites menu is something that I've grown used to, although not in love with. The Applications menu in Gnome3 is actually an improvement over the KDE version in that all apps are alphabetically listed, rather than sub-screens.

The lack of a screensaver option is personally annoying to me. In Gnome2, I used my pictures file and enjoyed the scrolling panorama of my family. In KDE, I used the clock and left it powered up 24/7. Handy to check the time when heading to the john in the middle of the night. Yeah, I know...ewwww....but a necessity post-60!

Lack of minimize/normal/maximize buttons? Not a fan. Also, I might just want to launch more than one terminal at a time.

3D without using Nvidia? For once, it actually works, although the fps is poor and game play is compromised. In Sauerbraten, the shooter's hands are to the left and the weapon to the right of him, or not seen at times. Oh well, at least 3D is finally functional in FOSS.

Why no right-click capability?

Shutdown/Reboot are missing within the user's environment. Have to log out first? Cumbersome.

Well, there's much more to explore and comment on, I'm sure. That's all for now.