Gnome Shell Panel

[jff]

Anyone know it's possible move the panel from top to bottom? And if yes, then how?
Thanks.

[tox]

Anyone know it's possible move the panel from top to bottom? And if yes, then how?
Thanks.
you cant move the panel

[skyxn3t]

As far as I know, you can't. The Gnome 3.0/shell developers and designers want you to use their own design, they don't want you to customize YOUR OWN desktop to fit your own needs, this shell might be useful for a mobile phone, not for a production desktop where one needs to get things done... Oh well, enough ranting... RIP Gnome... time to look for other distors or DEs.

[jff]

That's bad because we loose lot of space on top of the screen - the panel will take one piece and the application window another piece.
That's problem when work with laptops as we need bend head down and it's not ergonomic (healthy).
Workaround: Put a small box under laptop to get it higher;)

[gccmaniac]

moving YOUR panel on YOUR desktop would be too distracting!... Gnome Dev Team just saved you!... but hey!!... you can look at it as much as you want....

[Wayne]

Chalk it up to Mac envy...

[tox]

As far as I know, you can't. The Gnome 3.0/shell developers and designers want you to use their own design, they don't want you to customize YOUR OWN desktop to fit your own needs, this shell might be useful for a mobile phone, not for a production desktop where one needs to get things done... Oh well, enough ranting... RIP Gnome... time to look for other distors or DEs.

you cant really customize Unity either. i have no problem with the way GS looks in the current state but in time it will get better. and as far as i know Unity will be the default in Ubuntu11.4

[skyxn3t]

you cant really customize Unity either. i have no problem with the way GS looks in the current state but in time it will get better. and as far as i know Unity will be the default in Ubuntu11.4

I never liked Ubuntu to begin with so Unity doesn't worry me but many people told me that Unity is even worse than Gnome shell so...
As far as the panels go, that's how they want their design to be and it's the final design, so there will always be one panel on top for activities and one on the bottom for alerts, from now on the only thing that's going to be released are bug fixes and maybe they will add some customization options, still not good for a production system where one needs to get things done, it's useful for mobile phones though, not desktops.

Anyway, there are other DEs and other distors that are not going to change to the new Gnome so there are other choices...

[tox]

thats it, there are other choices. soon enough there wont be unless you go with xfce or lxde or KDE

[RahulSundaram]

Hi

Sadly, the answers here so far haven't been accurate. Details at

http://bit.ly/hbNUmr

Hint: Use the alt key.

[Dan]

Your posted link comes back with this, Rahul:


Document not found

The document you are looking for does not exists.

[tox]

i get the same as Dan

[ah7013]

URL was missing a exclamation mark at end for some reason:
http://www.vuntz.net/journal/post/2011/04/13/gnome-panel-is-dead%2C-long-live-gnome-panel!

[Dan]

URL was missing a exclamation mark at end: The entries are also listed on the left.

Hmmm.

That all applies to fallback mode. What of panels adjust-ability in full Gnome shell?

[RahulSundaram]

GNOME Shell, the "panel" you get on top isn't really a traditional panel. The only way to tweak it is via extensions

[skyxn3t]

Hi

Sadly, the answers here so far haven't been accurate. Details at

http://bit.ly/hbNUmr

Hint: Use the alt key.

Fall back mode is gnome 2.xx without the freedom to customize and with many options removed. Even in the fall back mode they are not allowing you to customize your own desktop, keep it classy Gnome "Devs" :rolleyes:
I tried the Alt + Mouse Right Click but that didn't do anything.

I have: gnome-panel-3.0.0.1-2.fc15.x86_64 installed, if that makes any difference.

---- EDIT ---
Nevermind, I changed mouse_button_modifier to use "Ctrl" instead of "Alt" and that did the trick, still the fallback mode is not the same as Gnome 2.xx

[Dan]

Works here in fallback mode. But I darn well wish I could get my temperature and processor speed applets where I could see them in Gnome Shell! <..:mad:..>

[AdamW]

Dan...don't mean to sound officious, but if I had to monitor my temperature and CPU speed all the time I'd consider that a hardware bug. You really shouldn't need to...

[AdamW]

btw, the indignation about 'customizing YOUR desktop' doesn't really make sense. It's *not* 'your desktop' - you didn't write the code, did you? As soon as you use code written by anyone else, you cede all sorts of choices to them; where to draw the line where the developer decides stuff because they can't expose _absolutely everything_ as an option is a pretty subjective decision that's up to the developers. You don't expect to be able to resize every interface element by the pixel, for instance. Or change all 'OK' buttons to be circular.

As soon as you use someone else's code, you're asking that person to take care of things for you. It's inevitable. There isn't some sort of fundamental human right to be able to move panels around. It's a design decision.

[Dan]

Dan...don't mean to sound officious, but if I had to monitor my temperature and CPU speed all the time I'd consider that a hardware bug. You really shouldn't need to... Ain't that the flippin' truth! <..:rolleyes:..>


http://www.worldlawdirect.com/forum/class-actions-defective-products/16544-hp-pavilion-dv9000-others-overheating-damage-motherboard-failure.html

btw, the indignation about 'customizing YOUR desktop' doesn't really make sense. It's *not* 'your desktop' - you didn't write the code, did you? As soon as you use code written by anyone else, you cede all sorts of choices to them; where to draw the line where the developer decides stuff because they can't expose _absolutely everything_ as an option is a pretty subjective decision that's up to the developers. You don't expect to be able to resize every interface element by the pixel, for instance. Or change all 'OK' buttons to be circular.

As soon as you use someone else's code, you're asking that person to take care of things for you. It's inevitable. There isn't some sort of fundamental human right to be able to move panels around. It's a design decision.

Wow!

Okey, dokey. There you have it, folks. Straight from the fedora-man himself. It is what it is. Warts and all.





Live with it.


... or not (http://www.linuxmint.com/).

[leigh123linux]

Ain't that the flippin' truth! <..:rolleyes:..>


http://www.worldlawdirect.com/forum/class-actions-defective-products/16544-hp-pavilion-dv9000-others-overheating-damage-motherboard-failure.html



Wow!

Okey, dokey. There you have it, folks. Straight from the fedora-man himself. It is what it is. Warts and all.





Live with it.


... or not (http://www.linuxmint.com/).

Or dump it :cool:

[jff]

The answers here sounds like having or buy a car where you can't adjust seat nor steering wheel;)
Anyway, was hoping someone understand the usability.

[fpmurphy]

btw, the indignation about 'customizing YOUR desktop' doesn't really make sense. It's *not* 'your desktop' - you didn't write the code, did you? As soon as you use code written by anyone else, you cede all sorts of choices to them; where to draw the line where the developer decides stuff because they can't expose _absolutely everything_ as an option is a pretty subjective decision that's up to the developers. You don't expect to be able to resize every interface element by the pixel, for instance. Or change all 'OK' buttons to be circular.

As soon as you use someone else's code, you're asking that person to take care of things for you. It's inevitable. There isn't some sort of fundamental human right to be able to move panels around. It's a design decision.

Nice to hear the truth!

[bob]

Well, it's not YOUR car, is it? You didn't build the seat, steering wheel or dive shaft (although you might get the shaft, it seems). :rolleyes:

Sorry, Adam, but I couldn't resist. I know you really didn't intend to come off as We Who Know What's Good For You, but there was a bit of a tone there. ;)

[skyxn3t]

btw, the indignation about 'customizing YOUR desktop' doesn't really make sense. It's *not* 'your desktop' - you didn't write the code, did you? As soon as you use code written by anyone else, you cede all sorts of choices to them; where to draw the line where the developer decides stuff because they can't expose _absolutely everything_ as an option is a pretty subjective decision that's up to the developers. You don't expect to be able to resize every interface element by the pixel, for instance. Or change all 'OK' buttons to be circular.

As soon as you use someone else's code, you're asking that person to take care of things for you. It's inevitable. There isn't some sort of fundamental human right to be able to move panels around. It's a design decision.

Well your response is certainly better than that of the Gnome developers, "If you don't like it, go fork your own gnome"

I know I didn't design it or write the code, what I meant by "your own desktop" is customization, I would like to be able to customize "my own" desktop the way I used to in Gnomoe 2.xx to fit my own needs, with Gnome shell or even the fallback you are stuck with what the designers and devs want and if you don't like it that's too bad, live with it.

In Ubuntu at least you can use the full featured classic Gnome 2.xx if you don't want Unity, but in Fedora you are stuck with the fallback, which is sort of like a very crippled version of gnome 2.xx

There's nothing we can do about it, you are right about that, but as I said before, there are other Desktop Environments and distors so the gnome 3 devs can s*ck it ; - )

[DBelton]

Works here in fallback mode. But I darn well wish I could get my temperature and processor speed applets where I could see them in Gnome Shell! <..:mad:..>

according to the propaganda over on the gnome 3 site..



. A thorough review of the functionality provided by GNOME 2 applets has also been conducted as a part of the GNOME Shell design process and it was concluded that no essential functionality has been omitted from the GNOME Shell design.



So you should have your temp and cpu processor speed in there someplace! :D

I love this quote from the gonme 3 site as well...


Why no window list or dock?

The Shell is designed in order to minimise distraction and interuption and to enable users to focus on the task at hand. A persistent window list or dock would interfere with this goal, serving as a constant temptation to switch focus. The separation of window switching functionality into the overview means that an effective solution to switching is provided when it is desired by the user, but that it is hidden from view when it is not necessary.


or this one too...


What about theming and customisation?

One of the core goals of GNOME Shell is to provide the GNOME desktop with a consistent and identifiable visual identity. As a result, GNOME Shell provides a more limited set of customisation options than are provided by the GNOME 2 desktop.



Soooo.. they want to minimise distraction by stripping out the usable stuff, then undo all of that with those wild vertical stripes, eh? LOL

[Dan]

Or dump it :cool:Leigh ... how big did your base Scientific 6 install end up? Looks like I'll have 28.8 some gigs to play with fairly soon.

The F15 with most of the graphics stuff and the assorted office gear came in at a little over 6 gigs. Comparable with Scientific?

[leigh123linux]

Leigh ... how big did your base Scientific 6 install end up? Looks like I'll have 28.8 some gigs to play with fairly soon.

The F15 with most of the graphics stuff and the assorted office gear came in at a little over 6 gigs. Comparable with Scientific?


12GB with all the development bits


[leigh@main_pc ~]$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2 19G 12G 7.1G 62% /
tmpfs 4.0G 568K 4.0G 1% /dev/shm
/dev/sdb3 97G 24G 68G 26% /home
none 4.0G 36K 4.0G 1% /tmp
/dev/sdc8 37G 1.2G 34G 4% /var/lib/mock
/dev/sdb2 184G 118G 57G 68% /home/leigh/qBT_dir
/dev/sdc5 115G 35G 81G 30% /home/leigh/data
/dev/sdc7 58G 32G 26G 56% /home/leigh/data1
/dev/sdc6 115G 41G 75G 35% /home/leigh/development
[leigh@main_pc ~]$

[Dan]

Yikes!

I need a bigger partition!

[Wayne]

Wow! How to alienate your user base in one easy lesson. I'm soooo glad I switched to KDE where I still have choice!

I think the Gnome devs are working for Microsoft and the Gnome-Shell is a ploy to get users to switch to Windows :eek:

[skyxn3t]

Wow! How to alienate your user base in one easy lesson. I'm soooo glad I switched to KDE where I still have choice!

I think the Gnome devs are working for Microsoft and the Gnome-Shell is a ploy to get users to switch to Windows :eek:

Well at least the windows interface is user friendly, stable, efficient and very easy to use, I'd say the Gnome devs are the ones that were fired by Microsoft ; - )

[robgarth]

I am so fed up with rants.

For everyone that hates gnome-shell someone else likes. For everyone who says Fedora is doomed because of it, someone else says it is the second-coming of desktops.

A decision was made by the gnome foundation to go a new direction. If you don't like it use something else, if you do, great.

Everyone who is finding refuge in KDE, remember the KDE guys did something very similar in the move from 3 to 4.

Users come and go depending on the direction software devs go. I am sure the Fedora project know this, and I am sure Gnome know this. Can we please just stop the ranting.

[gccmaniac]

btw, the indignation about 'customizing YOUR desktop' doesn't really make sense. It's *not* 'your desktop' - you didn't write the code, did you? As soon as you use code written by anyone else, you cede all sorts of choices to them; where to draw the line where the developer decides stuff because they can't expose _absolutely everything_ as an option is a pretty subjective decision that's up to the developers. You don't expect to be able to resize every interface element by the pixel, for instance. Or change all 'OK' buttons to be circular.

As soon as you use someone else's code, you're asking that person to take care of things for you. It's inevitable. There isn't some sort of fundamental human right to be able to move panels around. It's a design decision.

...now... that's a community spirit!!!... I guess AdamW you already know that someone doesn't need to be a developer or to write code to participate in a FOSS community and tell his opinion.. Nevertheless it's not a surprise to me to see that kind of thought from a RH person... After Redhat 9, it is now the second time you are dumping all the people who use your code. In business there are successfull decisions and not so successfull desicions ... we have to wait and see this Gnome 3 Experiment.... but we certainly can immediately recognise arrogant behaviors....!!!

so... guess what ...if WE don't use YOUR code ...you are out of business!

[Dan]

... . Can we please just stop the ranting.Uhm ... actually, no. This is a community, and a community forum. It is not a commercial enterprise, nor a dictatorship, nor is it a fan club. It is, obviously one of the last resources the overall user community has in which to make their opinions, concerns, ideas and disgruntlements known.

The way to solve these kinds of issues is not to suppress debate about it. It is a communication process. Admittedly, at the current moment, it is not all positive. From the overview perspective as admin here on the forum, the amount of community push-back this time around is not only unprecedented, but quite clear and pointed in it's character. I also think that one of the overall issues it illustrates is the breakdown in the communication/idea flow between those who develop, and those who use the developed product. That disconnect has been growing for some time now, and whereas previously the community has been either tolerant, or accepting by way of a discontented and brooding silence, that seems to no longer be the case.

I think some of the the important take-aways from all this are: that insulating oneself too far from the desires and needs of your product's market users (read: buyers) is a risky business. Innovation is one thing, failure to serve the needs of the community is another; Whereas, "Good grief! Try it first!" is a very valid and many times necessary concept, "Screw-off, if you don't like it" is an attitude from an entirely different kettle of fish. The first bespeaks tolerant maturity, and a certain amount of respect. The second ... not so much.

[soundfreely]

Well... I also think a lot of people who are happy with the new direction aren't as vocal about the good news as the people who aren't happy with the changes.

I can't help but wonder if there's some curmudgeon out there pining over his loss of "green screens" and floppy disks.

[Dan]

The old, "buggy whip manufacturer's" argument, eh? Meh. There may be something to that. too. Although, even among curmudgeons, I'd bet you can count the number of true fans of floppy disks ... on the fingers of your left ear.

[RahulSundaram]

Hi

We are all individuals speaking and it is silly to assume that we do so on behalf of the project or any vendor unless stated otherwise.

Good or bad, pretty much all the major changes get this kind of feedback and in fact, I don't recall any single big change that doesn't get rants from atleast dozens of folks. I have seen this happen for well over a decade now. Lilo to GRUB, static /dev to udev, SELinux, PackageKit, PolicyKit, HAL, PulseAudio, NetworkManager, KDE 4, GNOME 3 - you name it and I can point exactly the same thing. That doesn't mean they are bad or wrong but calling it unprecedented doesn't match what I have seen IMO. It takes a few releases before we really know which projects have been successful or not. Practically everyone would agree that KDE 4 at launch time was fairly disastrous but I don't see negative opinions much about it now for instance. Give it time, report bugs, provide feedback upstream and things will evolve, usually for the better.

It is important to recognize that, in almost all these cases, what Fedora is doing is integrated existing components. Whatever development happens, it doesn't usually happen within the context of Fedora itself. Sure there are Red Hat developers participating in many of these but feedback about design of GNOME Shell for instance is outside the scope of Fedora to a large part. We get to integrate it and if there are straight forward bugs or security problems, we will strive to fix it. Other than that, ranting here isn't going to change a single thing typically. Of course, feel free to but lets get the expectations right.

[DBelton]

You know.. I would think that people at Redhat would be more concerned with the way things are going with Gnome 3.

For one thing.. It's possible that Gnome 3 could lose them some of their paid customer base if Gnome 3 trickles down into RHEL. As it is sitting right now, a lot of government systems would not be able to put it on their machines.

Where I work, PC's that connect into the main network can't use Windows, and most use some flavor of linux. It would be a shame to cut out a big user base and lose a lot of revenue.

[RahulSundaram]

This isn't a RHEL forum and if there are Red Hat customers who want to provide feedback, there are other channels for that. No point in conflating those with feedback from users in a community forum. Having worn the hat of a support person for a while, I can guarantee that, those are two very different.

[megaloman]

Hi

We are all individuals speaking and it is silly to assume that we do so on behalf of the project or any vendor unless stated otherwise.

Good or bad, pretty much all the major changes get this kind of feedback and in fact, I don't recall any single big change that doesn't get rants from atleast dozens of folks. I have seen this happen for well over a decade now. Lilo to GRUB, static /dev to udev, SELinux, PackageKit, PolicyKit, HAL, PulseAudio, NetworkManager, KDE 4, GNOME 3 - you name it and I can point exactly the same thing. That doesn't mean they are bad or wrong but calling it unprecedented doesn't match what I have seen IMO. It takes a few releases before we really know which projects have been successful or not. Practically everyone would agree that KDE 4 at launch time was fairly disastrous but I don't see negative opinions much about it now for instance. Give it time, report bugs, provide feedback upstream and things will evolve, usually for the better.

It is important to recognize that, in almost all these cases, what Fedora is doing is integrated existing components. Whatever development happens, it doesn't usually happen within the context of Fedora itself. Sure there are Red Hat developers participating in many of these but feedback about design of GNOME Shell for instance is outside the scope of Fedora to a large part. We get to integrate it and if there are straight forward bugs or security problems, we will strive to fix it. Other than that, ranting here isn't going to change a single thing typically. Of course, feel free to but lets get the expectations right.

I agree with you - any time something changes, you'll get people unhappy about the change. I was unhappy about introduction of PulseAudio, as it was buggy and didn't work well on my hardware - eventually it got fixed. But that was a minor thing, I could live with ie. by listening to the music from my mp3 player while working - not a big deal. I was quite unhappy, when Gnome has changed the way it managed sound volume - the new approach does not work for me, but yet - once configured I can forget about it. Not a big deal.

Gnome-shell though is a big deal - it's going to replace my desktop, my work board. From one side I am quite happy, that Gnome Devs are exploring new ideas, new ways for the desktop - that's really great! From the other side I need a desktop to work on - Gnome-Shell is not ready to replace my work desktop. It looks like and works as if it was written for a tablet, not for a full featured computer. There are important pieces of functionality missing, which may not be useful for some devs, but they are very useful for users. I even started to use Gnome Shell as a default desktop on my spare laptop to get used to it - as some one said "try it, you'll love it" - I am trying it since Fedora 15 Alpha came out and to be honest, I am very disappointed. It does not work for me - almost every single task takes longer to achieve with Gnome-Shell, than it used to with Gnome 2.0, there are important elements missing - starting with a list of windows - yes, I like to see it at glance and switch between them quickly; applets - inhibit applet, weather applet, system monitor, fan monitor... they are informative, yet very useful for me - why would I have to open a browser and look for a weather? it takes way too long... lack of customisation - yes, I really don't like the new font, I much prefer Droid Sans on my desktop, I do not understand why Gnome-Shell ignores font hinting settings - although I've managed to set anitaliasing to rgba, gnome-shell draws everything using greyscale, not rgba anitaliasing... and why is it black? yes, of course, there are ways of forcing gnome-shell to change it's default behaviour, but why? And what about accessing my files? where is the list of my recently open files? why nautilus got handicapped? why there are no icons on the desktop?

Yes, people tend to rant with every change, though most of the time, those changes don't break their habits and don't remove core functionality. KDE change was quite big, though it did not remove core functionality! and they kept 3.x alive for a while. Gnome 3.0 brings the whole new way of using laptop and dumps Gnome 2.x completely ignoring their users.

Fedora 15 will be a release to skip on my workstation, after that I might consider using other distro, don't think Gnome-shell will improve enough to be usable on my workstation.

[RahulSundaram]

Hi

It's not like you are forced to use it. There are literally dozens of alternatives including sticking with Fedora 14 and skipping a release, using fallback mode, Xfce, KDE and ... you get the idea. If you don't like one, pick something else. I am sure there is room to satisfy everyone.

[Dan]

Hi

We are all individuals speaking and it is silly to assume that we do so on behalf of the project or any vendor unless stated otherwise.

Good or bad, pretty much all the major changes get this kind of feedback and in fact, I don't recall any single big change that doesn't get rants from atleast dozens of folks. I have seen this happen for well over a decade now. Lilo to GRUB, static /dev to udev, SELinux, PackageKit, PolicyKit, HAL, PulseAudio, NetworkManager, KDE 4, GNOME 3 - you name it and I can point exactly the same thing. That doesn't mean they are bad or wrong but calling it unprecedented doesn't match what I have seen IMO. It takes a few releases before we really know which projects have been successful or not. Practically everyone would agree that KDE 4 at launch time was fairly disastrous but I don't see negative opinions much about it now for instance. Give it time, report bugs, provide feedback upstream and things will evolve, usually for the better.

It is important to recognize that, in almost all these cases, what Fedora is doing is integrated existing components. Whatever development happens, it doesn't usually happen within the context of Fedora itself. Sure there are Red Hat developers participating in many of these but feedback about design of GNOME Shell for instance is outside the scope of Fedora to a large part. We get to integrate it and if there are straight forward bugs or security problems, we will strive to fix it. Other than that, ranting here isn't going to change a single thing typically. Of course, feel free to but lets get the expectations right.I'll agree to some of that, and disagree with some, Rahul. I disagree that the response has not been unprecedented. I do, however, agree that there has been some grousing about most everything you listed. PulseAudio being my own personal pet peeve. (And that only because it still gives me grief on this box. Otherwise, It's learning manners quite nicely.)

You are also quite right about the fact that these things tend to evolve toward the better. When they work. I consider NetworkManager, PackageKit, udev, HAL, GRUB (1~2), PolicyKit, etc. to be mostly good things. Although I can see circumstances in which they'd be about as welcome as a porcupine in a condom factory. KDE? Meh. I don't use it on a daily basis.

And that's kind of my point. Fedora is, and has always been a very Gnome-centric distro. Therefore, when KDE took the hits for their changes, it did not effect the majority of fedora users. Gnome3, on the other hand, definitely does. Which is not to deliberately "fringe" our devoted KDE users, it's simply a statement of fact. That alone makes the push-back in this case both notable ... and useful.

Regarding the willingness to be a viable part of the solution, rather than an active or passive component of the problem, I call attention to the fact that even though Gnome 3/Shell is not particularly attractive to me in my environment, and my use of it will probably be pretty limited, I have both by action and word supported both it, and you, in the growing process of encouraging the product, the project, and the community.

I will, however, admit that some of my bug reports have been less than ideal. That's mostly due to hard lock-ups and forced resets leaving little useful evidence. It also didn't help that there for a while, ABRT couldn't find its own backtrace with both hands and a persistent itch to guide it. <..:rolleyes:..> But on the whole, the boog repoorts have been filed.


(Saved to take a break. Edits forthcoming below.)


And I would also wager that a good percentage of the folks who are expressing misgivings about Gnome 3 and Gnome Shell here, are not only production users in both private and government concerns, but also trying to help by offering suggestions or testing and filing bug reports. Yeah, some have read the handwriting on the wall and picked up their toys and gone home with little constructive feedback, but most are not being ugly and vindictive about it all. They're just trying to contribute to the effort to turn this thing into a silk purse.

Many of the issues which initially were major stumbling blocks have now produced work-arounds or plain fixes. The no-icon desktop now has options, the screen components of Gnome Shell now have options (Due almost entirely to your efforts. Thank you!), and it looks like theme-ability is happening as we speak here. Those were big deals to much of the using community. And they are evolving, as they should, through community feedback.

That is as it should be.

So I really do not consider the community's current push-back a bad thing. I think, however, that folks copping an ego-driven attitude, failing to acknowledge it, and not attempting to address much of it, (on BOTH sides of the argument) certainly would be.

[RahulSundaram]

Hi

FWIW, I expect the feedback surrouding GNOME 3 and the evolution and acceptance to be not much different from KDE 4. Sure, a bunch of users will jump to other desktop environments and some will come back in a few releases but I would be surprised if in a couple releases, users won't find something else to complain about and take GNOME 3 for granted. If there is anyone here who used be around during the GNOME 1.4 to 2 transition, you will know exactly what I am talking about. Oh boy, that was fun!

As far as bug reports go, if they are reproducible and has good details, drop me a link and I will take a look. So far the only one I haven't followed through is the one I couldn't reproduce.

[arowana]

From my perception many complains are obviously driven by the decision to dump classic Gnome, not so much by the development of Gnome 3.

For myself I decided to stop complaining about Gnome 3 in general as it is too late for this kind of debate now.

Instead i hope Fedora people get back to where improvement is needed en detail, to "help" or help developers with positive vibes. Gnome 3 feels like pre-release software at a moment but it is easy to see that it will be a very good OS in the future and i think everyone should be interested in reaching this point as soon as possible.

[Dan]

... As far as bug reports go, if they are reproducible and has good details, drop me a link and I will take a look. So far the only one I haven't followed through is the one I couldn't reproduce. Between you, Owen and Andre, I'm not sure there are any currently outstanding that updates have not fixed. The Gnome Shell-GIMP
crashing issue is still on-going, but I haven't gotten anything solid yet to report. That one may well be related to the video drivers, though. It may also be hardware specific.

EDIT: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=1461333 post 390~392

[soundfreely]

In fairness, I'm very new to Linux-based OSes in general. I am looking forward to riding the evolution (as it stands from release - not pre-release) from the start.

I'm probably going way off-topic but isn't something like pulseaudio a necessity for multiple applications sending sound? IOW, does alsa by itself provide sample rate matching when two applications provide audio of different rates? AFAIK, you must employ something like pulseaudio to perform sample rate conversions as needed - otherwise, you will not be able to send multiple sound streams of different sources.

Anyway, my assumption is that GNome 3, is very much like pulseaudio. It likely has some changes that are a necessity for Linux to continue to evolve and remain useful to all needs.

[AdamW]

...now... that's a community spirit!!!... I guess AdamW you already know that someone doesn't need to be a developer or to write code to participate in a FOSS community and tell his opinion.. Nevertheless it's not a surprise to me to see that kind of thought from a RH person... After Redhat 9, it is now the second time you are dumping all the people who use your code. In business there are successfull decisions and not so successfull desicions ... we have to wait and see this Gnome 3 Experiment.... but we certainly can immediately recognise arrogant behaviors....!!!

so... guess what ...if WE don't use YOUR code ...you are out of business!

GNOME 3 isn't my code, or Fedora's code, or Red Hat's code. It's GNOME's code. I'm not representing the developers here, I'm making what you'd call a 'general point'. It applies to all desktops, not just GNOME 3; it applies to all software ever, period. You can look at the very act of writing software (especially a desktop interface) as making choices for the people who use it: what _is_ a desktop interface? It's a defined set of interactions with a computing environment. Almost by definition, it's a set of choices made by the developers on behalf of the users in order to allow them to interact with a computer.

[AdamW]

soundfreely: "I'm probably going way off-topic but isn't something like pulseaudio a necessity for multiple applications sending sound?"

No.

"IOW, does alsa by itself provide sample rate matching when two applications provide audio of different rates?"

Yes.

alsa has a plugin called dmix which was introduced a couple of years before PA starting gaining widespread acceptance, which does software mixing. There are still quite a lot of things PA does that ALSA can't, but software mixing isn't one of them.

[fpmurphy]

GNOME 3 isn't my code, or Fedora's code, or Red Hat's code. It's GNOME's code. I'm not representing the developers here, I'm making what you'd call a 'general point'. It applies to all desktops, not just GNOME 3; it applies to all software ever, period. You can look at the very act of writing software (especially a desktop interface) as making choices for the people who use it: what _is_ a desktop interface? It's a defined set of interactions with a computing environment. Almost by definition, it's a set of choices made by the developers on behalf of the users in order to allow them to interact with a computer.

Well said and so true!

[megaloman]

GNOME 3 isn't my code, or Fedora's code, or Red Hat's code. It's GNOME's code. I'm not representing the developers here, I'm making what you'd call a 'general point'. It applies to all desktops, not just GNOME 3; it applies to all software ever, period. You can look at the very act of writing software (especially a desktop interface) as making choices for the people who use it: what _is_ a desktop interface? It's a defined set of interactions with a computing environment. Almost by definition, it's a set of choices made by the developers on behalf of the users in order to allow them to interact with a computer.


I agree with you Adam, I am a software developer too. I make decisions for users, I don't make desktop interfaces, but still I try to make usable applications for users. But making usable applications / desktops and making choices for users does not mean deleting core functionality or deciding what's usable for users.

I can recall one of the Gnome developers stating that he did not understand point of many applets - not his fault. For him, ascetic panel with nothing on can be usable, for me it's useless. When you make choices for users, you should always think about those who don't agree with you or have different usability needs.

Lets see a simple example - inhibit applet - for you it may be useless piece of software, but for me it was actually a very useful one. Whenever I wanted to make a presentation or calibrate my monitor, I had it handy on the panel and I could just click on it to activate, than click to de-activate. Now my only option is to open power settings and change it from there, a number of clicks and wasted time. Your friend would say - less clutter on the panel and improved usability. Is it really?

My point is - being able to make choices for users is a huge responsibility and Gnome developers should act as adults, grown ups and responsible people while making those decisions. There is nothing wrong in admitting they didn't thought through all usability cases and reconsider features. Instead we have people who behave like a little kids who can only say "if you don't like, go elsewhere". That gives a very strong message to the community, that developers don't care about their community and developers don't listen to their community. That should be a mutual communication between both developers and community; and developers should make their choices based on community needs not their personal believes.

When I first heard about Gnome 3, I was excited. I was really looking forward it. The actual Gnome 3 release (Fedora 15 Alpha/Beta) is not as exciting. It's something I would call "technology preview for tablets", not for desktop.

[RahulSundaram]

Hi

"I agree with you Adam, I am a software developer too. I make decisions for users, I don't make desktop interfaces, but still I try to make usable applications for user"

There is a big difference between general development and a desktop where interface design is crtiical. I recommend talking to a few good interface designers to understand why. The following reference from 2002 still holds true IMO especially the part about preferences overload

http://ometer.com/free-software-ui.html

[AdamW]

megaloman: remember the process, here.

GNOME 2.0 didn't have an inhibit applet. I don't remember if it had _any_ applets. Similarly with Windows 95; when it came out, there weren't ten thousand apps which dumped an icon in the lower-right.

What happened is these desktops came out and some app developers decided that 'sticking an applet on the panel' was a good design choice for the function they were trying to achieve - whether that's checking stocks, or the weather, or whatever. It's *not* the case that GNOME or Microsoft went out and wrote all these little applets. It was a later development.

Now, with GNOME 3, we have a new interface. Maybe an applet on the panel isn't necessarily the best way to do these tasks any more. There's nothing inevitable about an applet being the way to do it; it's just what happened to become popular in the wake of Windows 95-style designs.

What I'd expect to happen is that third party developers will come up with various approaches to integrating the same kinds of function into the Shell, one of those will become popular, and probably over time, that approach will become 'blessed', the GNOME team will make sure it keeps working, and distros will integrate some of the more key examples. But this all happens *once the new paradigm is established*. It's not the responsibility of the GNOME team to decide on what should replace applets for these purposes and port ten thousand of them over.