Gnome 3 vs Gnome 2 (Compare)

[RogerOdle2]

How am I making the system useless? Gnome makes the system useless when it insists on controlling the login menu under conditions when it can not run and only throws out an "oh no something went wrong" message. There is no fallback mode that gets me back to a simpler desktop so I can fix the problem with modern tools. I have to use grub to launch in single user mode and try to fix the problem with tools that Hannibal would have used when he marched on Rome with his elephants. This is an intolerable situation that only power user's can resolve. It's not like you can check your logs and search the Internet for a solution when you are in single-user mode. So no. A safe-mode launch does not make your system useless, it would useful when these fancy toys you are so proud of have really "screwed the pooch". Safe-mode isn't for normal operation, it is for fixing your crap.

[Dan]

Another solution:

Use a different/backup GUI.

Install e16/E17. If Gnome 3 based GDM fails to come to a GDM screen, reboot into Runlevel3, then start a fully functional GUI with the appropriate command at the command line.

E16 is in the standard repos. E17 must be installed using the fmd repos.

[DBelton]

Actually, if it comes up with that "Oh No..." screen, you should be able to pop over to a console screen without having to reboot and fix things.

Try using ctrl-alt-F2 and bring up a console. You should then have full network access, etc... and have a better chance of finding your problem. (For one, your ~/.xsession-errors file should still be intact and possibly have error messages in it to help.)

[RogerOdle2]

Try using ctrl-alt-F2...

I have had success with that only about half the time. The last time it did not work was when Gnome insisted on using audio at startup and pulse audio didn't get along with the driver. The solution was to blacklist the driver but this could only be accomplished by logging in to single-user mode because gnome takes over too early. It is a design failure everytime the solution means going to single user mode. The average user can't do it and won't put up with it.

I believe that windows tries to figure out what you were trying to do when it crashed and tries not to repeat that action the next time you startup the computer. Windows will never be a "good" OS but at least it is trying to help the user restore basic functionality. Gnome wouldn't even tell be what it was trying to do that crashed. If you have enough control to print "Oh no. Somthing went wrong" to the screen then you have enough control to tell be some details.

At least there should be some kind of tag saved that is checked at startup when the Oh No message is displayed. If the computer was restarted while the message was displayed then the desktop should automatically boot to a minimal safe mode with services turned off and a message explaining why it did it. "You have been diverted to this safe mode because something went wrong last time and your system was not shut down properly." If possible, this should be followed by some simple crash report. Maybe provide a button to view the logs. Another button can allow you to proceed to a normal startup if you do not want to investigate the problem at that time.

The problem with single user mode is that it is difficult to use and it is too powerful. Most user's don't know how to get into single user mode. It is essential for people learning system administration or doing low level development. These people often crash their systems. Sometimes on purposes. Sometimes as part of the process of harding the systems to make them more robust. You know. The kind of testing where you throw more and more stuff at something until it breaks. But single user mode is a gaping security hole. Close the hole and you can't fix gome.

In my case, I had to black list a driver. Something that could only be done by root. Why? I think we want to get to a system where the user can blacklist the driver without being root. This may be accomplished by some request mechanism. The user may not have the authority to actually blacklist the driver but a blacklist request may be honored by the system automatically if it is reasonable. Blacklisting a sound driver would almost always be reasonable. Blacklisting a network driver may not. Some judgement call is needed. The idea is to give the user enough authority to fix the problem but no more.

[DeathFromAbove]

Don't get me started on Gnome 3. I just installed F17 and Gnome 3 is horrible! I need a wm which is fast and efficient, there for i think ill go back to Xfce, but i will have a go at KDE.

[Dan]

*Sigh!*

One more time ... e16 is in the repos, and E17 (Enlightenment) is available through the fmd repos.

su
rpm -Uvh  http://repo.fedora.md/fmd/fedora/fedoramd-release-17.rpm
yum install enlightenment exchange

It's worth a look. Nice eye candy, and rock solid performance.

[boydrice]

Originally Posted by Dan

*Sigh!*

One more time ... e16 is in the repos, and E17 (Enlightenment) is available through the fmd repos.

su
rpm -Uvh  http://repo.fedora.md/fmd/fedora/fedoramd-release-17.rpm
yum install enlightenment exchange

It's worth a look. Nice eye candy, and rock solid performance.

E17 is interesting and has some nice features, the "run them all" menu is really cool, but the configuration of E17 is a bit bizarre. I ran into some issues with E17 about a year ago, but perhaps it is more stable now. It is very light on resources but most themes are over glossy to the point of being garish, at least in my view.

[Dan]

Like most UIs, E17 is quite themeable. Individual components are themeable separately, which allows one to "undo" some of the garishness that does tend to infest a lot of E17 themes. <....> I've gotten mine down to a happy medium between flavor and folly. <....>

[DBelton]

Here's my attempt at a new Fedora 18 background

[BBQdave]

Originally Posted by DeathFromAbove

Don't get me started on Gnome 3. I just installed F17 and Gnome 3 is horrible! I need a wm which is fast and efficient, there for i think ill go back to Xfce...

Coming from Debian 6 (Gnome 2 with backports) and moving to Fedora 16 Xfce was an easy transition, and F16 Xfce's stability and smoothness is growing on me...

So though I am looking forward to F18 and Xfce 4.10, I am a little nervous about letting go of F16 Xfce and it's goodness.

[RogerOdle2]

We all have our preferences for desktop environments. Has anyone compared them for serviceability? Which ones assist routine maintenence the best? Which ones are the worst? Which. if any, has some kind of disaster recovery plan? I can tell you from experience that neither Gnome 2 nor Gnome 3 have made any real consideration for system recovery. I have used KDE when Gnome was hopeless but there are just some things that I have become accustomed to so I am reluctant to move away from an environment that I am familiar with. I am not alone in that feeling.

At some level, I think that a disaster recovery plan should be taken away from the window-manager people; or at least there should be some effort to supply a light-weight window manager for recovery and admin purposes. There should be some minimal GUI that you can boot to from grub or that your system will boot to automatically when there is a problem. In some cases, the kernel attempts a controlled crash through the kernel panic mechanism but it can be very difficult to capture this information. When possible, this information should be preserved.

The biggest area of concern that I have had lately is with audio drivers. These have caused the Gnome-3 "Oh no" messages that locked me out of my system? I can not tell you why. I would hope that non-essential things like audio would not be in a critical path that could threaten the entire system. It is and Fedora 17 crashed repeatedly until I blacklisted the audio driver responsible. This was a difficult thing to do as it required knowing how to boot into single user mode and modify the system through the terminal interface. No attempt was made by the window manager to determine at startup that the system had crashed the last time it was run. No attempt was made to tell be that audio was the problem. No attempt was made to bring up the system without audio so that I could administer the system without the terminal interface. No help was provided at all. It was only on account that I still had a working Fedora 16 system that I could get to the Internet to find a solution.

I can do this because I am a "power user". The average user would say that Linux is crap and hopeless and go running back to Wintel or Apple. This should be an area of serious concern for the Linux community. In the case of drivers, the kernel may retain sufficient control to note which driver it was operating when a problem occurred. In terms of drivers, crash recovery should do the following:

1. networking is not essential. Disable it. The user enable it manually from recovery mode. It may be the problem and has often been with wireless drivers.

2. audio is not essential. Disable it. Hopefully some record of audio problems appears in the system logs.

3. video: boot to vesa mode. This is the lowest common denominator for video. It is crappy but at least you have a video system capable of showing you control panels. It is possible that this may be a second strike kind of default. If you crashed trying to get to recovery mode with your preferred or recommended driver then fall back to vesa mode.

4. Startup USB for mouse and keyboard.

5. You must have the hard drive drivers running so you would not disable those. Partitions should me marked as to being essential to system operation in the /etc/fstab file. No non-essential partitions should be automatically mounted.

6. Other drivers, disable unless you can make a case for them.

That should leave you with a system that you have control over, unless you have a real hardware failure. And one with an environment that is more familiar to the average user than an empty terminal with a blinking cursor. Now you need a light-weight window manager for your recovery tools to run in.

[ElderSnake]

My disaster recovery plan: install Fluxbox/Openbox/IceWM/whatever. Done.

That said I believe Ubuntu has a graphical recovery system which can rollback drivers and such and do diagnostics but truthfully I've never used it. Recovery systems shouldnt be the job of the DE devs, but rather the distro maintainers IMO.

Me, I'll take the command-line and system logs any day.

[deanej]

Originally Posted by RogerOdle2

We all have our preferences for desktop environments. Has anyone compared them for serviceability? Which ones assist routine maintenence the best? Which ones are the worst? Which. if any, has some kind of disaster recovery plan? I can tell you from experience that neither Gnome 2 nor Gnome 3 have made any real consideration for system recovery. I have used KDE when Gnome was hopeless but there are just some things that I have become accustomed to so I am reluctant to move away from an environment that I am familiar with. I am not alone in that feeling.

At some level, I think that a disaster recovery plan should be taken away from the window-manager people; or at least there should be some effort to supply a light-weight window manager for recovery and admin purposes. There should be some minimal GUI that you can boot to from grub or that your system will boot to automatically when there is a problem. In some cases, the kernel attempts a controlled crash through the kernel panic mechanism but it can be very difficult to capture this information. When possible, this information should be preserved.

The biggest area of concern that I have had lately is with audio drivers. These have caused the Gnome-3 "Oh no" messages that locked me out of my system? I can not tell you why. I would hope that non-essential things like audio would not be in a critical path that could threaten the entire system. It is and Fedora 17 crashed repeatedly until I blacklisted the audio driver responsible. This was a difficult thing to do as it required knowing how to boot into single user mode and modify the system through the terminal interface. No attempt was made by the window manager to determine at startup that the system had crashed the last time it was run. No attempt was made to tell be that audio was the problem. No attempt was made to bring up the system without audio so that I could administer the system without the terminal interface. No help was provided at all. It was only on account that I still had a working Fedora 16 system that I could get to the Internet to find a solution.

I can do this because I am a "power user". The average user would say that Linux is crap and hopeless and go running back to Wintel or Apple. This should be an area of serious concern for the Linux community. In the case of drivers, the kernel may retain sufficient control to note which driver it was operating when a problem occurred. In terms of drivers, crash recovery should do the following:

1. networking is not essential. Disable it. The user enable it manually from recovery mode. It may be the problem and has often been with wireless drivers.

2. audio is not essential. Disable it. Hopefully some record of audio problems appears in the system logs.

3. video: boot to vesa mode. This is the lowest common denominator for video. It is crappy but at least you have a video system capable of showing you control panels. It is possible that this may be a second strike kind of default. If you crashed trying to get to recovery mode with your preferred or recommended driver then fall back to vesa mode.

4. Startup USB for mouse and keyboard.

5. You must have the hard drive drivers running so you would not disable those. Partitions should me marked as to being essential to system operation in the /etc/fstab file. No non-essential partitions should be automatically mounted.

6. Other drivers, disable unless you can make a case for them.

That should leave you with a system that you have control over, unless you have a real hardware failure. And one with an environment that is more familiar to the average user than an empty terminal with a blinking cursor. Now you need a light-weight window manager for your recovery tools to run in.

Agreed. It looks like to Gnome devs took the old programming idea that a crash is better than anything else (because it makes it easy to find where a bug is) and took it to the illogical extreme of crashing every time anything goes wrong. Perhaps they haven't realized that crashing is only the best kind of bug for programmers, not end users. The number of times a window manager crashes/freezes due to a problem in an unrelated application is alarming (I've had cinnamon freeze on me because rhythmbox did something wrong MANY times); I have lynx installed for when this happens since I don't have another computer to fall back on when something goes wrong but it's very cumbersome, especially since lynx prompts the user to accept each and every cookie with no way to change that extremely annoying behavior (EVERYTHING uses MANY cookies! The default should be to accept first party and block third party with NO prompting).

[cgeekwannabe]

I am not sure if this is the right thread for this question but is there any way to keep FC17 and go back to the standard (not sure of the nomenclature here) Gnome desktop? I *think* what I have is Gnome 3 but I'd like to go back to a previous version like the one that comes with RHEL?

[Dan]

Not possible. Gnome 2 has been decommissioned. Instead, there are alternatives.

Look for Cinnamon, or MATE as replacements for Gnome 3, or install XFCE or LXDE. They are a lot closer to the older Gnome 2 style of interface.