My thoughts on fallback mode

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Pretty hard to jump in on the mega-thread at this point. But wanted to
provide a few notes from my perspective:

 * I like the term "fallback mode" better than "classic GNOME" or 
   "GNOME 2" because it doesn't set up the expectation that everything
   is identical. And there are significant changes - the handling
   of notifications and the radically different System Settings are
   probably what people are going to notice most.

 * The primary point of fallback mode is dealing with virtualization
   and driver problems.

 * A secondary point is dealing with old hardware, but we should try
   to be clear that GNOME 3 is a modern desktop designed for reasonably
   current hardware. If you are running a r200 on a system you bought in
   2003, you are going to be happier with an operating system from that
   era or perhaps an operating system particularly tuned for old
   hardware. (It isn't just the desktop components, recent Linux kernels
   seem to be working less well with rotating disks, etc.)

 * There will also be some people that want to use gnome-panel because
   they aren't ready to change. While we want to encourage people who
   have capable hardware to update and use the new experience, there
   are multiple advantages to accommodating such users in fallback
   mode as well rather than telling them to use GNOME 2.

    - Because we have the ability to change the fallback mode
      components to interact better with new application (such as
      by providing transient and resident notifications), we can
      provide a consistent story to application developers about how
      their apps work in GNOME.

    - Providing some changes but not the most intrusive changes will
      get people on the path to moving to the full GNOME experience.

    - We don't have to worry about parallel install issues for GNOME
      libraries.

    - It reduces pressure on us to provide support for old versions
      of GNOME.

 * Because we should be trying to accommodate people that aren't quite
   ready to change, and because we have a working, tested solution in
   gnome-panel, I think gnome-panel is far more compelling as a path
   than something thrown together in a month or so. A quick one-off
   might be OK if all we were trying to do was to bridge people over
   until they can download new drivers, but the scope is bigger than
   that.

 * If (*if*) it doesn't suck up a lot of developer time, I don't see any
   harm in continuing to provide gnome-applets. Yes, I suppose it could
   be considered weird if there's a way of adding a pair of eyes to
   the panel in fallback mode but not in the full GNOME 3 experience,
   but honestly, if something thinks that their day is not complete
   without a pair of eyes in their panel, I'd rather let them use
   fallback mode than argue with them that they are wrong.

- Owen