Re: Module Proposal: GNOME Shell

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Sat, 2010-04-03 at 17:05 +0000, jhs jsschmid de wrote:
> Hi William!
> 
> >
> > I think it is better to say: GNOME 2 will still be available after
> > GNOME 3 is released.  Perhaps in long term stable maintenance mode.
> >
> > http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/FAQ#What_led_to_the_decision_to_make_3D_acceleration_a_requirement_for_GNOME_Shell.3F
> >
> 
> I think this reduces GNOME 3.0 to gnome-shell which is not entirely right.
> Actually GNOME 3.0 is a API/ABI-broken release which includes some new
> interface elements if you have hardware support but also lots of other
> stuff (zeitgeist comes into my mind, mallard help, dropped Bonobo, etc.)
> 
> Saying that GNOME3 without hardware accelaration is GNOME 2.x is like
> saying that Windows 7 without Aero (do they still call it "Aero"?) is
> Windows XP.

Microsoft put a huge amount of effort in trying to make the experience
with and without Aero as identical as possible. In addition to the
development time that was put into that, it means that the usage of 3D
acceleration is largely restricted to eye candy. You can't introduce new
UI concepts that require graphics acceleration if sometimes you might
not have graphics acceleration.

In our case, if you have screenshots of:

 * GNOME Shell - single black top panel, overview, message tray, etc.
 * GNOME Panel - two gray panels, no overview, no message tray, etc.

I think it's obvious that they are two different versions of the
software. The fact that they both are running with new software
libraries beneath the scenes is pretty much irrelevant to the user. If
we if we try to market GNOME Shell and GNOME 3 as two different concepts
where the second one might just look pretty much like GNOME 2 or might
contain GNOME Shell, we are simply going to confuse the heck out of
people.

- Owen