Re: My thoughts on fallback mode

[Christopher Roy Bratusek <zanghar freenet de>]

On Tuesday 04 January 2011 01:16:54 Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-01-04 at 01:10 +0100, Mario Blättermann wrote:
> > Am Dienstag, den 04.01.2011, 00:41 +0100 schrieb Christopher Roy
> > 
> > Bratusek:
> > > > What about to have a gnome-shell with a fallback
> > > > mode which works (with function constraints) with the good old
> > > > metacity or other window managers?
> > > 
> > > *that* would be a kick-ass to step back from "We force you to use
> > > Mutter, when you're going to use GNOME-Shell" attitude. I've been
> > > following the discussions from users point of view and lots (and I
> > > mean it) have complained about having to use Mutter in favour of their
> > > current WM.
> > 
> > I agree with you. In the last years, I've learned to appreciate GNOME
> > because of its modularity, which doesn't preclude integrity. Nowadays it
> > is still possible to drive a system with Openbox instead of Metacity and
> > without Nautilus at all.
> 
> this is what we don't want any more.

Right. This is what you want. But that's not what lots of users want. Is it 
realy desired to develop GNOME away from it's former users? I think this way 
GNOME will sooner or later loose a (more than) percebtible amount of them.

> this modularity, and the fact that you can voltronize anything and still
> call it "GNOME" is a maintainership hurdle and it stop a coherent vision
> of GNOME as an operating system.
> 
> >  In fact, GNOME is built on top of a basic
> > 
> > gnome-session. If it switches completely to mutter/gnome-shell or any
> > other thing which forces the user to use that and nothing else, we end
> > up in a desktop which is as strong bolted as Windows or MacOSX and get a
> > considerable part of the "freedom of choice" lost.
> 
> GNOME is not about "choice"; it is about freedom, but the two are not
> related.

What about the freedom to choose? At the point where you disallow users to 
choose, it's not freedom at all. Of course they have the choice to use KDE, 
E17, XFCE or whatever instead, but when they choose GNOME they are forced to 
use your desired components, and that's *NOT* freedom at all. At least not 
what man call freedom.

> > If this ever really happens, I will turn away from GNOME, I'm sure.
> 
> this is part of the freedoms GNOME allows.

How kindhearted, Saya.

... above you said GNOME is about freedom, so now you differ between *this* and 
*that* freedom, that's not a very straight-line king to argue, if you ask me.

> 
> ciao,
>  Emmanuele.

So to summarize: As long as users accept what you want them to, it's ok, else 
they might go jump in the lake... Not that other Desktops fullfil users wishes 
by 100% but much more than GNOME3 will do.

Chris