Re: My thoughts on fallback mode

[Johannes Schmid <jhs jsschmid de>]

Hi Christopher!

> Besides... did modularity ever enslave a GNOME developer? Never. I expected 
> more than a statement like that.

This modularity prevents to create a solid user experience in various
ways because everything needs to be compatible with random components
that cannot even be tested properly.

And to be honest, 99% of the user-base has used gnome-panel +
metacity/compiz through the whole GNOME 2.x life-cycle so it is save to
assume that customization is not a big feature. Have a look at the
installations used by mainstream users (at hostels, internet cafés,
universities, non cs-students) and you will hardly find anybody not
using metacity (ok, or compiz, hardly any effects on) + gnome-shell. As
mutter provides all the compositing already, the choice for compiz is
obsolete.

Having said this, GNOME 3 is still quite modular, you could even write a
gnome-panel as mutter plugin and you can run GNOME 3 components with
Unity or whatever. It won't be called vanilla GNOME though.

Regards,
Johannes