Re: My thoughts on fallback mode

[Milan Bouchet-Valat <nalimilan club fr>]

Le mardi 04 janvier 2011 à 10:54 +0100, Christopher Roy Bratusek a
écrit :
> Ever thought, that the attitude of the people above (especially Emanuelles 
> arrogant "we allow you to choose another DE, that's the freedom we leave to 
> you") might stop possible contributors from doing so?
> 
> And: if critics are only allowed when providing patches, something isn't 
> right. Unless they don't accept that they are not infaillable, why should they 
> accept patches, as it's their mind and their decision that's ultimate, not the 
> contributors or (even worser) users?
> 
> Emanuelle said GNOME3 won't be modular anymore, so why should anyone bother 
> providing patches, *before* they changed their mood? No one will, because 
> their statements clearly tell people "we won't accept patches in that 
> direction, as the decision we made is already done and ultimate, we don't 
> fail, period".
That's not about patches. The decision that the Shell requires Mutter isn't
something you can patch out, that's a design decision that affects the whole
codebase and strongly impacts developer's efficiency and the project's stability.

This decision is in the hands of people that define the general design
of the GNOME desktop, who are the ones working the most on it. You can
ask them to listen to your criticism, but you can't force them to drop
this design, because that's not something random contributors could fix
(Contrary to keeping panel and applets working in GNOME 3.)

> So before doing anything we would first try to open their minds by writing 
> mails like we just did, but: they are not open-minded, so I fear we could make 
> this discussion endless with no change in any regard.
> 
> To bring this discussion to end from my side, my conclusion:
> 
> Linus was absolutely right as he called them "control freaks", but with GNOME3 
> their freakyness is taken to another dimension, if you ask me. Since they 
> argue like what they do is ultimate, no one will waste his/her freetime to 
> contribute patches in a direction against those decisions. (Again: I'm *not* 
> talking about gnome-applets!) I thought we would be able to wake them up from 
> their trance, but we failed... lot's of users already left GNOME and 
> especially Compiz-Fans will, as soon  as they recognize:
> 
> GNOME3 + Compiz = Fail ... or: GNOME3 + Sawfish = Fail
GNOME 3's Shell + Compiz = Fail
so use GNOME 3's fallback mode + Compiz if you really like Compiz (or
Sawfish). Nobody said gnome-panel was being removed.

> Why should someone who's hardware is capable of running Plasma (which runs 
> just fine without 3D accel and which is equal in 2D and 3D, except animations), 
> use an incomplete fallback rather than something more appealing? Unlike GNOME-
> Shell Plasms is not limited to KWin. Sooner or later people will recognize 
> that and KDE will get "lightyears" in front. We wanted to point that 
> missconcept out, but imagine this: someone would listen to a non-gods (^= non-
> RT) voice. OMG.
The Shell requires 3D acceleration because it's at the core of its
features - that's not just eye candy, that's really useful. It's almost
like asking Compiz to provide a non-composited compatibility mode. Do
you want the Shell to work without animations, i.e. an Exposé-like
effect that wouldn't use compositing? That wouldn't be usable.


Regards