Re: My thoughts on fallback mode

[Christopher Roy Bratusek <zanghar freenet de>]

> I'm not personally attacking people with whom I disagree. I just
> described where the different perception of how many users want to
> replace their WM might come from. Which is quite a central point when
> discussing whether it's hugely important to be WM agnostic, or not.

Well, I never said numbers, only that 99% doesn't hold. Just see how many 
replaced MC with Compiz, then you know for sure it's not 99%. More I didn't 
say on the numbers.

Well, I already said, but still, I'm speaking what users think. I'm reading it 
on Forums, OpenDesktop, ProLinux, ML & Co. All I wanted is that people at 
least listen to it, but for some this seems impossible.

If you do a harsh action you get a harsh reaction and so the discussion ended 
up somewhere I didn't want it to. So to make it clear a last time: I wanted to 
tell you, that there are users outwhere who care. Of course the ordinary 
Ubuntu (or whatever) newbie who the first time uses GNOME doesn't care.

But as soon as his/her friends tell him/her about Compiz "blinkiness" he does, 
at least enough to switch WM. Also in your calculation you forget people who 
are using GNOME for years now, people who care and people who know what a WM 
is and who decide on different things than "ultra-new", "hype" or "must-have".

The solution would have been to provide a fallback mode for GNOME-Shell, which 
allows it to run with any WM. AFAIR it was rejected because of architectual 
reason, which if you ask me don't make sense, as the stack below is still the 
same (kernel, x11, gtk, clutter).

But as some have unvealed today, it's not the real reason, marketing is the 
magic word and to provide a desktop "made from one", and some other less valid 
reasons (eg.: even if you allow modularization you can provide great user-
experience as modifications made by the user bother him/her not you).

So today I finally got the real reasons told and I told you my opinion (with 
wich, as you can see from the responses, I'm not alone).

Just one last thing for now: Most of those who disagreed with me are 
developers, most of them who agreed with me are users. For me that means that 
I'm right when I say I'm pointing out what I heard from users all around the 
places. Also note the discussion about the applets, there where several people 
complaining. Next take into account that you a) have to register for this ML 
and b) be "brave" enough (lots of users simply don't ask/complain/comment 
because they think "they don't are allowed/have the right").

Now if you take the complaining people from all places mentioned above and all 
other places I never visited (regional forums, LUGs etc pp), you can be sure 
that more than 1% is unhappy with your decision.

Of course it's yours, but it must be possible that critics aren't 
automatically interpreted as rants or attacks. I got the feeling some around 
here do that.

I hope you got my point now and regards,
Chris