Re: GNOME 3.1.90 beta released!

[Denis Washington <denisw online de>]

Am 01.09.2011 11:34, schrieb Frederic Peters:
> Hello all,
>
> This is 3.1.90, and it's out! It's the first beta of what will be
> GNOME 3.2, enjoy it while it's time, the next beta (3.1.91) will
> arrive next week.

I saw this in the release notes of gnome-control-center:

"Power:
- Remove power and suspend buttons config (Bastien Nocera) (#652183) 
(#657068)"

I am sad.

I know that the GNOME design team has its reasons to promote Suspend; it 
is great from a usability perspective, and I also suspend often and like 
it. However, I feel that the rigor with which this is pushed upon the 
complete user base of GNOME (minus those are knowledgeable enough to 
change a hidden dconf setting) is not right.

While suspending is convenient, many people do want to save power when 
they don't use their desktop or laptop over night, or simply because 
they only use it one or two hours a day anyway. I don't see this as a 
minor use case; its a general consideration of many, enviromentally 
aware people, especially in European countries such as Germany where the 
Green party is going strong and we are already warned about the 
environmental impact of standby devices in elementary school. Regardless 
of their technical knowledge, such people will be put off by not being 
able to properly shut off, or having to jump trough hoops to do so. They 
will think that GNOME doesn't care about the environment. I don't want 
our wonderful community to make that impression.

I don't want to start yet another flame war with this message (please, 
let's be sensible and respectful when discussing this). Neither do I 
want to denounce the design team; in fact, I greatly respect the design 
team for the many things it has done to make GNOME 3 the awesome piece 
of software that it is today, and that it will be tomorrow. I also don't 
want to throw everybody from the design team in the same pot: there are 
GNOME designers that are sympathetic towards some kind of compromise, as 
the discussion around bug #652183 [1] reveals. However, I feel that the 
current situation is not right, and that *something* has to be done to 
reach a solution that combines a high degree of usability with easily 
accessible ways to act environmentally responsible.

Best regards,
Denis Washington

[1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=652183