First Impressions, gnome 2

[Liam Quin <liam holoweb net>]

I recently installed gnome 2 (Thanks, Frederic, for your help!) and maybe
it will be useful to send some notes about the experience before i forgot.

I used the Mandrake Cooker gnome 2 packages.  There were some minor problems
with installation that are already known -- e.g. I didn't install
gnome-control-center, so I got the default X stippled grey background --
a missing dependency in gnome-session perhaps.

Once installed, gnome started quickly, with a nice startup screen, and
(barely-readable) text saying what was being done.

I had been using Gnome 1.4, as packaged by Mandrake.  Mandrake makes a number
of changes, that I consider improvements (sorry, Seth :-) ) -- e.g. a
task-based menu, and sharing the Debian menu structure so that KDE and Gnome
have compatible menus.  But that's not been done to gnome 2 yet.
I've tried to take that into consideration.

[1] The new panel is slow, takes maybe a second, sometimes 2 or 3, before
    (subjectively) it starts to unhide, even on the Fast setting

[2] preferences brings up windows with no wm decorations or titles,
   clearly a bug -- sometimes they don't work at all, at least from Nautilus

   This is an interaction with sawfish themes.  See
   http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/gnome/g2prefs.jpg

[3] right-click on URL doesn't work in gnome-terminal -- it brings up
    a menu, but Open link doesn't seem to do anything

[4] gnome-terminal "hide menu bar" setting is not remembered -- I have to
    click it each tiem I open a new terminal, yawnsville.  OK on a 21"
    screen, not on a 13" laptop.

[5] no menu items to run mozilla or netscape 4.x

[6] evolution is filed under Applications->Applications->Ximian Evolution,
    not under Internet->evolution (no mail readers under Internet).
    Come on guys, get it right :-)
    (hopefully Mandrake will get rid of the extra pointless "Applications->"
    menu level for a release, and have the submenus appear directly on
    the foot menu again)

[7] every now and again, especially after disconnecting the modem, I get
    a note that the news thingy has crashed in nautilus, even if it wasn't
    visible.

[8] Gnome started with a panel at the top.  I know it's a panel because if
    I right-click on it, it has an item, Panel Properties.  But it's a menu.
    And I can't drag it to the bottom of my screen. (I made a new panel in
    the end, dragged some of the controls from menu to panel, and deleted
    the panel.  I never did get the monitor applet that shows current focus
    back again though).

[9] Why is there an Applications->Applications menu? and why does it have
    all the sawfish preferences there, sorted alphabetically?
    It's really hard to find preferences, but maybe I am used to the
    Configuration menu.

[10] The default theme was military grey, ugh.  I had to put a symlink in
    place to use a theme.  Probablt be a good idea to ship with at least
    one working theme.  This might just be a packaging problem though.

Some good things:

[A] nautilus is fast enough now that I'm willing to run it.  It doesn't seem to
    keep the hard disk going all the time either.

[B] gnome-terminal doesn't resize the terminal widget any moer when you show
    or hide the menu, YAY! AT LAST!  (I use mutt a lot, which tends not to
    cope with a resized terminal window)

[C] it's been pretty solid.  Congrats, guys, it's not crashing.  Yes, bits
    fall over, but this is actually good enough to use.

I'm sorry if this has more negative than positive. Overall I can live with
gnome2, but right now it's not an mprovement for me as a user over 1.4.
I wouldn't recommend it to most other people.  Which is OK, it's not a
release yet. If the above bugs were fixed, it'd rock, as they say,
for me at least.  But I think it is pretty close.

I'm mostly posting this as a reminder that the "out of box experience"
(OOBE), as the marketers put it, is terribly, terribly important.

Ankh

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net www.valinor.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org
Author, Open Source XML Database Toolkit, Wiley August 2000
Co-author: The XML Specification Guide, Wiley 1999; Mastering XML, Sybex 2001