Re: Gnome 3 and computer shut down

[N B Day <nbday fastmail fm>]

On Mon, 2011-06-20 at 14:03 +0200, Olav Vitters wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 07:32:17AM -0400, Brian J. Murrell wrote:
> > On 11-06-20 07:26 AM, Olav Vitters wrote:
> > > 
> > > Applets are only available in fallback mode.
> > 
> > Is that permanent?  i.e. applets will *never* be available in GNOME
> > Shell-proper?
> 
> According to what I've seen from the designers: for now, yes.
> 
> Goal is 'distract-free', while applet-like things would result in
> distraction.
> 
> But there is work going on for an extensions website (like what is now
> in the gnome-shell-extensions repository). So 'proper' and 'real life'
> will differ once that is available.
> Further, 'gnome-tweak-tool' either already or in Git allows you to
> install/remove extensions.
> 
> My personal view is that the designers themselves are also using GNOME
> 3.0 more in daily life, that they'll get more personal experience with
> it together with feedback from everyone else who are using it. Based on
> that, things might change (though cannot read their minds :P). It is
> also the case that the designers want more things than 3.0 provides...
> so some things are a bit lacking ("good enough").
> 
> > > It would've been really nice to have gnome-applets ported, but there
> > > just was not enough time and everything else was good enough.
> > 
> > But considering that the applets provide the most "usefulness" (i.e.
> > actual information instead of just eye-candy) of desktop how could that
> > be considered "good enough"?
> 
> If useful and distract free, then it might be added, otherwise I assume
> someone will write an extension.
> 
> The extensions already really popular, though they aren't totally easy
> to use.
> 
> > > Having the exact same features while the focus is different also is
> > > unrealistic.
> > 
> > I did say "relevant" in my previous posting.  Of course a different
> > focus does mean that things might not be relevant with the new focus.
> > However, delivering useful information (i.e. weather, resource usage,
> > etc.) cannot be considered irrelevant.
> 
> Weather information will be in GNOME 3.2, but I think you'd need to
> click the time first.. not sure of this though.
> 
> Vaious resource usage extensions are also already available.

Hi, Olav.  Feeling much like a voodoo doll yet?  Thanks for being here.

For lack of anything better to do in my dotage I've been going through
personal use-testing of Unity, Gnome-shell (with Fedora 15), Gnome 2.31
(with Mint), KDE 4.6 and even XFCE 4.8, (the last on this very elderly
laptop).  I can honestly say that I'm more confused than ever.  They all
work in the sense that I can run the stuff I need to run.   They can all
be made to look good and to impress the odd Windows user who passes by
with spinning cubes or sliding desktops.  I can't say that *any* of them
makes me work smarter, faster or with less distraction than the others.
The distractions I need to deal with are wives who want attention,
hunger, wanting the first beer of the day way too early and other
external stuff.  

I don't think I'm all that easily distracted from my "work" by the
existence of a workplace selector or a weather indicator on my screen,
so I'm a bit dubious about one of the primary design criteria for G-S.
Otherwise, G-S works well for me in Fedora; after a few hours I had
internalized the mouse movements or keyboard actions necessary to go
where I needed to go and do what I needed to do.  If some of the old
familiar panel applets come to G-S later on, so much the better.  I
could live with it now.

Unity seemed really repulsive at first, but it grew on me too.  My main
complaints here are pretty much the same as with G-S: many of the panel
applets I'm used to having so conveniently on every workspace are gone
and you have to do more searching to find seldom used applications than
you did with conventional menus.  There was a lot of hate toward Unity
on the Ubuntu-users list when 11.04 came out; I found myself defending
it.  I could live with it.

I decided to give KDE a try (first with Mepis, which oddly doesn't allow
you to install to more than one hard disk, and then with Kubuntu) since
I had heard that the troubles that started with 4.0 are largely
resolved.  I hadn't used KDE at all since 3.5 went away several years
ago and I can see why there are still some small distros that use the
earlier version.  Stuff mainly works in KDE, even my beloved Gnome apps,
but it seems strange.  Clicking the cashew and the desktop folder seem
to be a lot of rigmarole to replace things that should be easy.  I never
liked Amarok, Kmail or Akregator all that much, and if I switched to KDE
I'd probably have to learn to like them.  I absolutely hated the KDE
filemanager, Dauphin (or is it Dolphin?).  The handling of usb keys, and
especially encrypted usb keys was terrible.  There still isn't a usable
weather monitor.  I could live with KDE in the same sense that if
Budweiser were the only beer in the world, I'd drink Bud.  The United
States owes the little Bohemian town of Budweis an enormous apology. The
KDE designers still seem to be favoring eye-candy over an interface that
is actually useful.

Mint has always had a good implementation of Gnome 2.x and the latest
Mint is no exception, at least when you turn off the crazy (Ubuntu?)
thin scroll bars and go to one of the older less
white-in-your-face-glaring themes.  I find myself booting that when I
have important stuff to do and just want to get down to doing it, in
spite of the alleged distractions of workplace switchers and the
temperature at several places I need to keep track of.

XFCE works too!  So what do I do?  What will the Mint guys do by next
November, fork Gnome 2.x or do something with Gnome 3.x?  I'm pretty
sure I'm sticking with Gnome but beyond that I think I'll keep a toe in
all of these pools and try to keep an open mind too while I see what
happens.  I understand the reluctance of the Gnome developers to keep
working on Gnome 2, just as I understood the reasons for the demise of
the very usable KDE 3.x.  I'm not positive though, that some of the
changes in each new version weren't made just to be different or to
appear forward looking.  Neither Gnome 3 or KDE4 works the way I've
learned to work with their predecessors.

I'm very glad to be making these decisions only for myself and not for a
fleet of computers and combative users as I used to have to do.  This
may all be academic when the tablet kills the desktop and the cloud
kills local storage and we're all condemned to doing everything on our
telephones.  My thumbs can't do that, so I'll just go off into the
desert somewhere off the grid.


-- 
N. B. Day
39.4732 North, 119.8100 West and 1416 meters up
Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:47:49 -0700
Diogenes up 1:15, 3 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
AMD Turion(tm) 64 Mobile Technology ML-30
Memory: 2008796 kB Free: 1576092 kB
Linux 2.6.32-5-686
Linux Mint Xfce Edition, Gnome 2.30.2