Re: Metacity, Mutter, GNOME Shell, GNOME-2.28

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 16:55 +0100, Calum Benson wrote:
> On 31 Mar 2009, at 16:18, Owen Taylor wrote:
> 
> > What isn't going to be able to run GNOME Shell is really old
> > hardware ... if you have a Rage128, GNOME Shell isn't going to happen.
> > But when we are talking legacy hardware of that age, I think a special
> > purpose environment makes sense. Whether it's XFCE, or metacity +
> > gnome-panel, or something else.
> 
> I guess the other category here is the current generation of thin  
> clients... not 'legacy hardware' by any means, they just aren't really  
> designed for this sort of thing.  Yet many people want to (and do) run  
> current versions of GNOME on Sun Rays, for example, and I'd expect  
> those numbers to ramp up once OpenSolaris (or some branch of it that  
> Sun blesses with long-term support) is officially supported by Sun Ray  
> servers.

Some of the current generation of thin clients may be unable to handle
GNOME Shell (though most are solid with an intel 945 or better), but
really the problem is more about the network protocols and how things
are handled on the server side.

There's no reason a composited desktop is significantly heavier on the
server computation or on network - in fact, it's usually going to be
lighter because you don't redraw windows on expose. (It is heavier in
server memory, but not way heavier.) But you have to get things to the
thin client at a somewhat higher level... you can't just view the
desktop as one big image.

I just don't think it makes sense to code GNOME Shell to the limitations
of other pieces of the software stack. The effort to fix the other
pieces of the stack - to create free software ways of doing thin clients
with a composited snazzy desktop - is going to be comparable or less
then the extra effort we'd need to put into GNOME Shell, and the end
result is much better.

And the same applies to virtualized desktops, but more so. Don't put the
effort into avoiding 3D. Put the effort into making 3D work.

- Owen