Re: We want task bar back. Pretty please.

[Tim Murphy <tnmurphy gmail com>]

On 17 May 2011 20:55, Ryan Peters <sloshy45 sbcglobal net> wrote:

I've had to acclimatise to all sorts of horrible interfaces after using better ones e.g. to Windows after Linux and you can get used to almost anything.   I can even get to the point where it's difficult to get back into the thing you prefer because you have hardwired all the Windows crap ways of doing things.  Is that all there is to say about it ?

 

This is a huge reason why so many people dislike GNOME 3. Instead of getting used to how it works, they complain that it's not exactly how they're used to using it. Many people have approached it with an open mind and, for the most part, enjoy it very much. If we enjoy it, then GNOME Shell has to be at least somewhat good, yes? Just because you do not see it as so does not make it bad.

You miss my point. I'm saying that if it takes a long time to get used to something and to accept its warts it then it's no better than e.g. Windows. If you have to keep telling people they are wrong and you are right for weeks then you have failed to make something that is obviously any good.   It would be like me trying to give you a lecture on why you ought to like Atonal music and that's it's only because you listen to so much ordinary music that you don't like it.  Perhaps I should explain to you why it's wrong to not like spinach?

Imagine trying to sell people a product that took 14 days to like?   I think that's really part of the issue.  People are not encountering gnome shell because they want it but because someone has put it there like a hump in the road and your alternative is to take the dirt track diversion after you read the faq that tells you how to unpick the lock on the gate.

Does Windows have new releases every six months? Is Windows a rolling release? On the most popular GNU/Linux operating systems, changes come very quickly. On Mac or Windows, changes are incremental and major updates are considered separate from the older software. This is how GNOME 3 wants to be treated; not as an "incremental update that's forced upon the users" like you suggest, but as a completely new desktop, and it must be seen as that or else a user's first impression will be sub-optimal.

That would be cool if there was actually a choice but people who want to keep their kernels and applications and compilers current are forced to take the gnome-shell or switch to XFCE.  Concepts are one thing and daily use is another. It's rare to actually come across something that is such an improvement that it's worth a lot of upheaval but here are a couple of examples of instant wins:

1) Mercurial after using CVS
2) bash after using cmd.exe
3) TortoiseHG after using the commandline to try to understand branches.
4) Linux after DOS - you allocate a 4MB array and nothing crashes even though you only have 2MB free RAM.

Bash and Mercurial are really quite complicated and different but with a few neat things thrown in like completion, a nice branch view/whatever one feels immediately that one is in a better situation than before and excited about starting off on an exploration.

I hope that the shell will become like that and I don't see why it can't but it doesn't feel like those other things at the moment to me personally.   It just feels like a change to a different set of tradeoffs which in too many cases are opitmised away from me.  I don't need to be told I am wrong or old fashioned here - I am letting you know that your conclusions are not valid for everyone and I keep getting the impression that this falls on deaf ears.  I don't know if it's helpful to continue posting but perhaps representing a contrary point of view is worthwhile sometimes.
 

Also, let me give you an analogy: say that GNOME 2 is a bicycle and GNOME 3 is a motorbike. Naturally, it still does the same things, but it does them in a different way that requires some re-learning. For some it might be a short period of time, for others, a long period of time. The requirement of fuel could be considered analogous to the hardware acceleration requirement; some people cannot afford it, but it's necessary for the design (and arguably, in the case of the motorbike, the addition of fuel and an engine is much nicer than having to pedal yourself). Arguably, the motorbike would take a bit of getting used to, and it doesn't have some advantages of a bike (faster start-up, easier customization, etc), but it gets you to your destination faster and much more elegantly than a bike does.

I ride a motorcycle but lots of people ride bicycles into work and don't want a motorcycle.   They keep fit on their bike whereas I get fat and unhealthy and stressed from the extreme traffic in London. When you come along and say your bicycle now has an engine, "praise be", you would not get a round of applause from the cyclists.  There has not and won't be a definitive answer ever about whether bikes or motorcycles are best.   In London they are both much better than cars if you want to move quickly but much more dangerous. In other places people consider them to be low status forms of transport etc etc.

It's ugly to read the putdowns on this list - telling people that what they think is wrong and trying to put the onus on them to like your software rather than the other way around.

We wouldn't do that *if they weren't wrong*. You have the false assumption that every complaint a user has is valid. Some things, like, "where is the taskbar?" are not considered regressions because GNOME 3 replaces it with a dock

 

I think that, again to some extent that this is not relevant in a way.   If you have to explain then the UI has failed to make itself obvious.  Think of a transport system that is used by many thousands of people who are visiting the city for the first time every day - even if the millions of inhabitants know how it works, it still has to have a user interface that can be understood by people who just arrived and don't speak the language otherwise it would get clogged with crowds of lost or confused people.

There may be an answer to every query and it could possibly even be an answer that would satisfy the people who are complaining but even their "invalid" complaints are telling you that something is not right.  There's also the problem of tossing off those complaints as invalid rather too easily e.g. "define a hotkey - hotkeys are the best" by offering an answer that suits you and not them. 

Expecting GNOME 3 to be like GNOME 2 is like expecting a roller coaster to be like a tricycle. It's a completely different beast and requires re-thinking the way you use the desktop. And no, this is not a bad thing, and in most cases takes much, much less time than "14 days". How long would it take to explain how to use Windows to somebody that has never used a computer? How about GNOME 3? The argument you have, if I'm reading this correctly, is essentially "we shouldn't have to re-learn how to use the desktop". Why not? If it brings improvement, as several people in this mailing list and on the internet have stated from first-hand experience, then it's a worthwhile change.

I don't doubt GNOME 3 is good - I'm talking about the shell.  Apart from not having a clock the panel is as bad a UI as it always was but at the moment the shell is worse for me.
 

If GNOME 3 was considered the standard desktop, and nobody else was familiar with another desktop system, what if GNOME 4 switched to a Windows-like design (assuming, for the sake of example, that it's easier to use in the long run)? There would be people such as yourself claiming that we shouldn't have to re-learn how to use the desktop, yes? I think that explains the general position of the designers.

No, design new stuff as much as you want - just:
1) Don't think you're right and they're wrong
2) Shove it down their throats and expect a thank you from all of them

 

Basically if gnome shell was a total option and won out by popularity rather than by herding people

You can still use GNOME 2, just like how you can still use Vista now that Windows 7 is out. Several distributions support it.

Bollocks.  Sorry to be rude.  I am a fedora user.  I have no such option - it's great inconvenience or the shell.  Tha'ts herding for you.  This is really one of the more annoying brush offs.  I actually had to find a shell file somewhere in /usr/share after I learned that the right word to google for was "fallback"  and then I got something where I couldn't tell the time and couldn't see my files until I found out about another tool called the "gnome-tweak-tool".    This is choice as defined by Microsoft salespeople.

I installed XFCE.  That seems to be ok especially with its recent big update.  It's a pity because apart from the shell, there are good bits to gnome3 - still the best file manager for example.

Regards,

Tim


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