New Topic: fallback desktop

[lofton alley <lha3r alumni virginia edu>]

Why bring this up? Well

1)  Fedora 15 fails to run on my machine (4 year old core 2 duo with nVidia GPU and 8GB of DDR2 RAM): The gnome shell fails to load, apparently an X problem

2) this was true as well on my work machine, an even older two processor Pentium 4 with 2.5 GB RAM

3) on both machines fedora 14 runs fine with an older version of gnome shell (the repo version, not the jhbuild version which would not load on either machine as well.

So, out of curiosity, i loaded f15 into virtualbox and, surprise surprise it ran! 

(BTW: i filed a bug with fedora about the above problems and worked through the process with the first level bug zappers and they finally passed it on to the developers who have done nothing about it -- this was a month ago)

So, anyway, f14 works OK with gnome shell, but it is not the canonical, final version (excuse the pun please) But f15 in the virtual machine goes to fallback mode. Let me say this, fallback mode is crapola. It appears to have returned gnome to the functionality of windows 95. The system controls (preferences and administration) are gelded and melded into the "Other" and "System tools" menu, which is not too disturbing, but there is almost nothing in them. The system control panel has almost nothing to control. While this system, even in virtual mode, can manage 3d acceleration I have no way to access this from the control panel, just to mention one rub.

Much of the functionality of the old gnome panel is gone, who knows where? Should I reload, or install gnome 2 to get this back ( not that I really care, this is just an experiment) How and what should I do to get the shell working? My system says that I am using gnome 3, but metacity is also running as a process while mutter is not. This seems to be a major flaw to me, There should be a path that is made explicit to users and explains what Gnome 3 needs to function properly. I (and while I don't claim to be an uber-geek I got the long term creds to back up my claims) could push around a bit to find some stuff to mess with and haunt the forums (like I haunt the mailing list here) to try to find kindred souls who might have a clue what to do: but the point is the developers are pushing ahead full speed and leaving me behind! 

Perhaps the fedora devs will get it together for the final release so that I can move up to f15, but it sure seems like the push for the future is leaving most of the passengers behind while the crew goes full steam ahead. This is not to fuss at you about f15 problems, but to point out that you are a part of a larger problem right now and you are part of the larger solution as well. You need to make an effort to pay attention to the fallback application as well as the bright and shiny new one, especially if even relatively modern hardware is not loading your candy bars.

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 11:25 AM, <gnome-shell-list-request gnome org> wrote:

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Today's Topics:

  1. Re: "Switch applications" and all Windows/Launchers actions
     work only with Alt (Tassilo Horn)
  2. New system monitor extension (Florian Mounier)
  3. Re: New system monitor extension (Adam Williamson)
  4. Re: New system monitor extension (John Stowers)
  5. Re: We want task bar back. Pretty please. (Adam Tauno Williams)
  6. Re: Persistant Activities Menu (Tim Cuthbertson)
  7. Re: We want task bar back. Pretty please. (Ryan Peters)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 15:49:47 +0200
From: Tassilo Horn <tassilo member fsf org>
To: Florian M?llner <fmuellner gnome org>
Cc: public-gnome-shell-list-rDKQcyrBJuzYtjvyW6yDsg plane gmane org
Subject: Re: "Switch applications" and all Windows/Launchers actions
       work only       with Alt
Message-ID: <877h9lzdl0 fsf member fsf org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8



Florian M?llner <fmuellner gnome org> writes:

Hi Florian,

>> I've just noticed that when assigning shortcuts to actions in the
>> Keyboard settings, there are quite some actions that can only be
>> triggered if the shortcut includes the Alt modifier.  This is not
>> documented anywhere, and IMO it clearly classifies as a bug.
>
> Yes: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=645200.

Thanks for the pointer.

>> A similar issue applies to all actions in the Windows category or in
>> the Launchers category.  All these actions (Minimize window, Maximize
>> window, Close window, ..., Launch help browser, Home folder, ...) are
>> only triggered, if the Alt modifier is used in the shortcut.
>
> No, that's not true. However, global shortcuts which use the Super
> modifier don't work

Hm, I tried Mod4+H for Help, Mod4+B for Browser, Mod4+F for file
manager, and so forth.  None of the work.  But Mod4-Return for firing up
a terminal does work...

> - see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=624869.

Again, thanks for the pointer.

Bye,
Tassilo



------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 14:17:39 +0200
From: Florian Mounier <paradoxxx zero gmail com>
To: gnome-shell-list gnome org
Subject: New system monitor extension
Message-ID: <BANLkTi=HwHuvRM_JgrWp=7QF4SJo==++sg mail gmail com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Hi !
I wrote a gnome shell extension displaying memory / swap / cpu usage in
status bar.
My code is far from perfect but I thought it might interest some of you.
Code is available here:
http://github.com/paradoxxxzero/gnome-shell-system-monitor-applet
Any feedback is welcome.
Best regards

--
Florian Mounier
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Message: 3
Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 16:58:29 -0700
From: Adam Williamson <awilliam redhat com>
To: Florian Mounier <paradoxxx zero gmail com>
Cc: gnome-shell-list gnome org
Subject: Re: New system monitor extension
Message-ID: <1306022310.1905.69.camel@adam>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

On Sat, 2011-05-21 at 14:17 +0200, Florian Mounier wrote:
> Hi !
> I wrote a gnome shell extension displaying memory / swap / cpu usage
> in status bar.
> My code is far from perfect but I thought it might interest some of
> you.
> Code is available
> here: http://github.com/paradoxxxzero/gnome-shell-system-monitor-applet
> Any feedback is welcome.
> Best regards

Just thinking out loud, but it'd be nice to see alternative approaches
to showing these things - system info, weather - than just re-creating
applets. Has anyone thought of writing an extension that adds these
somewhere else, like to the overview somehow? Or for weather, to the
clock?
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net



------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 13:02:59 +1200
From: John Stowers <john stowers lists gmail com>
To: Florian Mounier <paradoxxx zero gmail com>
Cc: gnome-shell-list gnome org
Subject: Re: New system monitor extension
Message-ID: <1306026185.10967.2.camel@nzjrs-netbook>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

On Sat, 2011-05-21 at 14:17 +0200, Florian Mounier wrote:
> Hi !
> I wrote a gnome shell extension displaying memory / swap / cpu usage
> in status bar.
> My code is far from perfect but I thought it might interest some of
> you.
> Code is available
> here: http://github.com/paradoxxxzero/gnome-shell-system-monitor-applet
> Any feedback is welcome.

Cool extension.

Have you considered reading /proc/meminfo instead of calling 'free -m'
and reading /proc/stat instead of calling 'cat /proc/stat'?

It might be more efficient to use Gio to read these files directly
instead of spawing commands.

John




------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 21:54:40 -0400
From: Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam whitemice org>
To: gnome-shell-list gnome org
Subject: Re: We want task bar back. Pretty please.
Message-ID: <1306029280 7562 4 camel linux-yu4c site>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

On Sat, 2011-05-21 at 18:42 +0100, Tim Murphy wrote:
>
>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
> I find it funny that it's apparently considered "shoving things down
> users throats" when we don't listen to their every demand. Some things
> are valid, some are not.

I'd personally like to thank the GNOME developers for this significant
innovation in the DE UI.  Good work all around,  Shell is a solid and
practical improvement.

> Anyhow good luck and I hope  good new things will come out of all this
> somehow later on.  I think that there's a lot of revolution required
> in the rest of UIs as even the concept of an "Application" strikes me
> as being highly retrograde and I am sure that there is a lot yet to
> happen which will make some of this moot.






------------------------------

Message: 6
Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 12:11:22 +1000
From: Tim Cuthbertson <tim gfxmonk net>
To: Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl>
Cc: gnome-shell-list gnome org
Subject: Re: Persistant Activities Menu
Message-ID: <BANLkTimteWWervMffv_9ZyQGc3-dQvHo3A mail gmail com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 9:58 PM, Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl> wrote:
> On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 05:55:25PM +1000, Tim Cuthbertson wrote:
>> Using the windows key for this might be hard. I've submitted a patch
>> to enable this behaviour when you hold down shift (like in a browser,
>> when it opens a link in a new tab / window). Nobody's said anything on
>> it yet, I guess the devs are pretty busy...
>
> Isn't middle mouse button supposed to work? Pretty normal way to open
> multiple things.

currently that opens each new app on a new workspace (i.e three clicks
gives you three new workspaces). And you still have to re-show the
activities view between each click. My patch will work if you use
shift+middle-click (to open 3 new workspaces without having to re-show
the activities view), but that's not the behaviour the original post
was about.


------------------------------

Message: 7
Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 22:25:15 -0500
From: Ryan Peters <sloshy45 sbcglobal net>
To: Tim Murphy <tnmurphy gmail com>, gnome-shell-list gnome org
Subject: Re: We want task bar back. Pretty please.
Message-ID: <4DD8821B 6020704 sbcglobal net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

On 05/21/2011 12:42 PM, Tim Murphy wrote:
>
>
> On 19 May 2011 05:01, Ryan Peters <sloshy45 sbcglobal net
> <mailto:sloshy45 sbcglobal net>> wrote:
>
>     I'm sure that the development and design team would love to hear
>     some specific examples of how GNOME 3 is a regression. I've heard
>     a few before; launching several applications in succession, for
>     example, is slower in GNOME 3 than in GNOME 2 with panel
>     launchers, though this is overcome with an extension or simply
>     launching the applications on startup. Another regression that I
>     can think of off the top of my head is how the file manager/recent
>     documents list aren't quite as integrated as GNOME 2 was, though
>     these are things that are being worked on. The reason it seems
>     like so many complaints "fall on deaf ears" is that they have
>     already been discussed and the users making the complaints and
>     suggestions can't provide concrete examples of why their
>     suggestions are valid. As I've said, I've heard some good
>     suggestions. The most popular complaints, though, are invalid,
>     baseless, and without examples, as has been proven to death in
>     this mailing list many times over.
>
>
> Apparently they don't listen and repeat robotically, "use a hotkey" or
> "you aren't giving it a chance".  You have heard ample complaints but
> brush off every one of them. why bother to discuss?   I'm only
> motivated to reply to this because I want to show how utterly
> resistant you are.
...I'm sorry, but who's being robotic here? I've given examples of valid
regressions and bugs (I believe). The devs/designers listen to every bug
and regression report that they can find time for, and there are several
things that will be fixed for 3.2. The reason we, as you say, "brush off
every one of them" is because the most popular questions, concerns and
suggestions have been discussed to the end of the world and back. We
know for certain after many, many discussions that GNOME 3 is staying
mostly the same. As I've said many times before, the popularity of a
complaint *does not* make it any more or less valid, and there is no
definite correlation; basic logic. "Right is right if nobody is right,
wrong is wrong if everybody is wrong", as said by Archbishop Fulton J.
Sheen. I'm not saying that there's "one true way to use the desktop",
but I am saying that some things are more efficient and better than
other things and that is a fact.
>
>
>     I admit that was a bad analogy (I should have thought of a more
>     solid one). Bicycles are cheaper than motorcycles and are used for
>     exercise, while motorcycles are used for quickly moving around.
>     The difference here is that GNOME 3 and GNOME 2 are meant to do
>     the same thing, which is not the case with this analogy, so it's a
>     bad one as I said, and I apologize. GNOME 3 aims to be better than
>     GNOME 2 at the same job (and in many areas it already is), so a
>     "what's good for you might not be good for me" argument isn't
>     really appropriate here.
>
> No it was a good analogy because it absolutely indicates the kind of
> assumption that there UIs can be ranked on some single axis in order
> of "superiority" and that all others are wrong to complain that what
> they used is blown to bits or degraded in usefulness or accessibility
> by a change that seeks other tradeoffs.  If you don't want complaints
> then it's best to stick to your branding.  Create a new brand for a
> new thing and don't disenfranchise the people who liked and use the
> tradeoff balance that they have got.
>
> Prove your idea is better by convincing people and seeing them choose it.
I highly suggest you read the reply by Matthew Planchard (apparently
titled "Re: gnome-shell-list Digest, Vol 31, Issue 89" by mistake, it
seems). He gives a much better analogy than mine.

Also, does Apple still support the OS9 interface? If a lot of users of
Apple software, when switching from OS9 to OSX, asked over and over for
the desktop to behave the old way, should Apple have to listen to them?
Of course not. For there to be innovation, stability and consistency in
GNOME, we have to make decisions like, "is this really necessary?", or
"is there a better way we can do this?". What you're describing leads to
preference overload: including many useless and inefficient options and
increasing the probability of bugs. For GNOME to move forward, we have
to ditch the old way of using the desktop (though it, as of now, is not
completely ditched). You can't run forward while staying in the same place.
>
>     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.
>
>     And that something is that they often fail to provide evidence of
>     a regression, and many (but not all) complaints boil down to "I
>     want the old UI back because I'm used to it".
>
>
> That is to say, they are forced them to re-learn and cannot see the
> benefit.  Moreover when one of them persists, there is always a
> convenient answer that involves relearning with a small dose of "who
> cares that it's a bit harder to do x".
Will you please stop this? I'm sorry, but you are refusing to give any
good examples whatsoever of how it's harder to use the interface and
this thread is going in circles because of it (which you blame on me,
which isn't the case at all). You are just assuming that, because some
people don't like it, that it *has* to be bad, when there are many, many
happy GNOME 3 users that don't resort to fallback mode. Please do not
respond to this until you stop repeating the same message over and over
without examples. GNOME cannot move forward (for your definition of
"forward") without solid evidence that it would be better to do so;
seriously, how can anybody expect GNOME to change without proper
reasoning behind it? It would be illogical to do otherwise.

The *only* potentially good reason I've heard for, say, wanting a window
list, is that some users like using the mouse and don't want to have to
use the keyboard. In some (not all) cases this is the fault of the user
for not trying to use both of their hands, but in other cases, such as
if the user has only one hand or rarely has two hands available, it can
be worked around with an extension. There are many, many extensions that
enable a GNOME 2-like experience (application menu, icons on the top
panel, moving the clock, etc.) and if GNOME 3 *cannot possibly fit into
a user's workflow*, some extensions can help remedy that.


------------------------------

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End of gnome-shell-list Digest, Vol 31, Issue 93
************************************************

--
Lofton Alley
Lecturer
HKU-SPACE
Suzhou, PR China