Re: The good, the bad, the insane

[Ryan Peters <sloshy45 sbcglobal net>]

Hi Martin,

On 05/23/2011 06:05 AM, Martin Häsler wrote:
> Hi ,
>
> After having followed this list for quite some time, I now feel 
> compelled  to weigh in.
...
> The insane:
>
> Suspend/Shutdown:
>
> I think this is the first design decision ever made in any desktop 
> which made me angry.
> Leaving aside, that suspend - resume doesn't work with many laptops 
> and especially desktop PC's,
> I simply cannot understand the thought process behind this decision. 
> There was no need to change the old behaviour,
> and to say making Suspend default, because it would save energy, is so 
> blatantly wrong, I'm at a loss for words.
> That a machine uses less energy when turned off should be obvious.
> Please go back to the old behaviour and make a lot of users happy. 
> (especially us treehugging Germans :) )
Before I say anything, let me state that I am not a developer or 
designer of this project. From what I've read *from* the designers, 
though, the decision was made for consistency's sake, not necessarily 
saving energy. The menu has the same function that the power button and 
closing the window list do: suspending. Shutting down, when you think 
about it, is something that you rarely have to do (some people don't 
shut down their desktops for long periods of time, while others only 
shut them down once or twice per day). Compared to navigating a 
program's GUI, switching workspaces/windows, and launching applications, 
this is something that is rarely done, so, for the sake of consistency, 
it would make sense to optimize towards a behavior that, for most users, 
would be preferable when walking away (suspending). The preferred way to 
shut down, which indicates that you're done using the computer, is to 
log out first and use GDM (which takes a few more seconds, but I can't 
think of a situation where you have to shut down a computer faster that 
that).

Also, GNOME 3 is supposed to have hardware integration; the "Suspend" 
option should only be shown if your system is capable of doing it (for 
me right now it's a false positive, unfortunately). If your system is 
not capable of suspending properly and it still shows the suspend 
option, I would report it as a bug with a list of the hardware you're using.

PS: Look on the bright side: if suspending is the default and GNOME 3 
gets more popular, those suspend-related bugs would have more pressure 
to be fixed ;). In the meantime, if the current setup is not desirable 
for you, you can install the "alternative-status-menu" extension. It 
adds a permanent "Power Off" button to the menu under "Suspend".The 
extension should be available in the repositories of the distribution 
you're using (except maybe Ubuntu, but I am not sure), and if it's not, 
you can install it from the instructions from this webpage: 
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Extensions