Re: The good, the bad, the insane

[Jesse Hutton <jesse hutton gmail com>]

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 5:28 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam redhat com> wrote:

On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 16:43 -0400, Jesse Hutton wrote:

> The question is, why? Why did the designers want to mirror the typical
> power mode of a smart phone? Isn't there a vast difference in the
> utility and power consumption between the two? Yes, it seems
> small--and I can still shutdown my computer in numerous ways including
> the command line, etc--but this strikes me as one of the more arrogant
> design decisions I've witnessed. And it potentially has real
> implications in the world, ie. users' power usage.

Sigh, and again people run off with the phone reference; it was a

sidebar, not the main point. The thought is not 'ooh, let's do what
phones do'; the thought is 'suspend/resume is probably what most people
really want to happen when they stop using the computer and then start
using it again'. In general what you want is for the system to 'turn on'

really fast and give you exactly the working environment you had before
you 'turned it off', yes? Well, that's what suspend/resume do.

*Probably* what most people want? Is that the strongest justification? Because it sounds pretty weak. I don't know of any other DE hides the power off option the way Gnome Shell does. Do they all just not understand what users "probably want?"

And don't get me wrong, I'm a big supporter of Gnome Shell. If I weren't, I wouldn't even care about this issue.

 

"Isn't there a vast difference in the utility and power consumption
between the two?"

On most hardware, at the moment? Yes (well, not vast, but noticeable).
But hey, maybe if it becomes more normal to suspend rather than shut
down, this will be something that gets addressed.

Even though smart phones are becoming far more powerful and useful, they're still *phones*, and I'll never carry a desktop PC with me on the train or use one as an alarm clock.

"And it potentially has real implications in the world, ie. users' power
usage."

Again, you have to weigh the slight increase in power usage in
suspension versus complete power down against the big difference in
power usage between suspension and full power up. It's not just about
overnight; if you get in the habit of using suspend/resume all the time,
and you can truly rely on it to work, you'll do it a hell of a lot more
than you would a full power cycle. I suspend my system when I go to the
washroom for two minutes, because it's really easy to do it - two clicks
or one press of the system power button - and I know it'll come back up
working in a couple of seconds when I come back. I'd never do a full
power cycle in the same situation. Ditto getting up to feed the cat, do
some laundry, take out the trash, go to the store for half an hour...

Agreed that you have to weigh the differences. I judge that it weighs if favor of giving people the option to power off their pc's. Btw, you really terminate your IRC sessions, etc in all those situations you sited?

Jesse