Re: gnome 2.12 questions

[Elijah Newren <newren gmail com>]

On 10/2/05, david <nux blueyonder co uk> wrote:
> The terminal is a vital integral part of Linux, why remove it from
> Gnome 2.12?

It hasn't been removed.  We just tried to change the fact that we had
given it far more prominence than about any other program.  We used to
have it appear in the panel menu, have it be one of the shortcuts on
the panel by default, have nautilus show it in its context menus, have
a run application option in the menu (bound to Alt+F2) with which you
could launch a terminal or any other application with a
command-line-like interface (and from which "launch in a terminal" is
prominent letting the user know that many apps may need it too), a
command line applet (mini-commander) installed by default, and had
other additions like nautilus-open-terminal and now a global Metacity
keybinding (unbound by default, though) to be able to launch a
terminal.  We were very much sending the message "you _need_ to learn
this program" whereas it ought to just be a (very) useful tool to the
more advanced user.  (And yes, we still have work to do on that
front--my wife does NOT want to learn how to use the terminal, but
every once in a while when I get a call with a question from her I
still have to instruct her to open a terminal and tell her what to
type...).  At this point, though, almost all those options I listed
above for getting to a terminal or using something similar still
exist.  The only things that were removed were the context menu entry
for nautilus in 2.12 and the default terminal launcher for the panel
(a few cycles earlier, I think).  The terminal is still very much part
of Gnome 2.12 (gnome-terminal is one of the desktop applications) and
will continue to be--but there's no point in sticking it in the face
of the user so much.

Cheers,
Elijah