Re: fallback mode

[Josselin Mouette <joss debian org>]

Hi,

Le lundi 05 novembre 2012 à 10:42 -0500, Matthias Clasen a écrit :
> I'm writing to inform you that the release team discussed
> https://live.gnome.org/ThreePointSeven/Features/DropOrFixFallbackMode
> yesterday. We've come to the conclusion that we can't maintain
> fallback mode in reasonable quality, and are better off dropping it.

> Please watch the feature page for more details, as we work them out,
> and please contact us with your concerns. Lets work together and
> minimize the pain of this transition.

While this is a perfectly reasonable choice given your constraints,
there are several cases where plain GNOME is not an option. 
      * Some GPU drivers are still full of bugs or completely
        non-working. This is now for a minority of machines, but still
        an alternative is necessary. 
      * Some not-so-old CPUs do not seem fast enough to run llvmpipe
        (e.g. netbooks). 
      * Non-x86 machines become out of question. 
      * When you want all the GPU power to be available for heavy 3D
        applications, there’s a measurable impact of running
        gnome-shell. This can probably be improved on the clutter/cogl
        side, and anyway if it’s a hard constraint another desktop can
        be used, but currently, desktops without 3D requirements are far
        from as featureful.

None of this is a blocker per se, but if there is no mechanism to switch
to something that works in all cases, it will be hard to defend
installation of GNOME by default. What are users left out with if they
find they cannot log in with their hardware?

This goes as far as being able to detect GNOME compatibility from the
early stages of installation - which has consequences for all
distributors. It is not impossible, but this is not just a technical
problem.

Cheers, 
-- 
 .''`.      Josselin Mouette
: :' :
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