Re: Speaking of Fedora and Sawfish

[James Ralston <qralston+ml sawfish andrew cmu edu>]

On 2011-03-31 at 13:45-04 Christopher X Candreva <chris westnet com> wrote:

> Has anyone started looking at what we'll have to do to keep useing
> Sawfish under Fedora 15 / Gnome 3, when Gnome Shell replaces use of
> a window manger and the panel?

I don't think this will be possible.  The entire point of Gnome Shell
is that it combines the functionality of the panel, window manager,
and notification daemon.  It's not designed to be modular; it's
designed to be single, monolithic entity.

However...

On 2011-03-31 at 20:05+02 Christopher Roy Bratusek <nano tuxfamily org> wrote:

> There's a sub-optimal "fallback mode", which is basically GNOME2
> (panel, self- choosen WM (...)). But I guess it's not what you
> expect before 3.2 is out (panel not finished, applets not ported).

Yes.  "Fallback mode" is essentially "GNOME Classic": gnome-panel, a
window manager (metacity), and a notification daemon.

I think having sawfish be able to function as a window manager in
GNOME 3 Fallback Mode is a worthwhile goal.

However, as you've observed, fallback mode support is very minimal at
the moment.  I'm running Fedora 15 Alpha on my laptop (which has GNOME
3 prerelease), and only last week did they push out updated packages
that make fallback mode more palatable.

(And unfortunately, those updates broke sawfish.  But I'm running an
old sawfish version; I'll try building the latest versions against
these new GNOME 3 packages.)

> Though I don't know what is required to enter fallbak mode nor how
> to set it up.

Open System Info > Graphics; change "Forced Fallback Mode" to "ON".

> Recently I've switched back to KDE4 (I hate new technologies, which
> are combined with someone forcing you to use it's companion, instead
> of developing something less single-solution-only).

I was really looking forward to GNOME Shell.  I was hoping it would be
something like the Windows Aero interface: an evolution, not a
revolution.

But after spending 30 minutes or so exploring GNOME Shell, all I
wanted to do was KILL IT WITH FIRE.  It was one of the most confusing,
nonsensical, and non-intuitive interfaces I've ever used.  Nothing was
documented.  There were no tooltips to explain anything.  The desktop
effects were arbitrary and mercurial.  Managing virtual desktops (a
feature I really care about, because I use 9) was a frustration.

And although it's not GNOME's fault, my laptop has an nVidia card, and
the nouveau driver's DRI support for my card is beta-level at best.
Thus, all of GNOME Shell's DRI-based eye candy was slow and buggy.

I'm really hoping my adverse reaction to GNOME Shell is because the
version I was using was only partially complete, and that the final
version will be a lot better.  Because if what I used was the final
version (or anything close to it), I think most current GNOME users
will run shrieking from it.

> A DesktopShell is definitively something which should not be a one
> way. Plasma for example offers greater functionality and
> flexibility, while it doesn't matter what other software (in our
> case: WM) you use.

For better or worse, this is not the direction that GNOME went.
Either you drink the GNOME Shell Kool-Aid, or you stick with GNOME
Classic ("Fallback Mode").  There's no middle ground.