Fedora 16, OpenSuse 12.1 Betas With Gnome 3.2

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Fedora 16, OpenSuse 12.1 Betas With Gnome 3.2

Posted by timothy on Wednesday October 5, 2011 @05:32AM from the despite-gripes-it-gets-better dept.

Andy Smith writes "Fedora 16 beta and OpenSuse 12.1 beta have been released. For most users the major change in each distro is Gnome 3.2. Fedora also adopts the new Linux 3 kernel and the GRUB2 bootloader."

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Welcome to the 21st century by fnj · 2011-10-05 05:33 · Score: 1

GRUB2, yay, Fedora. Finally.
1. Re:Welcome to the 21st century by armanox · 2011-10-05 05:42 · Score: 2
  
  Did they ever make GRUB2 configurable? Last time I used GRUB2 it was a mess - what ever happened to simplicity?
  
  --
  I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
2. Re:Welcome to the 21st century by Fujisawa+Sensei · 2011-10-05 05:46 · Score: 2
  
  Compared with LILO, GRUB is still complex.
  
  --
  If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
3. Re:Welcome to the 21st century by thatskinnyguy · 2011-10-05 05:53 · Score: 1
  
  They did but it's still a pain in the ass. In Ubuntu at least, you have to edit grub.cfg and then "update-grub". I liked the old way of doing things where update-grub was unnecessary.
  
  --
  The game.
4. Re:Welcome to the 21st century by Vaphell · 2011-10-05 06:17 · Score: 1
  
  at least you are not left with broken configuration when you mess something up. Firing up livecd to repair nonbooting system is such a pleasure for your average user...
5. Re:Welcome to the 21st century by thatskinnyguy · 2011-10-05 06:23 · Score: 1
  
  Oh definitely.
  
  --
  The game.
6. Re:Welcome to the 21st century by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 06:29 · Score: 0
  
  You say, "yay", but GRUB2, GPT, and Mac's have been a real piece of work so far.
  
  I have been documenting (very) rough instructions for myself, because I will never remember:
  http://www.montleon.com/mac-efi-grub2.html
7. Re:Welcome to the 21st century by jon207 · 2011-10-05 07:09 · Score: 1
  
  Average user doesn't mess with Grub configuration...
  
  --
  "Freedom can only be the whole of freedom; a piece of freedom is not freedom." Max Stirner
8. Re:Welcome to the 21st century by AdamWill · 2011-10-05 07:41 · Score: 2
  
  Mac EFI with Fedora has been a real piece of work all along, just because - as you say on your page - the Mac EFI implementation is hideous. Actually, the Fedora devs responsible for the EFI support say they explicitly don't support Macs just because the EFI implementation is so crap/weird. Macs are a best effort, I'm afraid.
9. Re:Welcome to the 21st century by AdamWill · 2011-10-05 07:44 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  well, we *could* have switched to it at any time, but it's made a bit awkward by the fact that the only real benefit of switching is upstream support. despite its ridiculous panoply of shiny features, grub2 doesn't give Fedora much that grub didn't, really. we're only switching now because we decided the pain threshold of essentially maintaining grub-legacy ourselves downstream had been reached.
  in fact, if we were doing things over, we'd probably switch at f17 instead, because we haven't been able to make grub2 work well enough for EFI installs or PPC installs, so we still have to use grub-legacy for those, and that's just causing a ton of annoying complexity and possible breakage in the installer and upgrade paths.
10. Re:Welcome to the 21st century by tchuladdiass · 2011-10-05 08:01 · Score: 1
  
  What's wrong with using Syslinux for boot? It's not just for live CDs anymore (they've had ext2/3 support for a while now). It has the simplicity of Lilo, with the addition of being file system aware (unlike Lilo).
  In fact, any time I've failed to get Grub to re-install, I cheated and switched over to Syslinux.
11. Re:Welcome to the 21st century by Vaphell · 2011-10-05 09:43 · Score: 1
  
  average user as in ubuntuforums? He sometimes doesn't have much choice despite living in gui land. Broken video resolution at boot time, setting windows as the default option in grub menu or removing diagnostic modes from menu are not unreasonable things to tackle.
12. Re:Welcome to the 21st century by Junta · 2011-10-05 10:28 · Score: 2
  
  Average users need not touch grub.conf. The ones that do should understand how to hit 'c' or 'e' to recover without a rescue disk.
  Scenarios where I've seen someone forced to 'rescue' are when the available initrds are fubared, and 'update-grub' won't prevent that.
  Two things I hate windows for are binary registry and bcd files. Steering away from plain text to protect the user is not an aspect I want to see mimicked, as when it fails to protect, it actually makes the problem worse.
  
  --
  XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
13. Re:Welcome to the 21st century by Junta · 2011-10-05 10:30 · Score: 1
  
  No EFI support. Relatively poor interactive capabilities.
  
  --
  XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
14. Re:Welcome to the 21st century by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 10:41 · Score: 0
  
  What?? The ability to boot from LVM isn't a "real benefit"? Do you think the existence of "/boot/" as a legacy partition is a feature, not a bug?
15. Re:Welcome to the 21st century by dudpixel · 2011-10-05 14:10 · Score: 1
  
  However, the ability to edit commands from the grub boot menu is awesome, and has quickly saved my system many times.
  
  --
  This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
Gnome 3 by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 05:45 · Score: 0

Gnome 3 is bullshit. I'm just going to reconfigure it back to look like gnome 2.
1. Re:Gnome 3 by arth1 · 2011-10-05 05:53 · Score: 1
  
  Look like gnome 2? I guess a background image with icons and a menu on it will do, but it won't work like Gnome 2, so what's the point?
2. Re:Gnome 3 by Dunega · 2011-10-05 06:33 · Score: 1
  
  He can ride the "me too train" on hating anything new.
3. Re:Gnome 3 by turbidostato · 2011-10-05 06:49 · Score: 1
  
  "He can ride the "me too train" on hating anything new."
  Anything? Maybe the problem is not "novelty" but "novelty for the sake of novelty". And certainly when "novelty for the sake of novelty" happens on already standardized fields *is* worth hating.
4. Re:Gnome 3 by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 08:06 · Score: 0
  
  Mein FÃ¼hrer... Actually... All the preferences for this have been removed... And they are not comming back.
No grub 2 by FunkyELF · 2011-10-05 05:49 · Score: 1

installed the beta last night in VirtualBox 4.1.4 , it was using grub 1.99.
1. Re:No grub 2 by armanox · 2011-10-05 05:54 · Score: 2
  
  That is GRUB 2. Since GRUB2 is not yet a stable release they haven't moved the number to 2.x.
  
  --
  I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
2. Re:No grub 2 by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 05:54 · Score: 1
  
  "Grub Legacy" is technically numbered with version number less than 1, Grub 2 has version number greater than 1.
  On ArchLinux, the package "grub" has version number 0.97, and the package "grub2" has version number 1.99
3. Re:No grub 2 by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 05:57 · Score: 0
  
  1.99 is the current release of grub 2. There is no release with a version number that actually begins with 2... or 1 for that matter--"grub legacy" ended at 0.97.
4. Re:No grub 2 by Medievalist · 2011-10-05 06:02 · Score: 1
  
  Meanwhile, LILO still works just fine, despite being incredibly simple and elegant.
  I don't think I'll ever understand the rationale behind the switch to GRUB.
5. Re:No grub 2 by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 06:12 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  NIH syndrome. Lilo is BSD-licensed and the copyrights not owned by the GNU Project. This was unacceptable and a more complex and harder to use GPL version was needed.
6. Re:No grub 2 by jhdsl · 2011-10-05 06:35 · Score: 2
  
  More like lilo needed to be reinstalled after every kernel change.
  If you forgot or something went wrong you where SOL.
  GRUB only needs to update its files in the filesystem.
  Also, GRUB has a command line from where you can choose kernel to boot if things got messed up.
  GRUB can also boot more things than LILO can.
7. Re:No grub 2 by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 06:46 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah cause running /sbin/lilo after installing a new kernel is such a momentous thing that a whole new bootloader that is orders of magnitude more complex and hard to use had to be created. Really?
8. Re:No grub 2 by diegocg · 2011-10-05 06:51 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  No, LILO doesn't work fine. LILO always was incredibly unreliable, it needs to know the fixed location of the kernel inside the disk (if you move your kernel it stops working). I can't count the times my system stopped booting because of stupid things like that. GRUB in the other hand can read filesystems so it doesn't need to know where kernels are, only the stages are neccesary. Even if it fails to find a kernel it has an interactive editor where you can list the available files in the /boot directory, which is useful for recovery. Also, LILO doesn't support UEFI.
9. Re:No grub 2 by arth1 · 2011-10-05 07:07 · Score: 1
  
  Tried to install a grub-based distro on a truly headless system?
  There are cases where grub makes sense, and cases where LILO makes sense, and cases where u-Boot makes sense.
10. Re:No grub 2 by Lunix+Nutcase · 2011-10-05 07:07 · Score: 1
  
  Also,LILO doesn't support UEFI.
  2008 says hello.
11. Re:No grub 2 by AdamWill · 2011-10-05 07:42 · Score: 2
  
  ironically, neither does grub2. well, it does, but very badly. we're actually still using grub-legacy for EFI installs in F16, because grub2-efi is just too unreliable at present.
12. Re:No grub 2 by sunderland56 · 2011-10-05 08:35 · Score: 1
  1.99 is the current release of grub 2. There is no release with a version number that actually begins with 2... or 1 for that matter--"grub legacy" ended at 0.97.
  There is a release that begins with 1 - you just said so yourself.
  
  Grub 1 starts with a 0.
  Grub 2 starts with a 1.
  This is probably a worse situation than Firefox's new-version-every-week.
13. Re:No grub 2 by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-10-05 08:49 · Score: 1
  
  While we're at it, can someone give a quick rehash of the present state of Linux boot loaders? I've installed Arch on a netbook yesterday, and noticed that the installer gave me a choice of GRUB vs SysLinux. This is the first time I've actually heard about SysLinux, but apparently it's an old project - so why the sudden interest to it? Does GRUB have problems on modern hardware, or what?
14. Re:No grub 2 by diegocg · 2011-10-05 09:22 · Score: 1
  
  That's a separate (and not very healty) project.
15. Re:No grub 2 by Medievalist · 2011-10-05 10:18 · Score: 1
  
  Do you normally have need to move your kernel around? If so, just remember to run /sbin/lilo afterwards, and you are done.
  If you can't remember that, just boot some other media, chroot to your borked installation, and run /sbin/lilo. All fixed!
  Grub's fine if you like big complex solutions to simple little problems, I guess. We use it at work because the big distros ship it.
16. Re:No grub 2 by Junta · 2011-10-05 10:35 · Score: 1
  
  It doesn't though. The interactive capabilities are piss-poor, no EFI support, if you did anything that might change block location of kernel, it would fail. This means 'clever' filesystems might be fundamentally incompatible with LILO (if your kernel gets deduped and pointer moves, there was no user cue to go and update lilo). Having to re-run lilo every time is a sufficient indicator of a problem.
  
  --
  XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
17. Re:No grub 2 by Desler · 2011-10-05 10:37 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, it's funny how we have this overly complex GRUB solution all to save the "huge" hassle of running /sbin/lilo after installing a new kernel.
18. Re:No grub 2 by Junta · 2011-10-05 10:38 · Score: 1
  
  If you neglect to do that, then you are toast. If we ever get btrfs boot and btrfs does content indexed storage, it might not be amenable to lilo strategy (or several other fancy filesystem tricks).
  However, having a boot loader maintain filesystem support independent of the kernel is a tad worrisome. probably just say 'use vfat for /boot' and be done with it.
  
  --
  XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
19. Re:No grub 2 by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 13:12 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, and? How does that justification a much more complex solution that has proved to be much harder to maintain (hence why we have GRUB2). The entire justification for GRUB is because people are too lazy to run /sbin/lilo? Really?
20. Re:No grub 2 by Medievalist · 2011-10-06 02:01 · Score: 1
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_boot_loaders
  Enjoy.
21. Re:No grub 2 by Medievalist · 2011-10-06 03:45 · Score: 1
  
  So, in a hypothetical future scenario where grub won't work, LILO won't work either? Doesn't seem like a big problem to me. In the real world, both bootloaders will probably get support for your hypothetical filesystem long before most people ever need it.
  People have already pointed out that having to run /sbin/lilo at kernel update time is hardly a big deal. You could run it automagically off an inotify hook if you are really incapable of typing five keystrokes. Red Hat automated the process inside their software updates a decade ago, before they switched over to grub. And can you call it a "fail" if you forget to do something, but you can trivially fix it in a single boot cycle? Try dealing with a corrupt grub stage 2 some time - you'll be doing more than just running /sbin/lilo.
  As for EFI, there's been a version of LILO available for it since 2008 (actually much earlier, but official release in 2008).
  Use grub if you want to. Everybody should use their own favorite tools! But don't pretend there's anything functionally wrong with LILO - it's just a simpler tool, that doesn't have enough bells and whistles to suit your particular preferences. Nothing wrong with having choices...
22. Re:No grub 2 by OdinOdin_ · 2011-10-06 05:18 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah but, forgetting to run it results in a chronic failure at the next reboot (which could be a month away).
23. Re:No grub 2 by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-10-06 05:59 · Score: 1
  
  A yes/no feature chart does not paint the complete picture. For one thing, it might simply not include certain features that are nonetheless important. For another, it doesn't cover quantifiable but subjective measurements such as stability or convenience.
24. Re:No grub 2 by Junta · 2011-10-06 09:00 · Score: 1
  
  elilo is a fundamentally different beast than lilo. The name is the only thing in common.
  
  --
  XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
25. Re:No grub 2 by Medievalist · 2011-10-06 10:21 · Score: 1
  
  elilo is a fundamentally different beast than lilo. The name is the only thing in common.
  Care to elaborate?
  I'm very curious, since it seems to me that the ability to boot a kernel is something elilo and lilo clearly have in common. What is different, other than the code rewrite required by the difference between EFI vs BIOS? Does elilo recognize filesystems?
26. Re:No grub 2 by Junta · 2011-10-06 14:24 · Score: 1
  
  It doesn't have filesystem code *but* it doesn't read kernel/initrd from any filesystem that UEFI does not understand. So while it doesn't have any driver, it does require it be in a vfat partition or tftp area, but does not need to do anything like be re-embedded in an MBR to handle an update, an update to the config file is sufficient. I don't know if elilo is so much a rewrite(which in and of itself would be significant) or a project inspired by and named after lilo, but not actually coming from the same place. I have always thought the former.
  Incidentally, the elilo maintainers don't consider elilo a place for active development these days, and points people at grub2. However, elilo is the only game in town for linux kernel load over UEFI PXE (well, *technically* the EFI hacekd up grub-legacy can, but it's fairly insane). A shame, as far as I'm concerned, since grub I think of as riskier approach (you must correctly implement all the filesystems) vs. something like elilo, which just settles for whatever UEFI will drive and that means nothing more ambitious than vfat. lilo I don't like because it reads data out of the filesystem without anything really *understanding* the filesystem, elilo is a nice medium, a real, if limited filesystem everyone understands.
  
  --
  XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
"For most users" - Really? by c0d3g33k · 2011-10-05 05:51 · Score: 1

Granted, I don't know the proportion of users who use a given desktop environment in these distributions, so the OP may be accurate, but this seems a little presumptuous. I personally use KDE, and I know that many folks eshew both Gnome and KDE for lighter desktop environments. Quite a few users of these distributions won't notice this "major change" at all. Might I suggest something like: "The major change that will be most visible to Gnome users in each distro is an upgrade to Gnome 3.2. Users of other desktop environments will experience minor upgrades with little visible impact on user experience".
1. Re:"For most users" - Really? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 06:46 · Score: 0
  
  I know that many folks eshew both Gnome and KDE for lighter desktop environments.
  Not even for "lighter" environments. I don't use FVWM because it's "light", I use FVWM because it doesn't completely change its interface every few releases and stores its configuration in flat text files that I understand and can back up and generally stays out of my way and lets me use my computer the way I want to use it instead of trying to force me to learn whatever its developers think will be better.
2. Re:"For most users" - Really? by fnj · 2011-10-05 06:51 · Score: 1
  
  A large majority of users just use the one that comes up by default after a default install, and that is Gnome. A lot of users are surprised that you can install other DE's, or that you can have a bunch of them installed at once.
Re:Gnome? bah by RotateLeftByte · 2011-10-05 06:01 · Score: 1

Gnome to Beta Hell maybe?
Geddit?

--
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
News? by StarKiller53861 · 2011-10-05 06:18 · Score: 1

Two mildly popular distros releasing their betas is not news. An actual release might be news (and that's debatable), but a beta release? Bah.
And just a reminder that /. didn't cover the various betas of Ubuntu either. Or any other popular Linux distros, for that matter.
Also, GNOME 3.2 has been in the stable Arch Linux repos since almost the day it came out.
1. Re:News? by Noughmad · 2011-10-05 07:48 · Score: 1
  
  You'll see someday when timothy discovers ArchLinux, and there will be a story every day about a "new version" of Arch.
  
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  PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by Forget4it · 2011-10-05 06:21 · Score: 3, Informative

LMDE is a good alternative maintained Linux that continues with the latest Gnome 2 not 3
http://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

--
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
1. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 06:30 · Score: 0
  
  Mint sucks though because the installation is too basic. No network installer, etc. No power to install it properly (even Ubuntu has a way to do that).
2. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by jasno · 2011-10-05 06:51 · Score: 1
  
  I just tried Mint last night - ran into major problems with the nVidia proprietary drivers that I haven't seen on Ubuntu or Fedora. That was enough to kill the deal.
  I'm switching back to linux on my laptop after a few years of having a social life. Ubuntu is OK but I'm looking for something cleaner and more up to date. I'm trying Fedora 15 now but, god, those repos are slooooow. Also, even with the yum frontend, I think the package management sucks.
  Is Gentoo still alive? That was always my fav distro - clean, simple, up to date, and easy to configure. It seemed to be pretty good for dev work as well(building embedded systems, kernel work, etc...).
  
  --
  
  http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
3. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 07:01 · Score: 0
  
  I switched to Mint from Ubuntu because the new GUI interfaces essentially suck. If you want more flexibility regarding a GUI you can use strait up Debian (or Ubuntu server) with wii / Rat Poison or any of the other flavors of a GUI. I use wii on my low end computers and severs I run with XRDP. Most excellent ;)
  I don't know why Gnome project made 3.2 their flagship GUI. I would have kept it a screen interactive version for ipad type machines (at best) and kept 2.xx as the flag ship with continues improvements. Gnome might find that they may have to back track at some point.
4. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by geek · 2011-10-05 07:10 · Score: 1
  
  Go with Arch. Its up to date and very user configurable and you really can't go much lighter.
5. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 07:18 · Score: 0
  
  Ha, I started doing the same a couple of weeks back, chiefly because having the classic worksheet GUI for Maple saves me an enormous amount of time, and they're trying as hard as damn it to cut it out of everything. 32 bit Linux, I can still get it. I tossed around the idea of going for Gentoo (which is still alive) or Arch again and decided that I simply just can't afford the time anymore. I went for Fedora and boot on XFCE, which was a bit frustrating, and then swapped it to KDE which is OK but feels slightly flaky but basically works except when it doesn't clear another sodding notification or preview from the top panel and it stays there until I restart the window server. I'm half-inclined to swap it to OpenSuSE or however they capitalise it these days. Or Mint. Or something.
6. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 07:25 · Score: 0
  
  Mint is really good. I tried LMDE but had too many programs that wasn't compatible.
  So I reinstalled to LM 11 and it works REALLY good. Bye bye Unity..
  I have two computers with Nvidia and I haven't seen any issues (but I have with Ubuntu though!).
7. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by Grishnakh · 2011-10-05 07:54 · Score: 1
  
  I don't know why Gnome project made 3.2 their flagship GUI. I would have kept it a screen interactive version for ipad type machines (at best) and kept 2.xx as the flag ship with continues improvements.
  The Gnome team does not believe in having a different UI for different devices. They want you to use the same UI on all devices, whether you're using a tablet, a smartphone, or a quad-screen desktop PC. If that means reducing the utility of desktop machines, then so be it.
  Gnome might find that they may have to back track at some point.
  They're not going to do that. They want everyone to use their DE the way they want you to, and they don't even want you changing the themes (the developers have said so), because then other people who see you using this themed-Gnome won't know you're using Gnome. With the Gnome team, it's their way or the highway.
8. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by Vancorps · 2011-10-05 09:39 · Score: 2
  
  In what way has Unity reduced the utility of desktop machines? As a Unity user with multiple monitors I'm quite interested in the reply especially since this is a laptop with a docking station. I'm surprised how well it works, in the old days to put the laptop on the docking station I'd have to logout and back in or restart X, now everything just works and auto-detects nicely.
  I'll admit that laughing multiple instances of the same app from Unity wasn't all that intuitive at first I now understand why and it works fairly well. I'm also impressed with the integration of other workspaces.
  Also, I have a theme, I've branded my desktop environment to match corporate branding, wasn't very difficult either. So what you say is so confusing to me.
9. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by Grishnakh · 2011-10-05 09:44 · Score: 1
  
  When did I ever mention Unity in my post?
10. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by Vancorps · 2011-10-05 09:52 · Score: 1
  
  That would be the source of the confusion ;)
11. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by Tranzistors · 2011-10-05 09:55 · Score: 1
  
  More like Gnome doesn't believe THEY should develop different UI for different devices. Why should they do that? Do gnome devs target smartphones? Haven't seen that. If you have seen shell early prototypes, it is clear that they made the shell for desktop, but keeping in mind the touch interface.
  Speaking of themes, they sure look nice (sometimes), but changing icons (the main theming after changing wallpaper, which is allowed) can (and does) cause problems, when a lot of recognizing happens using icons.
  Finally, if you really want to have fun with the look, the option is there, it is called "gnome tweak tool". And the shell can be modified with CSS.
12. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by Grishnakh · 2011-10-05 10:14 · Score: 1
  
  More like Gnome doesn't believe THEY should develop different UI for different devices. Why should they do that?
  They've architected their DE so that there's only one interface. Contrast this to KDE, where they've designed Plasma to have different versions for different devices, while all the underlying systems are the same. In KDE, it's pretty easy to create an alternative UI for a different type of device. Right now, on any typical desktop distro, it normally runs "plasma-desktop", but you can easily run "plasma-netbook" instead if you want to try out the netbook-style interface. There's a fundamental disagreement in philosophy here. The KDE devs believe that different devices should have different interfaces, optimized for the different input and output devices used on each (keyboard/mouse vs touchscreen etc.). The Gnome devs don't believe this; they believe that all devices should converge to the same or very similar UI to "reduce confusion".
  If you have seen shell early prototypes, it is clear that they made the shell for desktop, but keeping in mind the touch interface.
  There's no reason to keep in mind the touch interface on a desktop, because there's no touchscreens on desktop systems! "Keeping in mind" touchscreens is just going to make the UI non-optimal for a traditional keyboard-and-mouse system.
13. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by Tranzistors · 2011-10-05 10:45 · Score: 1
  
  Don't mind me being lazy, but:
  1) why do you believe Gnome wants to have shell as UI for every device? Any links to chat logs or anything like that?
  2) i know one thing, that makes touch interface better for mouse interface — on touch the buttons have to be bigger and it helps to faster position the mouse as well. Mind telling us the downsides?
14. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by loftyhauser · 2011-10-05 11:27 · Score: 1
  
  The problem with LMDE is that it is still Debian with a bit more sane initial configuration. And you're only guaranteed to stay with Gnome 2 if you stay with stable, and LMDE is meant to be a rolling distro that tracks testing. It also doesn't allow installation onto a pre-existing LUKS-LVM setup, like I can with Fedora. On the whole, it's just not as user-friendly for the desktop. I have found that, for the time being, Fuduntu is a pretty nice alternative. Since it is based on Fedora 14, it has Gnome 2, but with an updated kernal (3.0.3). Then again, since it's based on 14, it will stop receiving updates once F16 is released.
15. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by Eil · 2011-10-05 14:38 · Score: 1
  
  Which is good right up until Debian switches to Gnome 3. It won't be soon, but it will happen.
16. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by Noitatsidem · 2011-10-05 15:54 · Score: 1
  
  "but had too many programs that wasn't compatible"
  A) What?
  B) Uh, it's linux, and the Debian package-base is roughly the size of Ubuntu's, so I have no clue what you're talking about.
  C) What?
  
  --
  Feel free to mod me down, just know that unlike some Anonymous Cowards I'm not afraid to express my views as myself.
17. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by Noitatsidem · 2011-10-05 15:56 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, Mint now mirrors the debian Repos and it's only semi-rolling, if a package isn't working for them at the end of the month, they don't update it.
  
  --
  Feel free to mod me down, just know that unlike some Anonymous Cowards I'm not afraid to express my views as myself.
18. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by Noitatsidem · 2011-10-05 15:57 · Score: 1
  
  Mint now mirrors the debian repositories and only updates the packages that they feel are ready.
  
  --
  Feel free to mod me down, just know that unlike some Anonymous Cowards I'm not afraid to express my views as myself.
19. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by temcat · 2011-10-05 21:40 · Score: 1
  
  I guess at least most home users don't need network install, and Mint desktop installs much quicker than say Debian. Besides, what additional "power" do you need?
20. Re:Linux Mint Debian Edition LMDE is Gnome 2 by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-12 01:07 · Score: 0
  
  Try to install fastest mirror; worked wonders for me!
  http://wiki.centos.org/PackageManagement/Yum/FastestMirror
Re:GNOME 3 HATERS: Please keep posts in this threa by hobb0001 · 2011-10-05 06:26 · Score: 1

It's been going on for several years now, but I wonder in which year did critique become "hate"? Seems to me that it happened sometime in the 90's.
Re:GNOME 3 HATERS: Please keep posts in this threa by Fwipp · 2011-10-05 06:47 · Score: 1

It was about the same time that people started trying to pass off "I hate the new look" as "critique."
Is there a timeline for Fedora 16 full release? by Joshua+Fan · 2011-10-05 06:59 · Score: 1

Just curious.
1. Re:Is there a timeline for Fedora 16 full release? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 07:02 · Score: 0
  
  Except for the version number, same as it always was:
  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/16/Schedule
GNOME 3 is growing on me by DrXym · 2011-10-05 07:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

Be in no doubt GNOME 3 has some pretty stupid omissions but the core experience is actually pretty slick and task centric. You can see and arrange all your activities from one screen, you use your apps from another screen. It comes second nature to use and it looks great, easily comparable to OS X or Windows 7.
As I said it has some issues and I wish they'd be sorted. Biggest for me is there are no desktop icons unless you enable it from a tweak tool. This oversight / omission is just bizarre. The second omission is lots of settings that gnome-tweak-tool exposes should have been in the options dialogs from the get go - things like enabling minimize / maximize buttons, font sizes and so on. I do not accept that these things are not basic configuration settings that every user should have access to by default. The final annoyance is while the activities screen is okay most of the time, the fact is that it would be useful to have a task launcher which is visible without flipping screens.
So I don't have bad impressions but it needs more refinement. Unity by comparison is really getting on my nerves and I used to be more favourably inclined to that effort than I was to GNOME. Maybe if Ubuntu actually fixed some of the more stupid "features" like the global menus and floating scrollbars it might be more tolerable.
1. Re:GNOME 3 is growing on me by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 07:12 · Score: 0
  
  You can see and arrange all your activities from one screen, you use your apps from another screen.
  Yep, this is quite an improvement over previous DEs, but it's incredibly hard to switch between apps within one workspace and AFAIK it's not possible to label the workspaces, and thus it's a no go for me.
2. Re:GNOME 3 is growing on me by DrXym · 2011-10-05 07:21 · Score: 1
  
  Why can't you alt+tab between apps in the one workspace. But I agree some kind of task bar / launcher / switcher is necessary at least as an option on the app screen. While flipping to the activity screen is pretty fast and slick I think it still causes a mental disconnect that a taskbar would alleviate. There is actually somewhere they could put this - in the notifications tray that pops up when you mouse into the bottom right corner.
  I don't use multiple screens much to comment but I expect it would be nice to be able to persistently set how many there were at startup and to also set the background for each to be visually different.
3. Re:GNOME 3 is growing on me by arth1 · 2011-10-05 07:33 · Score: 1
  
  While flipping to the activity screen is pretty fast and slick
  Not if you have multiple large monitors, it isn't. You end up dragging the mouse back and forth repeatedly between the top left of the leftmost monitor and the right edge of the rightmost monitor.
  It probably makes much more sense on a touchscreen, but it's directly mouse-hostile.
4. Re:GNOME 3 is growing on me by AdamWill · 2011-10-05 07:46 · Score: 1
  
  Start key.
5. Re:GNOME 3 is growing on me by Grishnakh · 2011-10-05 07:56 · Score: 1
  
  The Gnome team doesn't care if it's mouse-hostile, they want you to get used to using a UI designed for a touchscreen, so you can be ready in the near future to just use a touchscreen desktop which has no mouse or keyboard.
6. Re:GNOME 3 is growing on me by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 07:58 · Score: 0
  
  Gnome 3 has made me go back to WindowMaker. WindowMaker, with pcmanfm for file management, docker to run the needed applets to manage wifi and a cool Python script I found called wmmenu.py that pulls in the standard menu into WindowMaker's menu and I'm a very happy camper. Wow, I forgot how fast WM is and how much I missed it. With the mess that is Gnome 3 and KDE I think I'm going back in time to get my desktop of the future.
7. Re:GNOME 3 is growing on me by DrXym · 2011-10-05 08:30 · Score: 1
  
  I don't see much about GNOME 3 which makes it especially touchscreen friendly. I'm sure it's in the back of developer's minds to make it that way (e.g. virtual keyboard landed in 3.2) but at the moment its designed for mouse and keyboard.
8. Re:GNOME 3 is growing on me by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 09:43 · Score: 0
  
  Did they fix the shutdown/suspend issues? The worst thing I experienced was having to try to figure out how to shutdown my system without hitting the power button.
9. Re:GNOME 3 is growing on me by DrXym · 2011-10-05 10:28 · Score: 1
  
  Hold down the Alt key and the drop down says Shutdown. It's another of those annoyances that could be fixed assuming someone in GNOME would realise that not everyone wants to suspend their PCs.
10. Re:GNOME 3 is growing on me by Junta · 2011-10-05 10:46 · Score: 1
  
  Dear god I miss wmaker. If they had composting to let me preview windows and search them, I'd be back there so fast... I've just gotten too attached to searching for my desired window.
  wmaker's dock was more reliable at application grouping years ago than KDE or gnome 2, or gnome 3 is today.
  
  --
  XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
11. Re:GNOME 3 is growing on me by Junta · 2011-10-05 10:47 · Score: 1
  
  No, that's an 'advanced' function that requires a modifier key. There is a .css snippet to bring it back to sanity, but a novice user is pretty well screwed.
  
  --
  XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
12. Re:GNOME 3 is growing on me by sqldr · 2011-10-05 12:47 · Score: 1
  
  Biggest for me is there are no desktop icons
  I've never used desktop icons. My windows are in the way. You have to move the window out of the way, click on it, then presumably move the window back again. I've always pinned my icons to the taskbar, or the thing on the left in gnome 3. Usually I start up applications via alt-f2 anyway. Not sure why people would miss it :-)
  
  --
  I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
13. Re:GNOME 3 is growing on me by dudpixel · 2011-10-05 14:17 · Score: 1
  
  I actually agree with you entirely.
  I switched to fedora 15 when GNOME 3 was new and used it for 3 weeks or so. What I found was that as you said, it is easy to get used to the workflow and it does work pretty well for getting stuff done.
  However, the lack of taskbar for task switching was a huge downside. Yes you can switch tasks other ways but it was a lot more cumbersome than a task bar would be.
  In the end I found it too limiting and switched back to KDE. Interestingly my experience with GNOME 3 prompted me to make changes to my workflow in KDE. The beauty of KDE is that it is so flexible that I was able to make those changes.
  I'd like to try GNOME 3 again sometime but for now KDE fits my workflow perfectly.
  
  --
  This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
14. Re:GNOME 3 is growing on me by MikeBabcock · 2011-10-06 01:40 · Score: 1
  
  Switching to Gnome 3 slowed down my workflow tremendously. I no longer have "last window I used" switching; I have to toggle between ALT-tab and ALT-` ... I've lost rapid access to my system's status in my gnome-panel applets, and modal dialog handling has changed for the worse.
  
  --
  - Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
15. Re:GNOME 3 is growing on me by jc79 · 2011-10-06 01:53 · Score: 1
  
  It's not mouse-hostile, but it is keyboard friendly. Almost everything in the gui can be done without taking your hands from the keyboard. For example, getting to the activities screen is done by pressing the Super (Windows) key - much quicker than mousing to a hot corner from another monitor. The big annoyance for me in gnome 3.0 is not being able to select icons in the favouriites dock with the keyboard, but just typing the first few letters of the application name and pressing enter is sufficient to launch what you want. Hopefully this has been addressed in 3.2
16. Re:GNOME 3 is growing on me by DrXym · 2011-10-06 21:17 · Score: 1
  
  Switching to Gnome 3 slowed down my workflow tremendously. I no longer have "last window I used" switching; I have to toggle between ALT-tab and ALT-` ... I've lost rapid access to my system's status in my gnome-panel applets, and modal dialog handling has changed for the worse.
  It obviously has a lot room for improvement, no denying that. But of those things you state none of them is insurmountable. Gnome-panel applets for example are just processes that render into a little widget through a specific panel API. GNOME3 implements shell extensions which are a more powerful API anyway - write the gui in css and JS and hook it up to something. There is already a system monitor extension and failing that you could run a more traditional process / system monitor and minimize it. It would still be visible from the activity screen.
17. Re:GNOME 3 is growing on me by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-07 10:21 · Score: 0
  
  I just hope someone will finally realize that a Win32 subsystem is the only sane way to push Linux/FreeBSD desktop and save ourselves from the useless toy is nowadays.
Re:GNOME 3 HATERS: Please keep posts in this threa by hobb0001 · 2011-10-05 07:13 · Score: 1

???
Hate: (verb) to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest
Critical: (adj) inclined to find fault or to judge with severity, often too readily
Seriously? Hate is the more appropriate word? Extreme hostility and passionate dislike?
Me thinks that people on the internet exaggerate too much...
Re:GNOME 3 HATERS: Please keep posts in this threa by Lunix+Nutcase · 2011-10-05 07:17 · Score: 1

More like "Methinks GNOME fanbois are too thin-skinned".
Not on me by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 07:41 · Score: 0

Didn't grow on me - the more I used it, the more I found the basic way I used my computer was crippled for no reason. I couldn't even create my ten virtual desktops and label them, the way I've done since day 1 with Gnome 2. Anything that totally disrupts my ability to do my work is a non-starter. I'm migrating to KDE, which at least has a fixed number of virtual desktops. (And I still haven't found the font installer for Gnome 3, if there is one, but once I realized how crippled G3 was I didn't bother. Surely you can install your own fonts for your own documents?)
1. Re:Not on me by temcat · 2011-10-05 21:47 · Score: 1
  
  Make a directory called .fonts in your home dir and put your fonts there - after that, they should be visible to the system.
Use LinuxMint and you support Terrorism! by bornagainpenguin · 2011-10-05 07:54 · Score: 0

This is old news, but still not everyone knows about it. Clement Lefebvre has officially requested that anyone who supports Israel's right to exist not use his distro and made it clear that he supports the terrorists in Gaza. See here for the details: http://abriefhistory.org/?p=774

--
Have a Virgin Mobile USA smartphone? Give VMRoms.com a try!
1. Re:Use LinuxMint and you support Terrorism! by marnues · 2011-10-05 08:57 · Score: 1
  
  Good job on injecting a purely technical Linux distro discussion with a hyperbolic rephrasing of one distro developer's political believes. You have certainly trolled hard today! Maybe a nice lemonade by daddy's pool is what you need. Thanks for being here!
Unity? by Autie · 2011-10-05 09:13 · Score: 1

Does this mean both distros adobted Unity? I don't like that on my desktop computer. Only good idea for use with laptops or smaller.
1. Re:Unity? by Junta · 2011-10-05 10:39 · Score: 1
  
  No, Unity is differnt, though cut from the same cloth. Both have a hard-on for tablet-only interaction and sacrifice desktop usability toward that end.
  
  --
  XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
2. Re:Unity? by KugelKurt · 2011-10-07 06:42 · Score: 1
  
  Does this mean both distros adobted Unity?
  Unity is available for openSUSE but not as default if that was your question.
  So far Unity for openSUSE is only available from an not officially supported repository.
Missing bits.. by Junta · 2011-10-05 10:43 · Score: 1

Window title search in the window preview mode. Someone hacked up something like it but *without* live previews, which is significantly less useful.
When I hover my cursor over an applications 'dock' icon, I'd like it to preview that apps windows. Like compiz scale only windows belonging to this app. Same sort of usefulness of hovering over the 'superbar' in windows, but using more screen real estate to to so since all the windows are already in 'preview' mode anyway.
I think I'd be largely placated by just those two enhancements. I'm not crazy about the look, and hope to see some themeing (e.g. get rid of those rounded corners on the top panel).

--
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
bye bye fedora by lsatenstein · 2011-10-05 15:30 · Score: 1

I started with fedora 4, and with fedora 15 I switched to scientific linux.
The Gnome interface tries to emulate a tablet display. This is ok for home users, but for developers what work with data driven data, as opposed to function driven interface, Gnome 3.x is a big big big turnoff.
I also like compiz for the wobbly windows, but not for anything eles.

--
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
1. Re:bye bye fedora by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 19:00 · Score: 0
  
  Heh, I'm a developer who switched from Scientific Linux to Fedora 15 precisely because I wanted to use GNOME 3, and I'm glad I did. So I guess we cancel each other out. :)
2. Re:bye bye fedora by MikeBabcock · 2011-10-06 01:41 · Score: 1
  
  Wishing I had time to make a build with Enlightenment support ... now that's a nice interface. Sigh.
  
  --
  - Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
3. Re:bye bye fedora by lsatenstein · 2011-10-06 02:46 · Score: 1
  
  At 11pm, due to my blurry eyes and sleepiness I did not write with good grammar. What I meant to say was, I work on data and use the data to start applications. I do not use functions such as a compiler to search for the data. Much of what I do is command line oriented. Other is GUI (QT, GTK,) etc and workbench related.
  I think Linux needs a fork of Gnome 2.x
  
  --
  Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
4. Re:bye bye fedora by KugelKurt · 2011-10-07 06:38 · Score: 1
  
  Switching the whole distro just because one does not like the default DE is pretty stupid. One can always stay with the same distro and just switch DEs, especially considering that GNOME 3.x ships with a GTK3 port of classic GNOME Panel, including Metacity.
  Btw: What has Compiz to do with that?
Linux 3 by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-05 21:40 · Score: 0

Technically, Fedora 15 is already on Linux 3.x, but it renumbers it 2.40.x to avoid breaking scripts.
Fedora 15 is using kernel version 3, too by Anonymous Coward · 2011-10-06 01:28 · Score: 0

It's just calling itself 2.6.40 so as to not break some parts of user-land.