GNOME Shell No Longer Requires GPU Acceleration

An anonymous reader writes "The GNOME 3.0 Shell with the Mutter window manager no longer requires GPU acceleration to work, while still retaining the compositing window manager and OpenGL support. GNOME Shell can now work entirely on the CPU using the LLVM compiler via the Gallium3D LLVMpipe driver. This will be another change to Fedora 17 to no longer depend upon the GNOME3 fall-back, which is expected to eventually be deprecated and further anger GNOME2 fans."

Comments

Software GPU Emulation

[masternerdguy]

Is slow. I'm not sure that this is an advantage.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry Gnome-shell is already slow. Terribly slow. Unbelievably slow. Unusably slow. I could give a load of other adjectives, but I think you get what I mean. The target devices (netbooks and tablets) usually can't handle it, and even proper desktops struggle...

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[stms]

The advantage is if your GPU is unsupported by your distro, not on the live disk or, otherwise not working you can get video acceleration working without having to muck about in the command line.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on how you define "video acceleration". I think if it runs on the CPU, it is by definition not acceleration, since it does that anyway. Considering it will probably be even slower than just disabling the bling, I'm tempted to call it "video deceleration".

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome 2.x needs to be forked. (not mate a real fork like "troll")

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[jdege]

Am I the only person who runs my desktops as often through remoting as sitting at the console?

How fast will this be running over VNC?

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[TD-Linux]

Meh, the compositor has to draw the pixels, one way or another. KDE has two backends, XRender and OpenGL. If acceleration isn't available, the XRender backend can still run in software, and is pretty fast. KDE also supports no compositing at all, but with software compositing it's becoming irrelevant.

Note that compositing != GPU acceleration. Mac OS X has always used compositing, but it was entirely software. There are still good reasons to do so. I'll compare for you:

No compositing, one frontbuffer: You don't get your own pixmap to draw onto. You have to send drawing commands to the display server to draw on your behalf, to prevent you from drawing wherever you want on the frontbuffer. Unfortunately, if you have something complicated to draw, the user gets to watch as the drawing happens. When drawing a new object, generally the algorithm used is to draw the background, and then draw the objects in order from back to front. This means whenever the screen is updated, the user will see flicker whenever any objects are updated because they may briefly flicker to the background color. To work around this most modern toolkits (Qt 4, GTK 3) render to a pixmap, and then just tell X to draw their pixmap when they are done. This avoids the flicker but uses a bit more RAM.

With a compositor, the application still draws to the pixmap, but instead of requesting the X server to immediately draw their pixmap to the screen, they pass it a handle to the pixmap and the display server can draw it whenever. This makes a lot of things easier, like vertical sync and effects, as well as things like color format and color space conversion.

Drawing the pixmap on the screen is really the same operations, no matter if compositing is on or off. And the API your compositor uses shouldn't matter too much either if the underlying implementation is optimized. The highly optimized Gallium3D blitter is going to just as good as the traditional X blitter, if not better. The only thing slowing it down in this case is the fact that OpenGL API is rather overkill for blitting, but hopefully the llvmpipe backend is optimized for this use case. And it's probably not worth it to make the compositor support two drawing APIs, like KDE, as they both end up doing the same thing anyway.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Anonymous Coward]

Slow? Not on my machine (an old dell).
I was actually surprised at how smooth everything is. I've got some minor complaints, but in all it's been a pleasant experience.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[thsths]

> I'm tempted to call it "video deceleration".

Good point. When it said "it works without video acceleration", I was hoping to read that they had optimised the desktop, so it would run fine without a beefy 3D card. But I think your interpretation is closer to the truth.

And since this turns into Gnome bashing, I would like to add that it does not seem easy to find the right design of a graphical toolkit and desktop. Qt has its own pre-compiler, mind you, so you have to programme in Qt-C++, which is nearly, but not quite like C++.

Closures help, which is why both Tk and Smalltalk have a really neat programming interface. Not that it has helped them - they are very marginally relevant nowadays.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but why use VNC? That's just streaming a video of the remote desktop through TCP/IP. Use X the way it was designed.
Unless you use Gnome, that is, because that pretty much kills all remote X functionality. Don't even try using LBX...

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[mvdwege]

So nice that you actually post links to objective measurements...oh wait.

I find it to be perfectly workable, even on an underpowered Intel GPU. The only thing slow is the build up of the Applications menu, because it re-reads the /usr/share/applications/ directory every time you open the menu. I can see why they did that, but I have rather a lot of packages installed, so I get a multisecond delay when opening the Applications view.

Otherwise I find Gnome Shell to be no slower than Gnome2, and a perfectly good UI. The way the various views and panels stay out of sight gives me a nice, large, and especially uncluttered workspace. I only have a few minor nits to pick, and aside from one design issue, none of them are deal breakers, and I expect most of them to be solved with an extension within the next 6 months or so.

Mart

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Eunuchswear]

The only thing slow is the build up of the Applications menu, because it re-reads the /usr/share/applications/ directory every time you open the menu. I can see why they did that, but I have rather a lot of packages installed, so I get a multisecond delay when opening the Applications view.

It takes multiple seconds to read a directory?

Just how many packages do you have installed?

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[mvdwege]

Currently there's some 450 files in /usr/share/applications. They all get read and parsed, and then their icons loaded, whenever I open the Applications view.

And multisecond is maybe 2 or 3 seconds, I haven't timed it precisely, but it is a noticeable and irritating delay. I wish they'd cache the results a little more aggressively.

Mart

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[kesuki]

if you don't like the bleeding edge there are plenty of old/new slow hardware distros up at distrowatch.
if your employer requires a certain distro, there have always been ways to change window managers etc.
i know there are plenty of tools i haven't personally used to maintain a network that make the shell (mostly)unimportant anyways.

if you've got a bunch of weird hardware it can be a mess, and ugly when things start to fail though.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Bengie]

Why would they want to re-read the directory when they could just cache the data, then only rebuild the cache when something changes in the directory? They could even limit it to files that change.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[DrXym]

Don't worry Gnome-shell is already slow. Terribly slow. Unbelievably slow. Unusably slow. I could give a load of other adjectives, but I think you get what I mean. The target devices (netbooks and tablets) usually can't handle it, and even proper desktops struggle...

Slow? Perhaps under software emulation it might be. But if you have hardware accelerated driver then no it isn't at all. There is absolutely no issue running GNOME shell on comparatively modest hardware. I have Linux running on a 5 year old PC with an old Radeon driver and it works perfectly well.

In certain ways compositing desktops are a lot faster than their older brethren. When a window is moved over other windows there is no longer any need to send out damage events to the other window's owners because everything is drawn into its own surface so the screen is just recomposed. It means much less context switching and less CPU taken up needlessly repainting stuff.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[0123456]

Why would they want to re-read the directory when they could just cache the data, then only rebuild the cache when something changes in the directory?

Probably for the same reason that gnome-zeitgeist thrashes my disk for three minutes after booting up and then they scan through 50,000 thumbnails looking for the oldest ones to delete.

Or at least, they did until I uninstalled the zeitgeist crap and pointed ~/.thumbnails to /dev/null.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck Gnome 2.x.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Iconoclasism]

You're using one adjective (slow) with a bunch of different adverbs (all those words that end in -ly), fyi.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Anonymous Coward]

No, there are two of us left apparently

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[jdege]

Because most of the apps I use run faster under VNC than they do under X, even with ssh compressing enabled.

I was using VNC as an example only, though.

How does GNOME3 work, running in a virtual machine?

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Waccoon]

Sometimes it just has to work, and you don't care how fast it is. You might as well insist that Linux must have a swap partition instead of a swap file.

I wish Microsoft had put a DOS emulator into Windows a long time ago. Then we would have never gotten ME, and we wouldn't have XP Mode today.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Anonymous Coward]

No compositing, one frontbuffer: You don't get your own pixmap to draw onto. You have to send drawing commands to the display server to draw on your behalf, to prevent you from drawing wherever you want on the frontbuffer. Unfortunately, if you have something complicated to draw, the user gets to watch as the drawing happens. When drawing a new object, generally the algorithm used is to draw the background, and then draw the objects in order from back to front. This means whenever the screen is updated, the user will see flicker whenever any objects are updated because they may briefly flicker to the background color. To work around this most modern toolkits (Qt 4, GTK 3) render to a pixmap, and then just tell X to draw their pixmap when they are done. This avoids the flicker but uses a bit more RAM.

This is a bullshit way to look at it. You are confusing compositing, backingstores and backbuffers.

Compositing means to have a procedural transformation from a window pixel to a screen pixel, and allows you to do such things as transparency and 3D windows, it implies nothing of whether or not the window pixels are cached (Backing store). Basically anything besides 1->1 blitting of pixels from window coordinates to screen coordinates is compositing.

Backing stores, enabled in X11 with the +bs option and maybe used by default by other window systems, Wayland in particular, mean that the application renders to an offscreen buffer which is used to redraw the window during damage events (when the window is obscured), rather than calling back to the application to request it to redraw the window. They have nothing to do with tearing or removing flicker, except maybe in the degenerate case where the output device doesn't implement double-buffering or the window system operates asynchronously and decides to page-flip even though the new screen hasn't finished being drawn.

Finally backbuffers (or double-buffering) are used by the graphics driver of the windowing system, so that the screen can be updated synchronously to the vertical-blank, to avoid both tearing artifacts when updating graphics, this is done by changing the base address the graphics hardware reads from to display a different part of the framebuffer on each alternate blank (or only when the screen contents has been updated).

Backing stores are not actually as wonderful as people think, they increase memory usage by the size of the window (width*height*depth bits, or rounded up to the nearest page boundary, double if double-buffering is used), and the same results can be achieved much more efficiently by on-demand synchronous rendering, by placing responsibility for drawing widgets (what are known as Windows in X11) in the display system, as X Athena does (even if you think Athena i ugly, it does this right), rather than opaquely drawing bitmaps and transmitting those to the window system, as GTK and QT do. In the rare case that a backing store is necessary, because large complicated graphics are required, then backing store can be implemented in the application as you mention by using a pixmap. There is absolutely no reason why normal widgets and window layouts need to be back-stored, because if your window/widget system can not redraw all the widgets on the screen in less than 1/60 (1 blank), it is useless and pathetically slow.

The issue in X11 is that because it's a network display protocol, and it makes certain choices to transmit low-level graphics primitives (windows and pixmaps) rather than higher-level objects like widgets and textboxes, it is very difficult to implement synchronous screen updates by on-demand drawing (or it was in the 1980/1990), so it resorts to asynchronous updates, where it redraws the screen regardless if the windows have finished drawing (in fact usually there is no update because X11 doesn't use double-buffering).

It is entirely possible to have backing stores without compositing, compositing without backing stores, and double buffering in either the backing st

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[bill_mcgonigle]

No, but why use VNC?

To maintain state between remote clients.

That's just streaming a video of the remote desktop through TCP/IP. Use X the way it was designed.

Can't maintain state that way unless it's special like a SunRay.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[DarkProphet]

To maintain state between remote clients.

Forgive my ignorance, but what do you mean, exactly? How does using VNC help this as opposed to using x-forwarding? I honestly don't understand.

The reason I ask is because I routinely remotely access my desktop machine (ubuntu 11.04 running stock gnome desktop) from my ten year old laptop (bootable kubuntu feisty CD, running KDE) using 'ssh -C -Y' and then calling whatever application I want to use (usually eclipse) and it works just great. If I want to remotely run the desktop itself I just call 'startx' instead of the application. It works fine. I'm just confused as to why VNC could possibly offer any benefit over doing it the way I described.

I mean, yeah, if I want to access my desktop machine from a remote Windows machine, VNC would probably be the path of least resistance, but otherwise I can't see how VNC would be preferable. Can you shed any light on this?

FWIW, I actually bothered to log into ask this so I can look later and see if anyone can help me out here ;-P

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Pausanias]

VNC or things like NX help in that if you turn off your laptop, your session is still running on your desktop. You can literally stop in the middle of what you're doing, suspend your laptop, and whatever you were doing with your remote session still keeps on chugging.

Also, in general, VNC or NX are much much faster than the straight X protocol. Even when compressed, there is something incredibly laggy and slow about the X protocol when you're throwing up windows that are non-text. A graphics-heavy application will run much faster in VNC or NX than in X-forwarding, even though the former are doing movies of the desktop and the latter is supposedly doing something more intelligent.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Chainsaw]

Forgive my ignorance, but what do you mean, exactly? How does using VNC help this as opposed to using x-forwarding?

It's probably something like this: Open VNC session, start application on remote, close session. Open VNC session, the app is still there as you left it. I'm not 100% sure if that's possible to do with X11.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Anonymous Coward]

It is pretty simply really. How do you suspend your remote X app in the event of something like network failure or time/equipment constraints? It is trivial to suspend a VNC session and reconnect to it later which is handy for a variety of situations..
To counter your use case regarding Windows I would suggest Xming since it fits into your workflow much better.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[bill_mcgonigle]

using 'ssh -C -Y' and then calling whatever application I want to use (usually eclipse) and it works just great. If I want to remotely run the desktop itself I just call 'startx' instead of the application. It works fine. I'm just confused as to why VNC could possibly offer any benefit over doing it the way I described.

OK, use case: You're right in the middle of working out a class in Eclipse, when you notice you have to leave *right now* to pick up the kid at day care. The class needs to be done tonight, but you can work on it from home, just needs an extra 20 minutes of work.

ssh/X case: Save, quit Eclipse, possibly exit X desktop environment. Go home. .... Tuck kids in. Log in via ssh. [Start X desktop] Start Eclipse. Open Project. Navigate to class, scroll to function, start working again.

VNC: disconnect. Go home. ... tuck kids in ... reconnect via VNC, start working right where you left off.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[DarkProphet]

Thank you for the responses, I see the light ;-)

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that software emulation sucks, but it is becoming less and less relevant. Since it's estimated that73% of CPUs sold today have on-board graphics processing, still no comparison to a dedicated GPU, but one way or another the CPU isn't going to sputter with this.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Junta]

I use SPICE, have used NX and, in a pinch, VNC. X 'the way it was designed' disintegrates in the face of network latency. At low latency, X is servicable and a lot more seamless than the alternatives (though NX rootless can do *much* (not all) of the seamless bits of X). If my laptop is going to switch from wired to wireless or hop from one access point to another X is going to kill the clients mercilessly.

In short, X network capability has been neglected far too long and sadly is not adapting to new requirements well. NX was promising for me, but the session seemed to die too often destroying the state persistence benefit and didn't cope with 'tray icons' in rootless mode. Now I've resigned myself to SPICE, it still sucks in terms of seamless integration into local applications, but at least the performance is good.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[Drinking Bleach]

Actually, you're wrong to assume that NX is just giving you a picture of a desktop like VNC is. Yes, you can use it like VNC in that you can have a big window containing a desktop (you can also use it in the much more traditional seamless mode). But, whereas VNC is a rather dumb protocol to pass through pixels and mouse/keyboard events (and this does help it be portable between X, Windows, and Mac OS), NX is more of a wrapper around the X protocol itself, reducing redundant messages, compressing bitmaps as needed, and sending text as actual text to be rendered client-side (this last one alone makes it a HUGE advantage if you ever have to work from a shitty Internet connection; your icons might look like a garbled JPEG mess, but the text is crystal-clear; VNC requires either having everything clear but dog-slow, or compressed like crazy and fast, but rendering text unreadable too often).

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[MikeBabcock]

The Gnome shell most certainly is slow, even with hardware acceleration. Compare with bare-bones Blackbox first, for a baseline of how blazingly fast a WM can be. Now try out the latest Enlightenment DR and scratch your head at why a huge feature-bloated monster like E could possibly be more responsive than Gnome. After that, give OSX a try. Strange, that runs on *nix too and doesn't suck so hard on similar hardware. A lot of people run Linux on Macbooks, its not that hard to compare really.

On top of that, you've got the instability ... the latest Fedora Gnome3 goes into never never land on me regularly and needs restarting "alt-f2, 'r', " all day ... jeez. Net benefit of using a Gnome shell? Negative. No feature benefits whatsoever over now-ancient shells and slower than most of them.

No, I don't use KDE to compare.

Re:Software GPU Emulation

[TheLink]

It's like GNU screen, but for GUIs :).

If you disconnect for whatever reason, you can still resume your session.

TWSS...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what she said!

LLVM?

[unixisc]

Will Gnome 3.2 work w/ Wayland? And also, does the above mean that Gnome is no longer using GCC to compile, but switching to the LLVM compiler? Honestly, it's time that GNU made GNUSTEP their official DE.

Re:LLVM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will Gnome 3.2 work w/ Wayland?

No, but likely a future version of Gnome 3 will.

mean that Gnome is no longer using GCC to compile, but switching to the LLVM compiler?

No (if they do switch compilers it won't be because of this news). GCC and Clang compile c and other programming languages. Gallium3D LLVMpipe driver is not a c compiler. It is a graphics driver. Unlike a typical graphics driver it uses the CPU not the graphics card.

Re:LLVM?

[diego.viola]

I hope it will work with Wayland, I look forward to Wayland.

Re:LLVM?

[Ster]

... And also, does the above mean that Gnome is no longer using GCC to compile, but switching to the LLVM compiler? ...

LLVM is designed to be modular. It sounds like what they're doing is probably similar to what Apple did a few years back - include LLVM bit-code files for functions that aren't handled natively, then hand those off to libllvm to emit native code when needed.

-Ster

"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[LizardKing]

Oh for fucks sake. I've just switched the wife's laptop from Ubuntu 11.10 to the beta of Fedora 16, since unlike that Unity bollocks at least the GNOME shell has the "fallback" mode that turns it back into something usable.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Anonymous Coward]

look out for linux mint 12, it's supposed to have the most sane ui since gnome2

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[thyristor pt]

I'm using Xubuntu 11.10 right now after switching from Fedora 15 and I couldn't be happier. Or you could just install the Xfce desktop on Fedora.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Anonymous Coward]

XFCE can be made to look and behave pretty similar to GNOME 2. Takes a few clicks to get there, but it's a better option than relying on something that will be going away.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Anonymous Coward]

If only there was some way to install a different window manager...

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Anonymous Coward]

Xfce FTW. Less is more.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Anonymous Coward]

Install the gnome-fallback-session package in Ubuntu and you're good to go.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Windwraith]

Why didn't you just install a replacement instead? Oh well, it's your time. But if you know how to install two different distros, I don't see why you can't just install another DE in a fraction of the time.

I am wondering how much of the Unity bashing is actually real.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[bmo]

So much this.

So much whining about Gnome3 and Unity. There is more than that in the repos.

I've got FVWM and KDE installed. FVWM for when I'm abusing multiple virtual machines (because really, they have their own environments anyway), and KDE for my regular desktop.

Linux is about choice. Don't like it? Install something else.

--
BMO

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[PessimysticRaven]

OOoh. I see what you did there!

Seriously, though, I can't wrap my mind around why the most clunky, disgustingly inefficient windows managers are installed BY DEFAULT!

You'd think they were trying to copy Win7 and OS X's shinies in some half-arsed attempt to gain followers...

Oh, wait...

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Korin43]

Seriously, though, I can't wrap my mind around why the most clunky, disgustingly inefficient windows managers are installed BY DEFAULT!

Because not everyone is you. Despite the extremely loud GNOME 3 haters (who are apparently incapable of installing a different DE), a lot of people like it. It's actually the perfect example of how to make software: Ignore the people who aren't going to like it anyway.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Windwraith]

Damnit I just posted so I can't mod you up as you deserve.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Anonymous Coward]

I like gnome_shell and I still think they need to keep the gnome2 looking desktop so as to not throw away a good thing. I use KDE because you can make kde4 look and behave like kde3

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew this was coming, that's why I never bothered with the shitty 'fallback mode' in the first place. I switched to XFCE in April, around the time that GNOME 3 was first released and I immediately wished I'd done it sooner. I can't recommend XFCE enough.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[jawtheshark]

I don't entirely agree. One thing that I liked about Ubuntu is that I could pretty much install it for anyone who wasn't computer literate and have them safely and easily do basic user tasks. To be able to support them well, I tend to use the same settings as they are so that I can help them even when I'm not in front of a computer.

You can imagine that those kind of people are less likely to cope with huge paradigm shifts like Gnome2->Unity? The two most important of these users I have are my own mother and my mother in law. I don't foresee much problems with my mom, she's a science person (Master in Chemistry) and she'll cope. It will take her effort, but she's aware these changes require it. Mother in law though? Oh, boy, I so dread Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (I only give them LTSes)

It's not that I cannot install a different distro or install a different DE. I can, it's just that Ubuntu (10.04 LTS) did give perfectly sane defaults with a reasonable interface with good discoverability. I personally see that gone with Unity.

I have looked into Debian for an alternative, but Ubuntu does give a significant amount of polish (I'd mention the "Language Support" applet, for which I haven't found a decent alternative in Debian. I live in a multi-lingual environment, and it's pretty much the best tool I've seen in any operating system. It's not the only thing ) Linux Mint has been highly recommended on slashdot, and I'll most likely check it out sooner or later. I should also give Lubuntu a shot (LXDE, I use that on my Asus EEE 701 4G). It might be the way out of this mess. When doing a PXE installation of Ubuntu 11.10 it's given as a true option.

All in all, switching to Unity is alienating the userbase. Tech people because they don't like the dumbed down aspect of it, and non-tech people because of the familiarity (and let's face it, pretty traditional way of doing things of GNome2). Except for the light destop environments, I see none of the big ones being even remotely desirable... I know people think that GNome2 looks old, I happen to disagree. It's mature. Iron out the tiny bugs and annoyances and you'd get a rock stable useful UI. However, we can't do that in the open source world. Always, new, alway rewrite alway try out the newest language. Cut it already and realize this needs to stop.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[masternerdguy]

You'd think they were trying to copy Win7 and OS X's shinies in some half-arsed attempt to gain followers... Oh, wait...

Not everyone is using BOINC to abuse their CPU (and now their GPU). Not everyone is running 4 virtual machines simultaneously. Not everyone is attempting to use wine to run Crysis. Not everyone is compiling their own software. If you prefer the windows world not everyone is running Furmark to compare their 600 dollar graphics card in synthetic benchmarks involving a rotating fuzzy torus.

The facts are: for the typical home user, the computer needs to get on the internet and do office work while looking modern. When even budget OEM machines are packing duel core 1.5+Ghz CPUs and 4GB of ram, with a 128MB+ embedded graphics card (that happens to be supported out of the box by most distros), there's room for "ooh pretty".

Maybe not everyone who uses Linux is a mega nerd? I set my grandma up on Linux after I got tired of removing viruses from her XP install. She uses the computer for (shockface) office work and internet access. Your average person doesn't want to use a window manager that looks like it belongs in 1995 because it's somewhat faster when they won't even notice the performance benefits because all they use is Writer and Firefox.

For the record, I use KDE4 for my general work and LXDE when I need more performance. I used to use Gnome 2. My grandma uses Gnome 2 right now with desktop effects (she likes the wobbly windows).

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you give Mageia a try?

It's developed by most of the people who worked for Mandriva and they care a lot about UI consistency (at least for what I know)

I'm very happy with them, all the config are easy to find and easy to set.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Sepodati]

For normal users (office, internet, maybe a few games), Unity isn't that big of a change. You're just clicking an icon in a different location. I switched and my kids and wife never asked me a question about why it was different. I don't know your family, obviously, but I'd say give them a little credit.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[jawtheshark]

It is now on my "to check out" list. Thank you. I need to find a solution before 10.04 LTS runs out of support. I still have time, but I can't change distro nilly-willy for my users.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[thsths]

Yes, but XFCE is getting pretty fat, too. It is no fun in a VM or on a netbook. In fact it is using compositing now, too.

I have moved on to LXDE as lightweight system - it still uses a rather traditional window manager instead of an integrated desktop.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[jawtheshark]

Ok... Simple task: run a calculator. Ah, and we're talking mouse-bound users.. No usage of keyboard allowed.

That's the discoverability... Right there... Calculator even is an easy example as the Unity search gets it right when typing "Calc".

Your kids and your wife? Most likely tech natives and they have a role model right there. Try doing this crap with the 50+ non-techy people (I must specify this because I know that otherwise I'll summon all the 50+ slashdot dwellers who will say they can cope... You're not the people I talk about)

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Bert64]

Yes, choice is good for geeks, however non geeks require a sane default (or at least a very simple way of seeing the options available and choosing one)... Many of them will never use anything but the default, and if they don't like the default they won't use the system at all.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Sepodati]

How do they do it now?

With Unity, click on dash/icon thingy, click on "more apps", expand installed and click on calculator.

Now I assume it's click on start/icon thingy, go to applications, go to tools, choose calculator.

Really that much of a difference? It is _different_, yes. You'll have to show them the first time or two, more than likely. You really give them absolutely no credit in figuring out four clicks for themselves once you've shown them once or twice?

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Again]

I feel along with the sentiment. I do not look forward to putting Unity on my parents' computer but in my opinion there are a few changes that can be made to make it more friendly. First, remove the global menu bar, unless your users come from a Mac OS X background, it's not worth the retraining. Second change the backlight always on option in ccsm to toggle so it is easy to see when an application is running. I have big hopes for this alternate application launcher: https://launchpad.net/unity-lens-bliss

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Anonymous Coward]

glad to be helpful.

I forgot to mention that Mageia has also an excellent language support on all the packages provided, this was a strong requirement for me too (like the OP, Again) as the (not young and tech-savy) people I provide support to don't speak english at all..

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[joe_cot]

So does Ubuntu, it's just hidden. "sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback", then choose Ubuntu classic from the login menu.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[hedwards]

I haven't tried LMDE, but the standard Linux Mint is quite nice. When I get around to it, I'll be trying LMDE, but for the time being things work, and I don't generally have too much trouble getting my work done.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[hedwards]

It's a matter of trust, you shouldn't upgrade your system and find that the WM no longer functions because some jack wagon decided to include alpha code in a release.

And yes, I did end up installing something else and whenever people ask me I warn them off Ubuntu due to the unpredictability of development.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[hedwards]

Not really, it's a sane defaults thing. If you're going to install a WM as incompetently designed as Unity,then you had damn well provide a back up. I'm not sure if Canonical has gotten around to removing the back up, but it is on the road map if they haven't already doing it.

Unity was a buggy piece of shit. Once they fix the bugs it will be a ugly piece of shit that doesn't scale well to larger monitors and doesn't allow for repositioning.

Contrary to popular opinion around here, WM are a fairly big deal, they're the first thing that users see when they start working with a distro. Canonical doesn't seem to mind it, but personally I won't use anything that won't let me log in because I'm using a wireless keyboard.

It's a really sad distro who's shown up by MS.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[jawtheshark]

No, I don't. Mainly because I didn't figure it out. I just typed in when I saw the search text. Normal users really do not behave at all like us. Seasoned users will look in deeper levels, In Gnome2, everything is basically in 2nd level, where 1st level is a category understandable by humans.

I know it sounds elitist, but I don't give normal users much credit.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[shellbeach]

look out for linux mint 12, it's supposed to have the most sane ui since gnome2

But still, apparently, using Gnome 3 ... and still, according to the screenshots on the blog, looking as fugly and stupidly designed as ever. At least they may possibly be including MATE, although the most recent blog post didn't seem to positive about the chances.

As a user who switched to linux mint because of Ubuntu's adoption of Unity and Gnome 3, I really hope they don't adopt Gnome 3 without a Gnome 2 fallback. Gnome 3 is a terrible UI concept, poorly executed, and no amount of linux mint window dressing (which I don't believe linux mint does very well, incidentally) is going to change that.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Anonymous Coward]

So when one reaches 50+ they become morons and unable to change? Well, screw you with a wire brush you ignorant slut.

I've used various UNIX releases since pretty much since the days of only having Olwm and Unity, Gnome3 or OSX Lion changing is like .. OMG! Not a big deal. It's just different. When you become to ridged to change then YOU have out lived your usefulness and when you ASSuME people over a certain age aren't able to slide with the times ... YOU lose.

I remember when those who had CDE completely configured FREAKED out when Solaris went to Gnome ... it was laughable.

This whole thread and all like it are just stupid because YOU CONTRIBUTE NOTHING but whining to the discussion which is useless.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[shellbeach]

Linux is about choice. Don't like it? Install something else.

The issue is that with the latest ubuntu release, it's very difficult to install Gnome 2 (there's no repository for it, to my knowledge ... and Gnome's not a beast you'd wish to compile from source without a lot of spare time). Interestingly, following the release of Ubuntu 11.10, linux mint reported a 40% increase in their user base -- so a lot of people did install something else. But sometimes it's frustrating having to faff with your computer when you just want it to work; and switching to a new distro generally requires some serious faffing to get things back to how you want them again.

Probably the most important lesson to come from all of this is to make sure you retain a separate /home partition to allow easy distro switching. I've noticed that a lot of distros won't create a separate home partition by default, which seems a highly user-unfriendly decision to make.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[jimshatt]

I couldn't agree with you more! So much shouting around here lately...
Still, it's good that other promising DEs might get some more attention now. LXDE and XFCE still have some rough edges (IMHO). We'll see after the dust has settled.

BTW, I don't know about the quality of GNOME 3's code. It's plenty fast on my 5yo PC (Debian unstable). I actually switched from Ubuntu because of Unity, and I really like Gnome-shell.

Interesting times...

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Anonymous Coward]

agreed normal users just want things to work for them without struggle. they use their brains being normal. i hate vista/7 as they made the interface slower, less intuitive, and made features like tablets easier to use, the closest i've been to a tablet is a kindle and i only bought it because i gave up hard(pulse raising) gaming(for mental/physical health reasons) and i can't afford books the way i used to and project gutenburg has gone well with the kindle.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[epine]

Linux is about choice. Don't like it? Install something else.

Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?

I made my choice when I installed Ubuntu in the first place with the hope of not having to revisit my initial choice any time soon.

From Benford to Erd(slashcode fuckup)s

Erdos carried a suitcase from one city to another, arrived at the doorstep of any living mathematician, and declared "My brain is open!" Are you advocating that I carry my home directory with me from one distribution to another and declare "My desktop is open!" as a model of good living?

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[LVSlushdat]

I'm still on 10.04, and from the sound of the severely degraded stuff coming out of Canonical/Ubuntu since 10.04, I decided to start investigating other distros again.. I tried the new Debian-based Mint, and it looks pretty good, but for one GLARING problem.. I use the OpenShot video editor on a daily basis, and went to install it on Mint-Debian.. Not in the repos, could not get the Ubuntu ppas to work in Mint. Now I'm not a Linux noob, having started my Linux adventure in 1994 with Slackware. I had no more time to waste, so Mint goes on the backburner for me until its tweaked a bit.. Ubuntu 10.04 is good till well into 2012, so if we're still here then, I'll worry about a replacement for Ubuntu then...

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[VJmes]

Go and actually download Xfce, it's 15MB. Not even in the same league as GNOME's 200MB.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Aighearach]

Yes, choice is good for geeks, however non geeks...

Can just use something else if they don't like it.

It is not a company, it doesn't need to pretend to be for everybody to get more sales.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[shellbeach]

Note that there's a Debian-based mint and an Ubuntu-based mint -- the Ubuntu flavour is the standard one (and is the current Linux Mint 11 release, based on Natty). Any Ubuntu ppa should be fully compatible with the Ubuntu Mint version.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Chris Mattern]

He seems to complaining more about xfce's performance and memory footprint, not how much disk space it gobbles up. A lot of Gnome's disk bloat is bundled apps that don't mean anything to your system performance if you don't run them.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[rrohbeck]

If only there was some way to install a different window manager...

Yes, Canonical should really add some code to do that and push it upstream so other Debian users don't have to use Unity!

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[dhasenan]

You can explain things one-on-one just fine. Explaining things to a department of 50 people is going to be extremely painful.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[rasmusbr]

Maybe you should give Xubuntu and Lubuntu a try. I've never tried them until now, but this comment thread made me do it.

Xubuntu, under Virtualbox: After a ridiculously quick and painless installation process you have a desktop that runs reasonably fast in a VM and looks similar to an early version of Mac OS X.

Lubuntu, under Virtualbox: Takes 9.5 minutes to install. This is on a low-end laptop. Looks a bit like Windows XP.

Based on a brief look both Xubuntu and Lubuntu seem to have pretty much everything you need, including OpenShot. Lubuntu does not come with the Software center by default, but it's available in the repositories.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[KugelKurt]

Ok... Simple task: run a calculator. Ah, and we're talking mouse-bound users.. No usage of keyboard allowed.

That use case is totally retarded.
Why should people with a mouse not use the keyboard? In which world do people not use their keyboard when googling something? With the WWW so deeply rooted in our lifes, 'type to get results' is more natural than ever.
Many Mac users I know do not even start their applications via Dock or Finder. They simply enter the term in Spolight.

I'm a user of Plasma Desktop and despite a handful of apps (Firefox, Kontact, Juk,...) which I launch via QuickLaunch, I don't use the mouse at all any more to launch apps. Alt-F2 all the way for me.
As for your calculator example: Why launch one at all? In KRunner I can simply type "2+2=" and the result comes right up.
I think GNOME Shell as well as Unity are on the right track -- especially if they feature similar gizmos as KRunner (like the built-in calculator).

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Korin43]

Ok... Simple task: run a calculator. Ah, and we're talking mouse-bound users.. No usage of keyboard allowed.

That's the discoverability... Right there... Calculator even is an easy example as the Unity search gets it right when typing "Calc".

Your kids and your wife? Most likely tech natives and they have a role model right there. Try doing this crap with the 50+ non-techy people (I must specify this because I know that otherwise I'll summon all the 50+ slashdot dwellers who will say they can cope... You're not the people I talk about)

Step 1: Install Kubuntu or Xubuntu
Step 2: There is no step 2

Seriously, the whole point of having multiple DEs is that you can pick the one you want. If your users can't figure out GNOME3, don't use it!

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually switched from Ubuntu because of Unity, and I really like Gnome-shell.

So maybe you can explain this: Why does everyone feel the need to install an entire new distro when they don't like the default desktop environment? The GNOME Shell even appears in the Ubuntu Software Center, installing it is absolutely trivial!

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[VJmes]

I've never found Xfce to consume more memory than Gnome, in fact a quick Google search confirms it uses less than KDE & GNOME and only marginally more than LXDE. In terms of performance Xfce is blisteringly quick, after using GNOME for three years and a stint with KDE, Xfce has been fantastic with it's performance.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Anonymous Coward]

I have great hope for Xubuntu 12.04 LTS as I really can't picture us putting Unity on any of our engineering workstations.

I hope to see good competition from Lubuntu with 12.04, but as of 11.04 Xubuntu felt as if it had gotten a bit more love.

We might even try Kubuntu on one of the work machines just to mix it up a bit, but Unity as the standard desktop for something running ubuntu-server? it just doesn't make any sense.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Anonymous Coward]

> after using GNOME for three years and a stint with KDE, Xfce
> has been fantastic with it's performance.

Sure Xfce is clean and pretty quick, but I take it you haven't played with Fluxbox then? It's in a completely different league. Orders of magnitude faster with similar functionality. (if you know what you're doing)
yes, Enlightenment too..

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Anonymous Coward]

You can still install gnome shell extensions to look like Gnome2. Or install Mate. Or XFCE. Or LXDE.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Anonymous Coward]

So, instead of installing one package to install gnomeshell + fallback mode, you installed another *operating system* with this one exactly same package installed by default? Very efficient, you genius.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[jawtheshark]

Is it? Do you know how most normal users do copy/paste? A hint: it's not with ctrl-C, ctrl-V.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[jawtheshark]

Seems reading comprehension goes down after 50 too. Allow me to quote myself:

Try doing this crap with the 50+ non-techy people (I must specify this because I know that otherwise I'll summon all the 50+ slashdot dwellers who will say they can cope... You're not the people I talk about)

That means YOU are not one of the normal users. Proof: you read slashdot.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[KugelKurt]

Is it? Do you know how most normal users do copy/paste? A hint: it's not with ctrl-C, ctrl-V.

How does that relate to entering search terms into Google? Keyboard shortcuts are a completely different use case from launching applications via a search term. Entering search terms is common because of Google. Ctrl-C is not because nothing in Google (or Facebook or whatever other popular website) does not require it.

That said, Mac users are way more used to keyboard shortcuts but unlike Windows Mac OS X not go through lengths to hide shortcuts.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[jawtheshark]

I'm still sceptical. We'll see when I switch my mom over to Ubuntu 12.04LTS and if my support calls go up, it isn't a discoverable interface. My mom isn't technical, but she is science-y and has curiosity. Attributes most users do not have.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[mikechant]

As a user who switched to linux mint because of Ubuntu's adoption of Unity and Gnome 3, I really hope they don't adopt Gnome 3 without a Gnome 2 fallback

They are going to try their best to provide a Gnome 2 fork (MATE) which can be installed alongside Gnome 3 without conflicts. See the MATE section in this post:
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1851
If this works out and they match Ubuntu 12.04 LTS's further extended desktop support schedule, that means at least another 5 years of Gnome 2 if you want it.

Or there's always Centos 6.x or equivalent with 6 years Gnome 2 support.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Merk42]

For non-geeks there's Unity. That's who it's catered to.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[vadim_t]

You're doing it wrong, I think.

The important thing is not the distribution, but what you personally need. I've been running Ubuntu for years now, and I completely missed the introduction of Unity. Haven't ever seen it.

I run KDE, regardless of what the distribution does by default. First thing I disable all the "user friendly" crap and enable the advanced menus, fix the color prompt ("the focus in a terminal window should be on the output of commands, not on the prompt", my ass), alias dir to "ls -l --color=auto", and get to work.

It doesn't involve decision fatigue because I made the decisions years ago. The distribution is unimportant, it only matters for package availabilty, so I generally go with whatever is popular, and switch only if it turns out to be too buggy.

Besides, you're mixing things up. That article is about short term fatigue. It doesn't say anything about long term decisions.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[Anonymous Coward]

Xfce doesn't use compositing by default, but is that seriously your only complaint about it? FFS, that should actually be a huge advantage for using Xfce, use compositing if you can, then you get a more responsive desktop.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[aap]

Is a fresh Fedora install really easier than "sudo apt-get install gnome-panel" ? That would add Gnome Classic as an option on the Ubuntu login screen.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[MikeBabcock]

"More apps" sucks because users expect all their apps to show in the first place.

I'd be happier if like a bloated "start" menu, only the categories were shown with an MRU list at the side. By defaulting to showing 'some' applications, users browse through those expecting it to be exhaustive, and its not.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[shellbeach]

They are going to try their best to provide a Gnome 2 fork (MATE) which can be installed alongside Gnome 3 without conflicts. See the MATE section in this post.

You didn't read the first part of my post very well, did you? :) As I said above, MATE (surely the worst-named project in history!) is still very much a "maybe" according to that blog post, which doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[PessimysticRaven]

Seriously, the whole point of having multiple DEs is that you can pick the one you want. If your users can't figure out (insert anything here), don't use it!

This. This right here.

I can voice my annoyance, sure, but at the end of the day, stomping my feet won't do anything other than wear down my soles.

Re:"fall-back .. to be eventually depreacated"

[mikechant]

As I said above, MATE (surely the worst-named project in history!) is still very much a "maybe" according to that blog post, which doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.

I suppose I read the blog post a bit more positively; anyhow, I feel as if Mint will probably either end up with a reasonable version of Gnome 2 supported for a few years, or will put enough extensions/customizations onto Gnome 3 to make it seem 'close enough'.

Gnome 2 still included

[pavon]

The summary is a troll (as is typical for slashdot). Gnome 2 is still included in Fedora 17. The only difference is that if you have selected Gnome 3 for your desktop (which is default), and GPU acceleration isn't working, it will now fallback to unaccelerated Gnome 3 rather than Gnome 2. Regardless of your opinion of Gnome 3, this just makes sense; it would be much more confusing to get a completely different desktop than you were expecting just because your video drivers got borked. Not to mention it is wasteful to have to install Gnome 2 as a fallback if you want to use Gnome 3.

Re:Gnome 2 still included

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome 2 is not included. What you're referring to is the Gnome3 version of gnome-panel. It's not the same as the gnome-panel 2.xx.

Re:Gnome 2 still included

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome 2 is still included in Fedora 17

Citation needed.

I have done extensive reading on this in the past month, and I have not found one single source to back up your claim.

As far as I can tell, Gnome 2 has been abandoned by the Gnome 3 team, and the only hope of running it in the future is to use a fork: BlueBubble, Mate, or fork it yourself.

Why would BlueBubble even exist if F17 was going to include Gnome 2?

I would love it if you were right, though.

Re:Gnome 2 still included

[Anonymous Coward]

I strongly suspect you're full of shit. Fedora 16 hasn't even been released yet, and you're suggesting that there even IS a Fedora 17 branch? Anyway, gnome-desktop3 is the only gnome desktop in Fedora 16 Beta.

Re:Gnome 2 still included

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome 2 is still included in Fedora 17?

Nope -- Gnome 2 isn't even included in Fedora 16. There's no chance that it's coming back for 17.

Re:Gnome 2 still included

[pavon]

Sorry, everything I said is incorrect. The Fedora 17 was just a typo, I meant 16. More importantly I got my information from a post on another site, which turned out to be false. I'm sorry that this got moderated up, while the corrections did not.

xubuntu and lubuntu

[nadaou]

thank goodness for xubuntu and lubuntu! kubuntu too... the linux-for-OS-refugees world still has some shining lights.

Re:xubuntu and lubuntu

[houghi]

I use openSUSE where I install XFCE from the DVD. I still use various GNOME and KDE programs as well as others.

Re:xubuntu and lubuntu

[hedwards]

That's something I wish somebody would deal with. I always, always, always end up with at least one Gnome app on a KDE install or 1 KDE app on a Gnome install requiring me to have a lot of libraries installed for just one app.

Re:xubuntu and lubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

That's something I wish somebody would deal with. I always, always, always end up with at least one Gnome app on a KDE install or 1 KDE app on a Gnome install requiring me to have a lot of libraries installed for just one app.

Yeah, likewise I always have GIMP, Pan and Clawsmail installed whatever the DE or WM I'm using.
I just hope their reliance on the gtk toolkit doesn't fuck up their decent desktop gui.
There are no applications in the KDE camp that can rival those 3 unfortunately.

Re:xubuntu and lubuntu

[fnj]

So fucking what? What harm does that do? It's not like the code path is ever going to get exercised except in the cases where you need it.

Re:xubuntu and lubuntu

[hedwards]

You mean aside from bloating up the system and being that much more code that I have to recompile when I'm recompiling my software packages? It also happens to be that many more lines of code where there can be a potential vulnerability hiding. Not that I think it's particularly likely, but you never know.

Re:xubuntu and lubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean thank goodness for gentoo and openbox.

Re:xubuntu and lubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah but SuSE is on the dark side of the force.

GNOME is a study in how to not architect software.

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME is a perfect study in how not to architect a software system. Everything about it is wrong.

The first mistake they made was trying to cobble half-assed object-oriented support onto C, rather than just using C++ or Objective-C. Everything about GObject is stupid and counterproductive. It makes writing code a real pain in the ass, since you need to use typecasting macros all over the place. Worse, this sort of code promotes library design that's slow and inefficient. To make it even worse, this style of C code is so convoluted that it is not optimized well by compilers, resulting in binaries that are far slower than they should be.

It basically goes totally downhill after that. This bullshit with GPU acceleration being required in the first place, and then this additional bullshit involving LLVM, is yet another in a long list of flaws and horrible decisions.

I encourage all of the developers that I mentor to use GNOME and to get a good look at its internals. I just make sure that they know not to do what GNOME has done. By seeing the mistakes firsthand, it's less likely that they'll repeat them in the future with the software that they create.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[zixxt]

GNOME is a perfect study in how not to architect a software system. Everything about it is wrong.

The first mistake they made was trying to cobble half-assed object-oriented support onto C, rather than just using C++ or Objective-C. Everything about GObject is stupid and counterproductive. It makes writing code a real pain in the ass, since you need to use typecasting macros all over the place. Worse, this sort of code promotes library design that's slow and inefficient. To make it even worse, this style of C code is so convoluted that it is not optimized well by compilers, resulting in binaries that are far slower than they should be.

It basically goes totally downhill after that. This bullshit with GPU acceleration being required in the first place, and then this additional bullshit involving LLVM, is yet another in a long list of flaws and horrible decisions.

I encourage all of the developers that I mentor to use GNOME and to get a good look at its internals. I just make sure that they know not to do what GNOME has done. By seeing the mistakes firsthand, it's less likely that they'll repeat them in the future with the software that they create.

Mod AC up hes his spot on...

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME is a perfect study in how not to architect a software system. Everything about it is wrong.

The first mistake they made was trying to cobble half-assed object-oriented support onto C, rather than just using C++ or Objective-C. Everything about GObject is stupid and counterproductive. It makes writing code a real pain in the ass, since you need to use typecasting macros all over the place. Worse, this sort of code promotes library design that's slow and inefficient. To make it even worse, this style of C code is so convoluted that it is not optimized well by compilers, resulting in binaries that are far slower than they should be.

Nonsense. GObject gives you multi-language bindings for free and if you're just an application developer it only makes your life easier. You can develop GNOME programs in C++, Python, Java or whatever suits your tastes.

I don't think the overhead resulting from using C is substantial at all. Maybe you get more overhead than C++ by always using virtual calls but that is offset by not doing C++ magic like unnecessary constructor/destructor calls. You'll have to back this up if you want me to believe you.

It basically goes totally downhill after that. This bullshit with GPU acceleration being required in the first place, and then this additional bullshit involving LLVM, is yet another in a long list of flaws and horrible decisions.

I encourage all of the developers that I mentor to use GNOME and to get a good look at its internals. I just make sure that they know not to do what GNOME has done. By seeing the mistakes firsthand, it's less likely that they'll repeat them in the future with the software that they create.

I'm not a fan of GNOME and I agree that they are headed in the wrong direction, but the problems are not at all due to GObject or C. Cut the FUD when you criticise GNOME next time.

I like Gnome Shell

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it still has its rough edges, but this reminds me of the 1.x -> 2.x transition. Another few versions, a few more extensions (and a better interface for using them) and I expect the rage about gnome 3 to die down just like it did with gnome 2's changed button order.

Re:I like Gnome Shell

[MrLizardo]

Yeah. I feel exactly the same. How many people reading this discussion are quietly enjoying GNOME 3 but don't care enough about the arguments to jump into the fray?

Re:I like Gnome Shell

[RocketRabbit]

None. Not any.

It becomes clearer every day that people hate Gnome 3, and yet even as the soft noise builds to a roar, some people think it's merely a few haters bellyaching.

Listen, people hate the *shit* out of Gnome 3. It seems obvious that what started out as an attempt to create some sort of tablet-compatible UI which is also palatable on the desktop has now become a large liability. Gnome 3 has nothing that users asked for - it has been funded and driven by corporate interests (ahem INTEL) that wish to eventually provide some competition to Android's current domination in the Linux tablet market.

People hate Gnome 3. Developers hate Gnome 3. Gnome 3 is simply one of the worst abortions of a window manager to ever appear on Linux, and the situation is not going to get any better until people start fleeing and distributions leave it in the dust.

The writing's on the wall, but just because you avoid glancing in that direction that does not mean you can expect us all to swallow your fantasy about Gnome 3's awesome suitability.

Re:I like Gnome Shell

[badpazzword]

I enjoy Unity and/or Gnome Shell. I'm the 1%

Re:I like Gnome Shell

[Anonymous Coward]

If you weren't around then people really hated the shit out of gnome 2 when it originally debuted. They hated gconfig, they hated spatial nautilus, they hated the HIG and all that it brought with it. I liked gnome 2, and I like gnome 3 both as a user and as a developer and that includes shell. I like clutter, I like that the extensions are javascript and I like that things under the hood haven't changed that much. Some of the default settings are stupid and silly, but its trivial to fix them by using extensions that will likely become the standard in distros if not in upstream, and most people seem to forget that Gnome 2 was that way as well.

Out of curiosity, what do you think users were asking for that Gnome 3 should have provided but didn't?

Re:I like Gnome Shell

[GoingDown]

At least I like Gnome 3.

In past years, I have been using lots of different window managers. And still I run at least - LXDE, Awesome, Gnome3, Unit. I have always been quite flexible for using different ways of work, so I don't have any problem switching from Gnome 3 to Kde, or from Gnome 3 to Awesome - just short while of getting used to it and that's it.

I usually try out all new Desktops/Window managers which interest me, and run them for an week or two on my main laptop.

There is room for different Window managers/Desktops out there. I don't understand why there must be hate for one. Just switch to another one, it is your choice.

Re:I like Gnome Shell

[ameen.ross]

I wasn't going to reply until I saw your comment.

I like Gnome Shell as well.

Re:I like Gnome Shell

[Anonymous Coward]

Spatial Nautilus was bullshit, and most major distributions turned it off by default for the entire duration of Gnome2's life cycle.

Re:I like Gnome Shell

[jc79]

I like Gnome Shell. I find it simple, fast and intuitive. I just don't shout as loudly about it as the haters, because I have better things to get upset about.

Re:I like Gnome Shell

[galanom]

So you are saying that every major release of Gnome was disappointing?
Kinda reminds me of Windows and/or MSOffice. Every new release was met with anger.

That's because they make radical changes in places that they shouldn't and people was getting used to them.
If you put me now to a modern windows machine, I wouldn't be able to even change the mouse cursor speed.

They do it because want people do "wow" and "whoa" when they first see it. Rather than add actual improvements,
like speed, clean up code, etc.

this would be nice

[Tyrannosaur]

if gnome shell were actually nice. I'm with Torvalds; switched to XFCE

Re:this would be nice

[EasyTarget]

It's the way the Gnome3 devs are all working against each other that really sucks.

You have a half-incomplete tablet UI allied to a half-incomplete laptop UI both of which get on the tits of desktop users;
- and my feeling of 'at least they are going somewhere different and interesting' has evaporated now I see Gnome 3.2 is identical to 3,0 in every single cockup. Only one of the real UI problems has been addressed; and more ill-considered and contradictory decisions have been imposed on us.

Re:this would be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

my feeling of 'at least they are going somewhere different and interesting' has evaporated now I see Gnome 3.2 is identical to 3,0 in every single cockup

These are my thoughts as well. I've read a few things here and there about how 3.2 is a great improvement over 3.0, but they never mention why. I tried 3.2 and found it practically identical to 3.0.

Re:this would be nice

[0123456]

These are my thoughts as well. I've read a few things here and there about how 3.2 is a great improvement over 3.0, but they never mention why.

Gnome 3.2 finally has the weather applet back. At this rate, somewhere around Gnome 3.72 it will be as usable and useful as Gnome 2.

At which point they'll ditch it for Gnome 4.

Re:this would be nice

[drjones78]

XFCE is alright, but I think Gnome 3 is much better. Linus' rants against gnome 3 were rather childish and more than that - just plain idiotic. The inverter of the Linux kernel can't be bothered to learn enough about the desktop enough to discover that his big gripe could be solved with a ctrl-click or the dragging of a icon? That knowledge wasn't buried in the basement of some abandoned building with a sign saying "Beware of Leopard" posted on the door - any cursory, superficial glance at some Gnome 3 docs will yield the information before it was even a question in his mind.

Re:this would be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

ctrl-click is totally unintuitive. For years, the problem with gnome was its hiding of options and functionality. Then KDE caught the disease too. XFCE still have a useful settings dialog with useful options.

Stop making desktops for other people, the mythical "casual user". Make highly configurable, advanced desktops you want to use yourself as a developer born into an era of computer literacy.

Re:this would be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

I just installed Fedora 15 and LXDE. Very nice.

Too bad Fedora doesn't seem to have a good terminal font. "Fixed" always was my favorite but on Fedora it seems to be restricted to Latin-1 (no euro sign, for instance).

This is great news!

[Etherized]

I know there's a lot of resistance to GNOME Shell, but it's clearly the future of GNOME (like it or not) and the weird non-3d degraded mode that you get with GNOME 3 + no 3d is something that's not really fit for anybody.

Personally, I really like GNOME Shell and I'm glad to see that it will be supported on older hardware. I always found the decision to completely ignore this hardware to be questionable and damaging to Shell's adoption rate (as if it wasn't going to have a hard enough time to begin with). Surely they could have provided a similar UX without the eye candy for older systems - at least now we have a workaround!

Re:This is great news!

[jdege]

I know there's a lot of resistance to GNOME Shell, but it's clearly the future of GNOME

True. Which is why GNOME is no longer the future of Linux.

Re:This is great news!

[Etherized]

I'm curious, because I guess I don't understand Slashdot's moderation system, why did I get moderated -1 troll? I was not intending to troll anybody.

Re:This is great news!

[Etherized]

You are certainly right, GNOME's future is tied to Shell, and it's very much unclear whether Shell will ever reach the same userbase that GNOME 2 had at its peak. Luckily, we have choice in this space, and I'm glad to see XFCE and friends enjoy increased exposure as a result.

Of course, some of us do like Shell, so the improved hardware support is very welcome. It may be that GNOME becomes a marginalized, oddball UI in time, but I've enjoyed similarly non-mainstream software for years - I mean, I do run Linux on the desktop, after all :)

Re:This is great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of:

I really like GNOME Shell

Re:This is great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

"I really like GNOME Shell" is the new "I really like Windows" on slashdot ...
(and I don't like GNOME Shell)

Re:This is great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, indeed it is. As a KDE fan, I really really love the fact that GNOME is driving yet more users our way. :)

Re:This is great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

No resistance here. I've rejected. XFCE is the desktop of choice. 6 solid months and it's starting to feel like home. Only a couple of pesky things, which can be dealt with.

Re:This is great news!

[jc79]

This is Slashdot. Expressing an opinion that somebody with mod points disagrees with is obviously trolling. Expressing an opinion that they agree with is +1 Insightful.

Personally, when I have mod points, I mod up anything that is well-argued and cogently written, even if I do not agree with the opinion expressed therein. I also mod down rude, ill-informed and immature posts even if they fundamentally agree with me.

More people need to metamod, and the metamod system needs to be improved.

Just reached a decent compromise on my machine

[Jack Malmostoso]

Debian Sid introduced Gnome 3 a couple of weeks ago and I had a bit of a tough time to come to terms with it, but now I have reached a good compromise by installing tint2 and the alternate menu extension (which basically brings back the switch off menu item).
I'm rather pleased with this setup and the only thing I am really missing are a couple of applets, but nothing major.

Or, as other have said, XFCE is a great alternative, especially if you NEED external outputs (which gnome-shell still miserably fails to manage properly).

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for quoting the entire post to make your six-word response.

It's about time...

[Zephiris]

It's about time Slashdot stops accepting 'blogspam' links, such as Phoronix, instead of attributing the actual source itself. Phoronix didn't solve this, a developer did.
A badly written Slash summary (and 'article') which just links twice to the same braindead Phoronix article (which itself is a several day old duplicate) is bad. Very bad.

Dredged from the bottom of Phoronix:
Mailing list post: http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2011-November/158976.html
Fedora 17 feature point: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Gnome_shell_software_rendering

Personally, I have little doubt that the "anonymous reader" is Michael Larabel himself.

Re:It's about time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but I wonder who alerted Phoronix? Oh wait,

Adam Williamson awilliam at redhat.com
Thu Nov 3 22:50:32 UTC 2011

        Previous message: F17 heads up: gnome-shell for everyone!
        Next message: F17 heads up: gnome-shell for everyone!
        Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]

On Thu, 2011-11-03 at 17:57 -0400, Adam Jackson wrote:
> As of tomorrow's rawhide [1], gnome-session will no longer treat
> llvmpipe as an unsupported driver. This means gnome-shell will run even
> on hardware without a native 3D driver, including virt guests.

I said on IRC, but just to reiterate, this is completely awesome work,
major congratulations! I alerted Phoronix already ;)
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net

Gosh, it's almost like someone on the Fedora list wanted this to be published on Phoronix so that the news could get wider distribution! Damn that Adam Williamson and Redhat.com!

Re:It's about time...

[Ant P.]

Yeah, it's hard to stay "anonymous" when his stilted writing style sticks out like a baboon's arse.

Re:It's about time...

[FreakyGreenLeaky]

That's beautiful man!

Re:It's about time...

[ElusiveJoe]

Actually, I'm glad I don't have to read mail lists, changelogs, diff files and other ultra-nerd stuff just to extract some basic information. Phoronix is the only at least semi-professional resource of news on linux graphics I know.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[nej_simon]

It basically goes totally downhill after that. This bullshit with GPU acceleration being required in the first place, and then this additional bullshit involving LLVM, is yet another in a long list of flaws and horrible decisions.

Err.. The llvmpipe driver is developed by mesa and xorg to provide a software fallback driver that is faster than the dog slow swrast driver. Exactly why is this "bullshit" and a "horrible decision."?

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the GP, but what he's saying is far more true to my experience than what you're saying. I don't think the GP's comment is spreading FUD, either, but just a truth that many GNOME'ers don't want to hear.

Have you ever tried to use the GObject bindings for other languages? The Python bindings are the only ones that aren't terrible, but they weren't that good either. The rest were very incomplete, very outdated, or didn't exist at all. The theoretical benefits or capabilities of GObject are worthless if we can't use them in practice. I've had a lot more success with interoperability between Java, Scala, and Clojure than I ever have had with any GObject-based code. The same goes for .NET when the languages are C#, VB.NET and F#. Those all work seamlessly with almost no effort, while GObject needs a lot of hand-holding and even then it often just doesn't work.

What the GP says about some C compilers not doing a good job optimizing unusual C code is correct, too. I used to work on a compiler that generated C for a proprietary OO language and this artificial C code confused the optimizers of several popular C compilers. We got much better performance when we wrote our own native back-end. So I could totally see some of GNOME's bad performance being caused by this.

Also, KDE is very good evidence to back up the GP's claims. It's comparable in size and complexity to GNOME, but is written using C++ instead of C. On every computer I've ever used, KDE has been a lot faster than GNOME. It is also a far nicer environment to work with when you're writing code. OO programming is more natural in C++ than it is in C using GObject.

Don't write off the GP's comments as FUD. There's a lot of evidence to show that they're real problems.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for quoting the entire post to make your six-word response.

Mod AC up hes his spot on...

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[PopeRatzo]

Thanks for quoting the entire post to make your six-word response.

It was useful for the poster to quote the entire post because many of us often filter out all posts by Anonymous Cowards. By filtering out the ACs, you avoid a lot of crap and frosty pisses and enthusiastic racist name-calling.

It was an insightful post by someone who didn't care to create an account, even though it's very easy to create an account and Slashdot is very good about not misusing our email addresses. By quoting the good post in full, the GP performed a service to the community.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Samantha Wright]

Because it would be faster and easier to maintain if all of said code was removed, period? Just because llvmpipe is an improvement over swrast doesn't make the resultant performance tolerable. It's just a better piece of chewing gum on the pipe that leaks by design.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that anyone who sees the non-anonymous (nonymous?) reply can just click on "Parent" to see the original post.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[binarylarry]

Same'd.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Chibi Merrow]

And see a frost piss post...

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[nej_simon]

What would be faster and easier to maintain if the software fallback driver is removed from mesa?

GNOME != GNOME

[unixisc]

One of GNOME’s original intentions was to create a distributed object framework similar to Microsoft’s OLE - that's part of where the name is from. But for a while now, that had gone, and been replaced by this dumbing down concept w/ crippled features. Heck, even Gnome 2 was less capable of making customized settings than KDE 3.5's Kontrol Panel was.

Given all that, why not just rename both the gnome forks to something else, since the original acronym no longer applies to either? And make GNUSTEP the new GNU Network Object Modelled Environment - it certainly does Objects better than Gnome 2 or 3.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[swalve]

Except that architect isn't a verb. The word is design.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Anonymous Coward]

The first mistake they made was trying to cobble half-assed object-oriented support onto C, rather than just using C++ or Objective-C.

Is that an attempt at recursive humor?

It makes writing code a real pain in the ass, since you need to use typecasting macros all over the place.

Presumably why they now have Vala.

Worse, this sort of code promotes library design that's slow and inefficient.

AKA: Object Orientated?

To make it even worse, this style of C code is so convoluted that it is not optimized well by compilers, resulting in binaries that are far slower than they should be.

I'm not convinced by this argument, it's possible to write inefficient code in any language.

While I don't actually like Gnome, being written in C is about the only thing I do like about it. I certainly don't consider GObject/Gtk to be worse than QT or Apples API's.

Just like Macs

[bragr]

So there are doing to same thing Apple has been doing for years with LLVM. Which is why LLVM is part of xcode.

Way to innovate Gnome.

Re:Just like Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

This driver is part of Mesa. Mesa is not part of GNOME.
This story ties into GNOME, because the driver now supports all the features required of Gnome-shell at an adequate speed.

You're right that Apple does do something similar. Shader compilation uses LLVM and if the graphics card is missing features it gets run on the CPU. You're wrong that xcode has anything to do with this. Xcode uses Clang which is a c compiler. Clang uses LLVM, but clang has nothing to do with 3d graphics.
I would rather people copy each other, than suffer from not invented here syndrome. As LLVM is opensource, having extra contributors should be mutually beneficial.

That's not what i need

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, the fallback is NOT gnome 2. it's horrible, and hopelessly broken. non customizable, you can't even right click.
Personnally, until being forced to switch to lxde due to upgrade necessities, i remain with gnome 2 for now. Perhaps Mint comes up with a gnome2 fork or another cute solution after all ??

Re:That's not what i need

[joe_cot]

Hold ALT, then right click.

Re:That's not what i need

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to hold the ALT key down when right-clicking on the panel to configure it and add/remove applets. It probably has 80% of the functionality that gnome-panel 2 has. Because it's gtk3 based, you'll have to use a gtk3 based theme engine and themes in order to customize it. Overall, its a passable substitute for version 2 gnome-panel for now.

Re:That's not what i need

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking gnome. Who on earth would guess that they need to hold Alt to reveal stuff like that? "made of easy" my ass.

Re:That's not what i need

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to hold the ALT key down when right-clicking on the panel to configure it and add/remove applets. It probably has 80% of the functionality that gnome-panel 2 has. Because it's gtk3 based, you'll have to use a gtk3 based theme engine and themes in order to customize it. Overall, its a passable substitute for version 2 gnome-panel for now.

You have to hold the ALT key for .... and this my friends exemplifies how FUCKING IDIOTS the developers of Gnome are, or have become.
Seriously, who the fuck comes up with these "usability" improvements ?
Gnome devs are like the Microsoft of old. They don't eat their own dog food, of course because it smells and tastes bad.
What do you want to bet they are all using their new shiny macbooks to develop a steaming pile of shit that will droped on us poor linux users ?

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Anonymous Coward]

What would be faster and easier to maintain if the software fallback driver is removed from mesa?

A 2-D gui.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[digitig]

Who says it's not a verb? The Oxford English Dictionary lists it as having been a verb since at least 1818, and as being more specific than "design".

Try to *look* at code you're talking about, OK?

[Anonymous Coward]

GObject or C++ or scripting language or whatever - function call overhead is negligible compared to all that work (and make-work) which a typical API function of a typical GUI widget is doing. When for other coders several years ago those same APIs, libraries and languages, and *worse* optimizing compilers, worked perfectly well on 10, and even 100, times less powerful hardware - trying now to blame other coders' ineptitude on GObject, GTK+, C compiler, X server, or whatever, is nothing but pathetic and idiotic.

The tools may be imperfect, but writing good and fast code with them is perfectly possible - *if* a coder knows what he's doing. If GNOME authors wrote a slow monstrosity, it is their own failure and no one else's.

Re:Try to *look* at code you're talking about, OK?

[Carewolf]

Most of the work performed by GUI calls is function overhead. Only a few calls in rendering graphics are process-heavy, the rest of the calls are mostly abstraction overhead, this makes being able to optimize the abstractions very important.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[epyT-R]

yes because racist name calling is just so horrible compared to other kinds, that supposedly more mature people can't help throwing adolescent fits over it.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[segedunum]

Nonsense. GObject gives you multi-language bindings for free and if you're just an application developer it only makes your life easier. You can develop GNOME programs in C++, Python, Java or whatever suits your tastes.

Language bindings count for very little when they pull down the general design of the software as the OP has said. Besides, just how many applications are using those bindings? Very few.

I'm not a fan of GNOME and I agree that they are headed in the wrong direction, but the problems are not at all due to GObject or C. Cut the FUD when you criticise GNOME next time.

There is certainly no FUD at all from the OP. I don't think it's a silly thing to wonder why, with so many object oriented languages around and really one of the points of using C++, an object oriented library is tacked on to a demonstrably non-OO language in an inherently object oriented system like a desktop. Presumably that's why they're coming up with Vala these days as well.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[segedunum]

Is that an attempt at recursive humor?

I don't think so because it's confirmed by your good self below:

Presumably why they now have Vala.

Yep, that's why they've tacked on another non-native language.

AKA: Object Orientated?

I believe the point is it's object oriented in the worst possible way.

I certainly don't consider GObject/Gtk to be worse than QT or Apples API's.

Uh, huh.

remote X for Gnome apps

[rduke15]

I often run remote GUI apps over SSH to my Ubuntu notebook. When you say that it doesn't work well with Gnome, does it also apply to single apps designed for Gnome (or designed for Gtk?), and would K* apps work better?

In practice, I regularly use Meld to compare 2 remote files, or Geany to edit them. As far as I understand, these 2 happen to be designed for Gnome/Gtk, rather than for KDE.

Would I be better off selecting KDE apps instead, or does it make no difference if I don't actually run the whole desktop, and just start a single app from my CLI SSH session?

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Anonymous Coward]

Tons of Gnome projects and practically every RedHat and Canonical configuration tool is using the Python bindings.

worse is better

[decora]

google it.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Vanders]

Perhaps you should stop filtering ACs, in order to not shit-up Slashdot with reposts just to keep you happy?

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[KugelKurt]

This bullshit with GPU acceleration being required in the first place, and then this additional bullshit involving LLVM, is yet another in a long list of flaws and horrible decisions.

WTF? LLVMpipe is not developed by GNOME. It's a Mesa project. LLVMpipe implementing compatibility with OpenGL API calls has nothing to do with GNOME's decision to rely on OpenGL for GNOME Shell.
The decision to use LLVMpipe instead of Fallback Mode isn't even a GNOME decision. It's a Fedora / Red Hat decision: LLVMpipe happens to be good enough now and that's why Fedora will ship it by default and Xorg will be configured to use LLVMpipe as fallback driver instead of the Vesa driver or so.

LLVMpipe is a very good software renderer. Nokia conducted benchmarks and in turned out that LLVMpipe performs many times better at rendering than Qt's own software renderer. That's why Nokia decided that future Qt versions will use LLVMpipe instead of a home-grown solution that performs worse.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Anonymous Coward]

> I've had a lot more success with interoperability between Java, Scala, and Clojure than I ever have had with any GObject-based code. The same goes for .NET when the languages are C#, VB.NET and F#. Those all work seamlessly with almost no effort, while GObject needs a lot of hand-holding and even then it often just doesn't work.

That's hardly a surprise. All JVM languages use the same object system underneath and were explicitly designed to interop with it. Same for CLR languages. When you use GObject, you are using it as a portable, but foreign object system that has to co-exist with the native one (like Python's). This is not poor design. It's a good work-around, given the constraints.

It's one thing to discuss whether GNOME should have been in C++, but another to compare it with JVM/CLR features. Core libraries should be native, not byte code.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[PopeRatzo]

Perhaps you should stop filtering ACs

I would rather see a few reposts of useful information than a hundred frosty pisses, goatses and lengthy GNAA screeds.

Maybe you disagree...

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[PopeRatzo]

yes because racist name calling is just so horrible compared to other kinds, that supposedly more mature people can't help throwing adolescent fits over it.

I don't care so much about the name calling, racist or not, as I do about the extra work I have to do with my index finger scrolling down past them.

What is a 1000 word NGAA screed vs the huge energy output of my scrolling finger?

Keep up the 2% guys

[anezch]

For me, its funny to see how so called linux geeks and power users hates GS and Unity so much. Now I understand where the 2% desktop share comes from, seriously, our attitude (and taste?) toward USER experience and UI is bad. In fact, GS and Unity made my hope with desktop Linux high. That there are somebody out there actually care about how Linux apps and desktop both attractive and usable.

Re:Keep up the 2% guys

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't agree more.

Re:Keep up the 2% guys

[VJmes]

Agreed, Linux needs to focus on the end-product. However it should also refrain from trying to differentiate itself for the sake of it. Unity comes across as an crappy attempt to be stylish rather than contribute an easily developed and more usable interface.

Re:Keep up the 2% guys

[jmorris42]

No, I can just switch to another desktop. But GNOME2 was the last UI that end users could be plopped down in front of cold. KDE is too wierd. XFCE can be configured to be pretty close to GNOME2 but out of the box it isn't and it still has a lot of sharp edges. The minor desktops are all aimed at people like me.

But by day I'm the admin in a public library and we have been putting the general public on Linux based lab PCs since 1997. The early days were a but rough but for years now a random person can just walk in, sit down and recognize a GNOME2 desktop and instantly get to work. I have no intention to inflict Unity or GNOME Shell on them. When I can't get a modern browser and GNOME2 running together I'm not sure what happens. With luck we either get a fork of GNOME or XFCE grows up a lot by then.

Doesn't matter if Gnome Shell or Unity are pretty or not, doesn't matter if they are 'better', doesn't mater if they are better designs. They are too different from what a typical person is familiar with. They use Windows at work, school, etc. Several years from now, if Windows 8/Metro isn't a Vista scale fiasco, people might be ready to use what the GNOMEs are cooking, right now it is just not an option. And when this is pointed out they stick their fingers in their ears and hum.

Re:Keep up the 2% guys

[Rennt]

You know, once people used the "Linux desktops should be more like mainstream OS's to appeal to mainstream users" shtick to argue for change. Now they use it to argue things should stay the same. Not that I particularly like the new shells myself, but I didn't buy the argument then, and I don't buy it now.

Re:Keep up the 2% guys

[Junta]

Now I understand where the 2% desktop share comes from, seriously, our attitude (and taste?) toward USER experience and UI is bad

There could be all sorts of arguments made about the subjective assessment of 'good' v 'bad', but at *worst* 'our' attitude/taste is different, not bad.

If there are only 2% of the world sharing my tastes, I'd rather not piss away my only platform to boost that number. Market share is not worth giving up the whole damn point of existence.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Dasher42]

Who says you have to code in raw GObject C? Did you have a look at Vala, which is awfully similar to C#, or Genie, which is much like Python, but both of which compile through C+GObject down to machine code without a virtual machine? They're strikingly beautiful and lightweight.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Ragzouken]

It's British English, dick'ead.

Messy

[VJmes]

All this development does is contribute to the mess that GNOME has become.

Unity is crap, it's a step backwards for usability and another barrier for people migrating to Ubuntu. Labelling the end-users as a group of complainers only shows how out-of-touch and pig-headed the developers have become. Developing for GNOME has become a chore more than anything, the reason why is easy to understand when you start using the barely functional API. Most importantly and it's become so bloated with superfluous visual effects and useless applications that the form-factor unity was designed for (Small screen netbooks) can barely run it, forget about trying to put a recent Ubuntu install on an aging computer.

GNOME need to cut this bullshit of trying to change the desktop UI for the sake of being different and focus on the end-user, otherwise given their current attitude GNOME will become completely irrelevant in a couple of years.

Re:Messy

[prefec2]

I wouldn't categorize Unity and Gnome-Shell a step back. However, they have performance issues. Unity tried to address this with Unity 2D. And Gnome-Shell tries to address it with the mentioned change in its dependencies. Still this is not enough. but this is not only a Unity/Gnome-Shell thing. If you look at the memory footprint of present applications in Linux. It sucks. Some of these issues are related to X11 others are related to the way the widget-sets are implemented. We need a better separation of UI and application function. but these are general issues and we have to address them together.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[itzdandy]

uh, yeah it is

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[PitaBred]

You've had AC's disabled for a while, eh? I only ever see a few frosty pisses or goatse's or whatever per discussion, and a lot more useless shit from people who've actually signed in.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[lsatenstein]

I have already written off Gnome 3.x as being counterproductive. True, it is geared to the email/internet browser society, but it is definitely not a developer's or an interface that is fast in use, or easy to use with dual monitors.

XFCE is my standard since Fedora 15.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding me?! The C++ bindings are top notch. GTKmm is way better than some of the other C++ GUI frameworks that I've seen! The C# bindings are also top notch! GTK# is way easier than Window.Forms by a mile, it's just a shame it doesn't integrate well with other platforms.

GObject has improved language bindings. I'm not a C person by any means. I know where a lot of people are coming from when they talk about the C GObject. Seriously, take a good look at GTKmm and QT. The only thing that QT has really going for it is is QT Quick.

Yes does making the 3D bindings LLVM make sense? Not really, but the GNOME people are really dead set on this new UI. I've worked in it and it feels a lot better than where some desktops are going. There is a lot missing, don't let me sugar coat it and I think the GNOME people should be tied to the pole just like the KDE people were during 4.0.

But just like the KDE 4.0, by KDE 4.5 the desktop was usable again. Now with 4.7 everything feels wonderful with KDE again. I want to hold out hope that the same will be said for GNOME by the time we get to 3.10 or 3.14. So yeah they are messing up royally now but let's not short sight ourself. GNOME is f'ing up but I am holding out that they'll get it all together soon.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[smellotron]

Maybe you get more overhead than C++ by always using virtual calls but that is offset by not doing C++ magic like unnecessary constructor/destructor calls.

Bullshit. Constructors and destructors fall into several categories:

• POD (initialized to garbage values): no cost for construction on the stack, and no code required for destruction at all. Cost for allocation via Foo() (whether on the heap or on the stack) is equivalent to calloc().
• Trivial memberwise assignment (initialized to zero or other constant values): Equivalent to assignment from a constant—e.g. using PTHREAD_MUTEX_INITIALIZER—if inlined. C and C++ are identical, but note that the class/struct designer must "expose" the structure definition somehow for this to be inlined.
• Necessary nontrivial initialization/finalization code (e.g. resource allocation): Equivalent to foo_create(&foo, ...) and foo_destroy(&foo). C and C++ are identical, apart from the function name.

Virtual function calls, OTOH, (almost) always inhibit optimizations. The one exception I can think of is the case where the compiler sees a concrete class declared in main and it can theoretically bypass the vtable.

What a lot of whiners...

[msevior]

There is a hell of a lot of whining about GNOME 3 here. I'm a free software developer of desktop software (AbiWord). I personally like GNOME 3 and its approach to do a new take on how best to present a computer interface to users. I also maintain systems for my mother and daughter who are definitely not computer geeks. They're both impressed and comfortable with GNOME 3.

So my extremely small sample imply that GNOME 3 is a good step. For the computers geeks out there there a plenty of alternatives. Find the one that works for you.

Re:What a lot of whiners...

[epyT-R]

there was a time when the average user (not geek) could handle a windows 95 esque desktop without a problem.. this further dumbing down into desktop-lite/tablet non-functionality is not helping anyone, geek or not. it just makes everyone more dependent on the nascent multivendor closed garden takover of the internet.

Re:What a lot of whiners...

[prefec2]

I work with both new shells and it did not reduce my productivity. So it can't be that bad. It is just some things are different now and you have to do work a little different. And yes the performance sucks. But instead of complaining. Try to find out what are the main causes of that. One is definitely Javascript in Gnome-Shell and one is the damn X11. And another one is the general memory wasting style of Linux applications. For example:

    PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
  2643 ****** 20 0 1309m 211m 43m S 0 5.4 1:46.87 thunderbird-bin
  2650 ****** 20 0 1050m 209m 40m S 4 5.3 7:13.57 firefox
  2453 ****** 20 0 1026m 145m 49m S 1 3.7 2:15.61 gnome-shell
  4134 ****** 20 0 593m 56m 17m S 0 1.4 0:04.45 evince
  2607 ****** 20 0 369m 47m 11m S 0 1.2 0:10.20 ubuntuone-syncd
  2579 ****** 20 0 456m 46m 13m S 0 1.2 0:09.72 gwibber-service
  2736 ****** 20 0 693m 46m 27m S 2 1.2 3:59.32 plugin-containe
  1407 ****** 20 0 159m 46m 16m S 2 1.2 2:51.15 Xorg
  3464 ****** 20 0 779m 41m 20m S 0 1.1 0:07.32 nautilus
  2616 ****** 20 0 421m 31m 1352 S 0 0.8 0:00.00 gwibber-service

Why are these memory figures that big? I know, the real use is smaller due to shared libraries and share memory etc. But still, this is too big.

Re:What a lot of whiners...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whining fan and mediocre battery performance = lousy user experience. No graphical gimmicks or fancy animations are gonna save that precious battery! I want more time to work on road = no 3d fanciness on my laptop. Oldskool it is...

Re:What a lot of whiners...

[Requiem18th]

I'm sorry, but Gnome 3 general UI is inferior. I dunno about the backend. Maybe it improved, or not. But the UI is a huge disappointment. Gnome 3 is so bad the best thing that could come up from it is that it could motivate more people to join Gnome just to fix it.

I'm actually amazed by the amount of stuff Gnome 3 broke, Trying to walk through it would be very hard (specially as I'm supposed to be at work). You are right, your sample is extremely small. For reference, 2 non tech savvy users I moved to ubuntu recently presented my with 2 complains

How do you make it stop asking for a password on suspend? (This included, how to make it suspend from a single click to the power button)
How do you had wallpapers to the wallpaper box?

The first one used to be doable from option settings in gnome, now I had to (install and) run dconf (what was wrong with gconf?) and search for 3 separates keys to change this setting, which btw can be configured froma single dialog in Windows XP.

So yeah, Windows offers better options than Gnome now.

To the second question, about managing wallpapers. It's just impossible now. The "Wallpapers" file list is fixed on a system directory, the other option "Pictures" is fixed on a user option.

Also the file view is tiny and there is a huge cartoon monitor display in the dialog, why? Gnome 2 had a wonderful wallpaper selector that let you independently configure the display settings of individual wallpapers and used bigger thumbnails, what was improved?

I feel bad about only providing 2 examples, there is A LOT of stuff wrong there that is objectively worse than Gnome 2.

And about Shell, there are a few good things about it but it's largely a flawed concept, I see potential but man it is FAR from even just ok.

Re:What a lot of whiners...

[jc79]

Eh? What functionality of your computer can you not access because of Gnome Shell? It's not like the filesystem's hidden from you (like iOS). You can write, run or install any software you like.

How exactly is a GPL-licensed free desktop environment making "everyone more dependent on the nascent multivendor closed garden takover of the internet."?

Re:What a lot of whiners...

[maestroX]

So my extremely small sample imply that GNOME 3 is a good step. For the computers geeks out there there a plenty of alternatives. Find the one that works for you.

Your granny only needs a browser and bookmarks. GNOME 2 works for me and a very big userbase.
I know where to find it, but I won't be compiling or packaging any gnome 2 + dependencies + vfs crap for the next release of a distro that moved to Gnome 3.
I seriously hope debian is not out of its mind and includes it in the next release (Whiner), 'cause I will fucktard all of my patches over the years with a non-GPL license (actually only one made it, but i like to brag and Gnome 3 really sucks).
I'll ditch gnome for the next couple of centuries, because I got work to do on my work pc. I don't want to fuck around with a gadget nor waste my time trying to grasp this years hallucinations of the gnome developers.
improving /= rewriting every month

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[PopeRatzo]

You've had AC's disabled for a while, eh?

No. I never said I had ACs disabled. I said that "some of us" have ACs blocked.

I treasure every GNAA post as a little gift, connecting me to a an earlier, simpler era, before the big telecoms took over the Internet when men were men and women were in pornographic gif files spread across multiple Usenet posts.

And I do mean "spread".

Can anybody point me to a good comparison?

[Pausanias]

I'm still in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. I fear this thing called Gnome 3 that I'm going to have to install in the LTS. Can any either write up or point me towards a good informative write-up what exactly the biggest differences are which a Gnome 2 user might find confusing or annoying?

Re:Can anybody point me to a good comparison?

[prefec2]

In Ubuntu the default is Unity which is similar but not identical to Gnome-Shell. While Unity is faster, it has other short comings than Gnome-Shell. Personally I like the way Gnome-Shell arranges desktops (in a column) and the feature that it adds a new desktop when all are full. I dislike it that it closes a desktop when it is empty (or it thinks it is empty). This is annoying when you, for example, use Eclipse which performs a restart every now and then when you update something. Or when you develop a plugin etc.

Unity does not have that feature. It creates by default a 2x2 virtual desktop grid (just like this apple OS). However, Unity places the application menu in the top bar. This is cool and save space on the desktop. However, on small displays (where this space saving comes in real handy) applications with many menu options cannot show all their menu options. Even more, the menu disappears when the mouse is away from the menu (how the menu can be accessed on a touch interface, I don't know). This makes it hard to target the right menu option.

In general you have to change your basic way how to work with the UI. I use both (Gnome-Shell at work and Unity on my netbook) and it took some time to adjust to the new philosophy. After that transition it is ok to work with. Some things are better than with Gnome2 some things are worse (One really bad thing is the lack of options. I do like good default and I do not need that many options, but they went too far for my taste. Beside in Ghome-Shell, the default for switching of is "suspend" not "hiberante" (which would be at least a real off state) and not "power off". To get it you have to press ALT. This is hmm not very clever. Especially were a Ubuntu and I guess all other Linuxes boot in seconds.)

What both variants lack is a start application X on desktop/activity 1 and Y on desktop 2 etc. But that didn't work with Gnome2 or KDE.

What is most confusing is: The application menu is gone (actually it just moved). And the "Dock" has become more prominent.

Most annoying at the beginning is, that a click on the Dock starts the program. Another click does not start the program a second time or give you a second view of the same program. No it moves you to the previously opened view. You have to click with the middle mouse key to get the desired result. At least that was what I found most annoying after switching. After working with it for some month, the annoyance has gone. No I found other things that annoy me. :-D But hey, there is always potential for improvements.

Re:Can anybody point me to a good comparison?

[Pausanias]

Oh I see so I guess they are continuing their monkey-see-monkey-do with Mac OS X LOL.

I actually like that behavior BTW but realize that it must be frustrating as hell for most geeks as exemplified by Linus's rant.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, thanks to GObject introspection, bindings will no longer lag. They will automatically get the new api. This is how the javascript bindings for GNOME Shell work. If you gobjectize any library, and add introspection you'll be able to get the new api for free and use it for extensions. It what makes the GNOME extensions a beautiful thing.

I don't agree with any of the GP's assertions.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[epyT-R]

doesn't X already provide a 2D blitter? doesn't gtk et al support this still?

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Anonymous Coward]

I also like gtkmm more than Qt. The only problem with gtkmm is sigc++ which is very tricky to use correctly with threads. Essentially the auto-disconnection of signals brought about by sigc::trackable is at the core of the broblem.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[tyrione]

GNOME is a perfect study in how not to architect a software system. Everything about it is wrong.

The first mistake they made was trying to cobble half-assed object-oriented support onto C, rather than just using C++ or Objective-C. Everything about GObject is stupid and counterproductive. It makes writing code a real pain in the ass, since you need to use typecasting macros all over the place. Worse, this sort of code promotes library design that's slow and inefficient. To make it even worse, this style of C code is so convoluted that it is not optimized well by compilers, resulting in binaries that are far slower than they should be.

It basically goes totally downhill after that. This bullshit with GPU acceleration being required in the first place, and then this additional bullshit involving LLVM, is yet another in a long list of flaws and horrible decisions.

I encourage all of the developers that I mentor to use GNOME and to get a good look at its internals. I just make sure that they know not to do what GNOME has done. By seeing the mistakes firsthand, it's less likely that they'll repeat them in the future with the software that they create.

I wish it had ObjC/C++/ObjC++ as part of an Agnostic Model giving me more re-use with Cocoa. You're absolutely buying the wrong dope if you have a problem with LLVM. It will replace quite a lot of software in the FOSS word presently co-dependently tied to GCC and that's great news. If you have to understand then you really aren't involved with what's going on with LLVM/Clang.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[DrXym]

Conflating the user experience with the programming experience is bizarre. A GUI might be a dog to program but might result in a good user experience or vice versa. And GPU accelerating the GUI should be regarded as a good thing whether we're talking of KDE, GNOME, OS X, Windows or anything else. Treating windows as surfaces massively improves performance on accelerated hardware and reduces the amount of context switching going on when windows damage other windows.

If Mesa is getting a better software rasterizer through LLVMPipe it means that GNOME Shell (and KDE, Unity, xfce et al) can support users of older hardware without constraining what they can do that. That ultimately means better performance for the majority who do have GPUs, and it also means that Linux as a whole offers an experience that can compete against desktops running on other operating systems.

Gnome-Shell nice and sucks

[prefec2]

I use Gnome-Shell on my office machine with a [Geforce 9500 GT] and it works fine. Beside some stupid design mistakes (which will most likely be addressed in future) it is nice to work with. However, the shell has two main problems. First when choosing the application menu under activities it takes seconds to appear. On a netbook (where I tried to use it as well) it took 15 seconds. As we all know that a system is considered unresponsive after 2 sec., this is definitely a no go. So performance of the application menu is one problem. There are also other performance problems all over the place, but this is the most prominent.
The second, problem is the used language. While I can understand it, that they wanted to use a fast JavaScript engine as these perform so well in browsers, which have become application interface servers these days. The language itself sucks as it has too many options to do things and too many options to do them wrong (which makes it slow and buggy and hard to debug). So I wonder why they didn't define at least a DSL to abstract from the Javascript monster (As Gnome did with Vala for gobject).

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[Entrope]

The effort spent by programmers around the world who have written GObject overhead -- the annotations in C, the extra macros when using it, and so forth -- dwarfs what it would take to create a tool to extract similar information from C++ class definitions. There are free-software C++ parsers out there, and well-known techniques to extract annotations from comments.

But hey, GObject lets people save an entire register that might otherwise be dedicated to the "this" pointer.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[tehcyder]

yes because racist name calling is just so horrible compared to other kinds, that supposedly more mature people can't help throwing adolescent fits over it.

Spoken like a true moronic racist.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[MikeBabcock]

So you don't know how to use the 'parent' button under a post I take it?

Big quotes are unnecessary, both on USENET and here.

Sigh.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[rl117]

GNOME is a perfect study in how not to architect a software system. Everything about it is wrong.

The first mistake they made was trying to cobble half-assed object-oriented support onto C, rather than just using C++ or Objective-C. Everything about GObject is stupid and counterproductive. It makes writing code a real pain in the ass, since you need to use typecasting macros all over the place. Worse, this sort of code promotes library design that's slow and inefficient. To make it even worse, this style of C code is so convoluted that it is not optimized well by compilers, resulting in binaries that are far slower than they should be.

I don't think the overhead resulting from using C is substantial at all. Maybe you get more overhead than C++ by always using virtual calls but that is offset by not doing C++ magic like unnecessary constructor/destructor calls. You'll have to back this up if you want me to believe you.

You are incorrect here. In C++, if you choose to make virtual calls, you pay the price of indirection via a vtable (this pointer). That's it. You only pay the price in classes which have virtual methods. With GObject, all classes contain a vtable, i.e. all class methods take a pointer to the type instance, which contains within it a pointer to the vtable. Every GObject instance contains this overhead, which makes instantiation of GObject expensive, and additionally increases the memory required for every object. In comparison, you don't pay this overhead for C++ classes unless you actually require it. This isn't including the overhead of additional GObject features such as properties, which are both inefficient to process and are type-unsafe, and the use of "construction properties" in object instantiation. What makes it truly awful is that all this work to implement OO in C is mostly done by hand! You have to manually create your own vtables; you have to manually cast all types to the correct type, and if you get it wrong the compiler won't typically tell you. You have to understand the intricacies of how a C++ compiler works to implement an inferior version in C! Why would anyone willingly inflict this upon themselves?

But this is only the beginning of the GObject problems. When using GObject, the type resolution is done at run-time. Not only does this make programming unsafe--the many typecasts can hide typing issues, leading to failure at run-time rather than at compile-time, it has additional run-time overheads. Here are a few reasons: G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE_CAST, G_TYPE_CHECK_CLASS_CAST, G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE_TYPE, G_TYPE_CHECK_CLASS_TYPE, G_TYPE_INSTANCE_GET_CLASS. And you'll also need to check every function argument taking a GObject to make sure it's of the correct type with G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE_TYPE (or commonly using a wrapper around it). This is not a cheap operation, it has to check the GType type register, which involves a string lookup in a hash table (GQuark, at least last time I looked). So you have several of those for every function call if you actually investigate the use of all the uppercase casting macros, and again inside the function. This is mostly absent for C++ code (the type checks and casts are done at compile-time), and C++ RTTI involves simple pointer comparisons of typeinfo objects; much faster, and again type-safe.

Here's an example of class using GObject: header source

This is the same class using C++

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[AdamWill]

Modern graphics cards don't even have 2D support any more. They fake it up. It makes precisely zero sense to target a card S3 made in 1998 when you're writing an entirely new Shell. Zero. Sense. The _only_ sane way to do it is via GL.

llvmpipe is slow when Phoronix is benchmarking Quake 3, sure. So what? Shell is a _desktop_, it does not feature rocket launchers or complex lighting. The performance of Shell / llvmpipe is reasonable running on an emulated Cirrus adapter in a KVM, for pity's sake, with absolutely no performance tuning done yet. You really don't need much power to render Shell perfectly well. All that was needed was *feature* support in llvmpipe, for even quite modest hardware to be able to render Shell reasonably without hardware 3D.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[m50d]

When you use GObject, you are using it as a portable, but foreign object system that has to co-exist with the native one (like Python's). This is not poor design. It's a good work-around, given the constraints.

The object system will always be foreign in all languages other than one; better to have native objects in one language rather than none at all. If you look at the practical results, pyqt is an absolute dream, much nicer than pygtk - and I wouldn't be surprised if the same were true for java.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[PhloppyPhallus]

Stop wasting electrons; don't you know how expensive they are!?!

There is some extreme suckiness though

[Teunis]

gnome3 (or unity) both crash ION2 graphics chipsets (yay for dual-videocard displays!). KDE does not.
this will probably mean it will start working on ION2 graphics chipsets (Intel + nVidia is what I have. Intel for low power, nVidia for 3D/gaming/...)

it means I'll finally be able to start testing things out rather than walk away in frustration ... again.

it started with gtk

[cheekyboy]

I thought this even when just using gtk, and its horridness in 1.x Docs were shit ass (is it so hard to ask someone to spend just one day 8hrs making docs, lazy mofos)

API was inconsistent, as if parts written by different people from different projects.

And dudes, your god aweful file open/save dialog, just as ugly ass as all home grown unix based dialogs, learn god damn it, learn from other OSs, use beOS, use RISC os, use Amiga, use a Mac. LEARN!!!!! *hits their dev on the back of the head*

But to need a GPU for GUI, what did they write their desktop in ? VBasic? (no that would be faster I bet)

Did you see what Unreal the game did in 1999, it could do a full software render in 600mhz that had more complex parts than gnome3.

Gawd, just grab and use the unreal engine as your renderer for the window manager.

Re:GNOME is a study in how to not architect softwa

[cheekyboy]

oh dude, clicking on something is such an effort. Todays people require instant magic convenience. Not 12000 options you have to think for. Thinking is for work stuff.

Love Gnome3!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why this depreciation of Gnome 3, I just loved it! And I think it have a lot to grow yet

Gnome3 and Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

I have upgraded to Gnome3 on Debian testing. I am suffering from the day first. I am okay with the interface(i am adjusting to ui!). the problem is, there is problem with graphics,image performance.
Gnome version: 3.0.2-5
For eg: Iceweasel, if I scroll through the page, it freezes images, looking garbled,stuck looking page. same with any image viewer like eog,shotwell etc.
sample:
http://i39.tinypic.com/29wa3wl.png
I would like to seek attention to this peculiar problem with Gnome3. I am having all video drivers all installed.
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=72358

Thank You.