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SolusOS Forks Gnome 3 Fallback Mode
An anonymous reader writes "Linux distribution SolusOS has forked the GNOME 3 'fallback mode' that the GNOME Project decided to scrap with the upcoming 3.8 GNOME release. According to SolusOS, the fork, named Consort, can 'maintain an experience virtually identical to GNOME 2, but vastly improve it with no need for hardware acceleration such as with GNOME Shell or Cinnamon.' It 'will bring back all the old features, such as right click-interaction on the panel, GNOME 2 applet support, creating desktop launchers, etc' and 'allow Python GNOME 2 applets to run natively on consort-panel.'"
It's good to see that there are people out there taking up the good fight in developing *good/usable* user interfaces that just work. If the Gnome 3 developers didn't literally have their heads up their arses, this necessity wouldn't be happening. Though...Windows 8 actually makes Gnome 3 look somewhat usable...that's not saying much.
So what are the actual differences? Does the fallback mode use GTK3 or something? It sounds like everything promised is exactly Gnome 2.
How can they not see the destruction of their ecosystem right in front of them? They worked so damned hard to make GNOME 2 the best damned environment, and it grew like a weed with Ubuntu. And then sometime around 2009 everyone just lost their damned minds and destroyed it all for no good reason at all.
All they've done is make all of the users unhappy, removed and broke functionality. They're too busy cutting off their own limbs to fix actual problems anymore. How do the leaders in GNOME not see this happening? It's a damned shame.
Maybe it's the cynicism growing on me but I don't get the constant bitching and moaning over desktop decorations. Back in the day I used KDE3.x and it was fine. Then I used Gnome 2.x and it was fine. Now I use Unity and it is just fine too. On my low-end tinker-boxes, I use Openbox and Fbpanel. And it's all fine. Alt-f2, Alt-tab, Alt-f4, and Alt-Space work everywhere. Focus on your applications, fellas; that's what's important.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
...and already the same old discussion of "I use {inset DE} therefore it is the only good one and all others are dumb" has started.
Instead of helping GNOME to modernize fallback mode
GNOME didn't want to modernize it. They abandoned it.
I tried GNOME 3 when it was still pretty new, didn't like it very much, and switched to another desktop. I've heard it's improved a lot so I'll probably give it another shot in the near future, but it's not a big priority for me because XFCE is already extremely usable and configurable.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
People who have real work to do are already using XFCE.
Did you ever consider that some folks who cut their teeth on Gnome 2.x UI are just vastly more productive using that interface? For those folks, this is a big draw.
Why should I change my comfortable UI habits just because some OS Distro (ie, Microsoft, Canonical, etc) wants change for change's sake? I'm sure there's as much to hate about XFCE as Gnome2. To each their own.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
And yet there's less to hate about both of those put together than there is to hate about Gnome3. At least this new Consort thing is being done by people concerned more with usability than with "must get rid of everything old! must do everything different, even if it makes it unusable!"
If the Gnome 3 developers didn't literally have their heads up their arses, this necessity wouldn't be happening.
And by "literally", you mean "figuratively, but with strong emotion!". That is, unless there have been some bizarre death scenes among the Gnome 3 devs I haven't read about yet.
Before Gnome 3 and Unity we had KDE, Gnome 2 and XFCE along with a host of other lightweight desktop environments.
The big three all had the same or similar overall UI elements. A "start" menu, icons on the desktop, windowed applications and a task bar.
Now, we have Unity, KDE, Gnome 3, Gnome 2 forks, XFCE, the same collection of various lightweight window managers and desktop environments. Also, apparently, this.
Personally, I'm glad major players diverged significantly from the GUI elements we've all seemed to carry along from Windows 95. It is, in fact, a brave new world with touch screens and tablets. Sure it's arduous, and not cool for desktop productivity but it's only been 2 or 3 years. Maybe it will get better, or maybe some other options will become more popular. The point is, I'm glad I have something new to play around with.
And besides, it's not like you don't have choices if you liked the old way. I was a die-hard Gnome 2 fan, but now I use XFCE and I can hardly tell the difference.
As long as there are people willing to use and fund these forks I don't see a problem. The devs are investing their own time - why should anyone complain?
I even find it poignant in a way, the "bringing back old features" pitch. Trying to revive the past, being nostalgic... but above all, having the skill to actually do something about it instead of just whine - so kudos to whoever is behind this.
But that rancid poo usually still works better than the Linux desktop of the month version 0.1.
Yeah, it's a waste of resources, space, and time.
... ever getting on the mainstream desktop.
What makes you think the goal is making Linux a "mainstream" desktop? Windows is perfect as the mainstream desktop - it lets the non-technical masses post pictures of fluffy puppies to all their friends on the fashionable social media site of the month, and indulge in rambling flame wars about the relative merits of "Cool Ranch Flavour" versus "Nacho Cheese Flavour" on their favourite World of Cornchips forum, and maybe play some fun little games. The rest of us are happy with our non-mainstream OSes that we use to get real work done.
Can you imagine if OSes were like vehicles? Of course, it's okay for *me* to drive a 32-tonne truck to the shops for my morning paper, but can you imagine if *everyone* did it? Madness...
Personnaly I'm sick and tired of all the distro's: Ubuntu, Fedora and
even Mint/Cinnamon.
They ALL spell REGRESSION. ...backwards, sideways, upside down, mirrored, whatever.
R E G R E S S S I O N.
regression.
Niosserrger...
And there isn't a mouse or tablet or gesture or kick in the groin that
will do them any good or correct this wanton purposeful dimwittery.
So, -- for me, compiz, plus cairo-dock, plus emerald, will get my
attention.
Gnome 2 was a good companion that was dragged to the street and shot in the head without a emotion by its devs, since there has been a handful of forks and workalikes. I cant find anything on these except opinion and dont have time to sit down and fiddle fart installing DE's to find out what the differences, quirks, and compatibilities are.
There is just not enough signal in the noise on the gnome 2 wannabe's IMO
Compiz is dead
It's all about Wayland now...
>> " just vastly more productive using that interface?"
Some of have never like pointless wiggly windows and ugly, gaudy over-large shiny dock icons that look like they were designed by a 1950's middle school art class.
Compiz irritated me for years. Turning it off was always top of my agenda. I like and use docks, but can't stand Cairo. I don't know what taste is, but Cairo has never had it.
Use what you like. So will I. But neither of us gets to equate what we like with what is better.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
we have always had many distros and uis but the Ubuntu gnome 2 combo was the number 1 choice among users.then gnome decided to blow up a good thing. so ubuntu hates this and well we all did but rather then do the smart thing and fork gnome 2 they come up with the horrid unity.
that's because xfce does not try and change the desktop. the eye candy etc can all be turned off. no need for a fallback mode because your box has a weak gpu or needs drivers installed.
lol wasn't that supposed to take over the linux world like 2 years ago.
Personally, I like the fact that more DE options are appearing. Given that many are Gnome forks, I think it shows that the Gnome developers have gone off in a less-than-satisfying direction for many long-time users. So be it. I don't pay them to develop for me; I'm perfectly ok with letting them scratch their own itches. I don't like Gnome-Shell, I don't like Unity, and I haven't tried Mate, but Cinnamon seems pretty agreeable to me. I'll give Consort a shot - who knows, maybe I'll like it.
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
Would you mind repeating that in English and without the misconceptions and non sequiturs?
have fun in windows 8 with a DE you CAN'T replace.
at least we have a plethra of options to run to when devs decide to fuck us.
you have nothing.
Abandoning fallback mode is such a dreadful mistake.
I love GNOME 3, but the reality of current driver support on Linux is that many systems which aren't even very old are incapable of running GNOME 3 properly. Not to mention, remote desktop software such as FreeNX is incapable of 3d acceleration at all, and so a solution that does not require hardware acceleration is vital for that use as well.
I can certainly understand the desire to kill off fallback mode in the long run, but hastening its demise will just hasten the exodus of GNOME users. It's sad to me that the GNOME developers seem to have chosen the most abrasive transition strategy possible, ignoring critical use cases and the users who require them.
All that said, I don't see how a fork of fallback mode really makes a lot of sense at this point. Mate is already out there, and it seems to fill the same niche.
Imagine you have a nice and shiny turd. It looks okay from a distance, but when you get closer, you realise it smells rather bad and you can't use it for anything more useful than throwing it at the primates watching you in the zoo. Then take all the shine off it, let's call it a fall back turd. You are left with an ugly stinking turd. Why would you want to polish it? Gnome3 fall back mode is all the bad parts of the gnome3 shell, without all they eye candy. It's bad for productivity and usability, no matter how much compositing you throw at it. I can't think of a single argument why you would want to fork just the bad interaction design bit of it. Someone needs to take it out back behind the barn and put an end to it's suffering. It'd be the humane thing to do to all the users and developers wasting time on it.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
PS my laptop says: "Get off my lawn"
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Fallback mode is going away in GNOME 3.8. But recognizing that some people miss the functionality provided by the old panel, there are going to be some official extensions to emulate some of it.
No, it's not going to be exactly the same. So those who like to complain can still do that.
They are not really concerned about cooperation. Linux mint is a free loader of Canonical works ( because the only thing they do is the visible part ), who is not exactly the most contributing player in the field, and they already depend partially on Debian for lots of their distro. That's fair game of course. Then LMDE came, and managed to collaborate neither with Ubuntu nor Debian, and then Solus-os, made by the same people than LMDE not even try to collaborate with Gnome nor Mint. Heck, they do not even try to work with Mate people. ( on nemo )
They are not concerned about usability, they are concerned into keeping their habits because they think this is better. If they were concerned with usability, they would at least try to explain their ideas, do some usability testing, show the design, etc. They don't, they just did some git clone and that's it.
I am sure in the end, they will end like mate people and start getting all their commit from gnome, until this slowly become too late. Then the developers will start to fight each others and split more ( because when you do not care enough to work with upstream despite having disagreements, you surely do not care about the rest of the team, you forked once, so you can fork a 2nd time )
They will end like the trinity and kde3 revival desktop. When the developers of a software leave it and say this is better to start from scratch, they are not doing it to annoy others usually. They are doing because they know it cannot be done, because they did since years.
Well, I can do some real work suring the week using gnome 3, so maybe you should start to do some work instead of sitting on slashdot saying how you want to do some work ?
That's why you don't use "Linux desktop of the month", you use xmonad.
No you don't. No one WANTS to "do some work", we merely have to do it because it's our job or whatever. If we could get away with playing games all day and get paid for it, we definitely would.
So no, you don't want to do work. You just want a DE that operates in a non-crazy way so that when you are tasked with having to do work, it's the least painful.
Bug fixed, you mean "bug fixed by backporting gnome fixes because they are unable to do by themself" ?
Sure, and if the 3 forks are unable to cooperate, they are all doing something wrong.
Debian was forked to Ubuntu, Ubuntu got forked to linux mint, linux mint got forked to solusos, I guess we can agree that a huge part of them are doing it wrong ?
You know, unlike /. comenting, doing real work take time.
Because they used the magic word "forking gnome 3".
Acgtually, I don't really care what desktop environment I use. I find that it is the applications I am using that determine my productivity or not. I rarely sit there staring at an empty desktop.
You don't need to change you're comfortable ways: Don't upgrade.
Just don't pretend developers are obligated to keep updating the innards so you can run current software.
Developers who give their stuff away for free usually do pretty much what they damn well please.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I'm a KDE user, just so to be clear. But I like to keep an eye on the goings-on in the Linux world and I don't think Gnome 3, and GS on top of it, is "totally unusable and a train-wreck". Although, clearly I don't use it, so that's my bottom line vote.
Now, fragmentation. Imo, it would be fragmentation if some Gnome devs forked the project, not when Clem does it or the guys behind Mate (Clem again?), or someone else. Those people would never have worked on Gnome proper anyway. It's FOSS. These small teams of two/single devs work on what they like, and if they can't do that, they don't join the bigger project. They just don't do it. So I don't see any relevant fragmentation in all this Gnome 3 forking. I see the creation of a lot of options for the end user. The quality of those options is debatable, of course, but again - it would not be automatically higher if no forks.
I use gnome3 every day on my HP tc4400 tablet (it works great). I use xfce4 on my dualscreen desktop where it works better than gnome3 ever will. The developers of gnome3 are fixated on controling my experiance, and the forced 3d accelleration is simply not an option on my desktop machine. One example of the way the gnome3 devs have changed things for the worse is that "alt + tab" will not cycle through your windows any more. Instead (for some god awful retarded reason) they group windows of similar type. so when you want to copy something between two lowriter windows you can't use "alt + tab". It is (sadley) faster to move the mouse into the top left corner of the screen and then hunt for the other lowriter window among all the other shrunken windows. This is not "bitching because it doesn't work like the old software". This is a very real demonstration of how stupid some of the "features" of gnome3 are.
"For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice" -- God
i don't think you understood that then bought 2 years ago both fedora and ubuntu where calling it the second coming of god and saying it was going to be in there next release of there distros. everybody knew it was not even close to being ready. it had nothing to do with the wayland devs.
You don't need to change you're comfortable ways: Don't upgrade.
Just don't pretend developers are obligated to keep updating the innards so you can run current software.
Developers who give their stuff away for free usually do pretty much what they damn well please.
Even developers who don't give there stuff away for free usually do pretty much what they damn well please, or at least their company does.
Mate currently works, just as you say. However, where it will fail is as more applications make use of Gnome 3 libraries and GTK 3, whether because Redhat/Fedora use it or Ubuntu uses it under Unity, eventually using Mate as your desktop will mean you will have a mix of all sorts of libraries and their will inevitably be conflicts.
Holding on to Gnome 2 is like holding on to Windows XP. It may still work, but eventually, you will be forced to upgrade to something more current because new releases of software won't work with it.
Instead of helping GNOME to modernize fallback mode
GNOME didn't want to modernize it. They abandoned it.
In great time of peril
Desktop devs are dare devils
Abandon tested ways
Each gnome for himself!
Defining Statistics and Social Research
"Your options become limited if your apps are too closely tied to your DE."
not really.
gnome apps still work in KDE, and vice versa, except you pull a lot more libraries.
modern computers with 500GB HDs, where the user never uses more than 100GB typical, and those who care about storage can get 1T or more, very easily.
whats 200MB of gnome libraries?
Name one app that doesn't work on
1. GNOME
2. KDE
3. LXDE
4. Cinnamon
5. Enlightenment.
I have them ALL installed on my computer, and guess what, merely installing them they ALL show up on lightdm, or most other modern DMs.
you windows brownshirts are as dumb as ever, reading of a placard, isgnoring that most theorhetical bugs in linux aren't a problem. Next you'll complain about compiling for diffrent versions of GLIBC, which has been ABI stable since 4.1, which means all modern distros