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GNOME Shell 2.29.1 Arrives w/ New Stuff

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  • RahulSundaram
    replied
    Hi,

    Red Hat does have some very large customers using it on the desktop but suffice to say that what you consider missing features and what customers want from Red Hat are different. The big picture is that, the choice of desktop environment is irrelevant to many of what is really important to customers. Red Hat continues to invest heavily on those core technologies including being the largest contributor to Xorg as a distribution vendor.

    Leave a comment:


  • kraftman
    replied
    Originally posted by RahulSundaram View Post
    I am not focusing on it because I am not in the desktop team.
    I meant Red Hat as a whole.

    Also development focus doesn't switch from one thing to another without very significant reasons and none of your reasons you cite such as "sorting of icons" are really important enough for Red Hat customers and when there is such a demand, I am pretty sure Red Hat can implement such features within GNOME rather than switch to another desktop environment. KDE is fully supported within RHEL as well anyway.
    This is what I wanted to hear. RHEL isn't made for desktops like Windows or OS X is, right? I assume this is right, because it's using Gnome which is missing some basic features which are available on some other desktops and which are available there since years. If it would be made for desktops such features would be present in RHEL Gnome or KDE would be a RHEL default DE to catch up with some proprietary systems in terms of customization, features and look. As everyone knows Linux has a little market share on desktops, so to attract people it shouldn't be missing some basic stuff. I believe my assumption is right - RHEL isn't made for desktops, so it doesn't matter if things which are present on other desktops since years are missing in RHEL, because its customers usually aren't desktop users.

    So the real question, why be against one company's focus on a desktop environment even if it is not your personal preference when the alternative is supported as well? Can you make a commercial justification for any reason to focus on an alternative? If you can, talk to Red Hat directly. Not me.
    If you're (as a Red Hat) not interested in desktops it makes few things clear.

    Leave a comment:


  • RahulSundaram
    replied
    Originally posted by kraftman View Post
    I know your main focus is Gnome and while QT isn't proprietary since long time I wonder why you're still focusing on it?
    I am not focusing on it because I am not in the desktop team. If you are talking about Red Hat, my understanding is that there was several reasons even after it become non-proprietary including the GPL license on the toolkit (which meant copyright assignment and dual licensing with trolltech) which only changed recently and even now Qt development is fairly closed and Nokia remains the only commercial contributor while GTK development has been in the community space ever since it was created. Also development focus doesn't switch from one thing to another without very significant reasons and none of your reasons you cite such as "sorting of icons" are really important enough for Red Hat customers and when there is such a demand, I am pretty sure Red Hat can implement such features within GNOME rather than switch to another desktop environment. KDE is fully supported within RHEL as well anyway.

    So the real question, why be against one company's focus on a desktop environment even if it is not your personal preference when the alternative is supported as well? Can you make a commercial justification for any reason to focus on an alternative? If you can, talk to Red Hat directly. Not me.

    Leave a comment:


  • fermo111
    replied
    Originally posted by kraftman View Post
    There are probably many more disadvantages and Gnome development seems to be in stagnancy. If you read some mailing list discussion it seems they don't know where to go in the future.
    Well, it is not that difficult to find what to do: FIX it and bring its usability to the level found in Windows Explorer (as in XP). That would be appreciated by *many* people who don't really care for all that KDE4, Snow Leopard, Vista stuff, and believe me, in my experience, this is the majority of the users.

    Leave a comment:


  • fermo111
    replied
    Originally posted by srg_13 View Post
    What the hell? What distro are you using because either their Gnome install is messed up or you've somehow broken it...
    Ubuntu, since 7.04. With the last one, Ubuntu 9.10, I cannot even disable the 'Keep Aligned' feature (right click on the Desktop). That is, the setting is not remembered across sessions.

    Then there are those NFS mounted directories, that when become unresponsive, have the effect of making all my desktop stuff disappear.

    Then there is that Trash icon that looks like there is stuff in it, but when I open it, it is empty.

    Then there is that CD icon on the desktop, but the CD has long been ejected.

    Then there is that "Create folder" that sometimes takes forever, and sometimes does not create anything until you click around in the Nautilus windows.

    Then there are times when some directories disappear from Nautilus and I have to refresh to view them again.

    Then there is the "Open with > Add", where the list of applications to choose is not sorted and many entries are repeated over and over

    Then there are the icons in the top panel of the Desktop that when the screen resolution change temporarily (for instance launching a full screen game), do not keep the position when the old resolution is restored.

    Then ... etc. etc

    In any case I doubt it is a problem related to the distribution. The
    defects are so many and so varied that this cannot be the case.
    And I am not taking here of a single computer. I administer tens of computers, with different hardware and all show the same problems.

    P.S.: F2 and drag do not work on the *tree* panel, not the view panel.

    Leave a comment:


  • kraftman
    replied
    Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
    Gnome is very customizable. If you don't like the defaults of a specific distro, you are free to change them or pick another distro with better defaults.
    It's customizable, but it's missing some basic stuff compared to KDE, Windows or OS X like sorting icons, setting up a screen saver, compositions without some third party software and to move min/max/close buttons you've got to edit some file. All of those things makes it less usable then KDE in my opinion.

    Besides, this kind of logic doesn't make sense: Kubuntu sucks hence KDE sucks. I'm sure there's a name for this kind of fallacy but I have better things to do than search wikipedia right now.
    It's something wrong with your logic, because I meant: Gnome defaults sucks (for me, not only defaults) hence Fedora sucks.

    Originally posted by RahulSundaram View Post
    If you want to ask Red Hat's opinions, you will have to find someone in the desktop team to talk to. I am not that person but if you want my personal opinions, I can tell you that.
    Thanks, I'm very interested in your opinion.

    I would note that Fedora doesn't modify GNOME upstream default settings much if at all since Fedora in general prefers to work with upstream as closely as possible. Red Hat does have a fairly large KDE team and the work being done within the growing KDE community of contributors in Fedora is exciting as well.
    Ok, this sounds good.

    Red Hat has been a strong contributor to GNOME from the very early days (KDE wasn't a option then because of dependency on Qt which was then proprietary)
    This made sense when QT was proprietary.

    and has continued to invest heavily including GNOME Shell at the moment.
    I know your main focus is Gnome and while QT isn't proprietary since long time I wonder why you're still focusing on it? Drag mentioned webkit integration, but it's already in KDE, KDE is also more consistent, because there are mainly QT/C++ apps rather then C/Python/Mono mix and KDE apps share resources while afaik Gnome apps don't (at least not on the same level), there are also things in KDE which are ready to use at the moment and which equivalents will be present in Gnome in the end of the year. Gnome is also missing basic stuff which is available on other DE, systems:

    ...like sorting icons, setting up a screen saver, compositions without some third party software and to move min/max/close buttons you've got to edit some file
    There are probably many more disadvantages and Gnome development seems to be in stagnancy. If you read some mailing list discussion it seems they don't know where to go in the future.

    It is important however to recognize that a lot of the desktop investments such as D-Bus, NetworkManager or PulseAudio or PolicyKit to cite some recent examples are not tied to a single desktop environment and benefits everyone.
    So if you are using Linux on the desktop and even if you are using KDE, you still benefit from the work that Red Hat has continued to do. So regardless of your preference, you can be happy about that.
    That's right, your contribution is very, very important and appreciated.

    Leave a comment:


  • RahulSundaram
    replied
    Originally posted by drag View Post
    I don't think that Gnome Shell will make it for the Gnome 3.0 release. So I think Gnome is still going to default to regular Metacity. Gnome Shell's basic functionality requires composited desktop and such so there really is no way to use that without 3D support and such.
    Not quite. 3D support is different from the ability to have a composited desktop but neither is a real barrier with some effort. In connection to the GNOME Shell development, Red Hat has done extensive work on Xorg drivers including radeon driver for ATI and Nouveau driver for Nvidia cards to get it to the stage where a composited desktop can be supported without relying on proprietary drivers.

    In Fedora 12, you can install mesa-dri-drivers-experimental package to get the experimental 3D support for a number of ATI chipsets and in Fedora 13, this package will have 3D support for Nvidia via the Nouveau driver.

    In my Fedora 13 development system, I have

    # rpm -ql mesa-dri-drivers-experimental
    /usr/lib/dri/nouveau_dri.so
    /usr/lib/dri/nouveau_vieux_dri.so
    /usr/lib/dri/vmwgfx_dri.so

    While there is still work to be done including performance and power management, enormous progress has been made in the last six to eight months and I think by oct, we would be in a state where we can run GNOME Shell out of the box for the large majority of modern desktops. I think, there is a fall back option for users who prefer running the older GNOME panel as well.

    Leave a comment:


  • RahulSundaram
    replied
    Originally posted by kraftman View Post
    I'm not interested in such bull. It's not sane, not intuitive and its apps sucks a lot. It's far from being consistent too. Btw. You probably didn't tried Fedora, because Gnome defaults are terrible there. If you try it, you'll probably realize they don't care about desktop. I want to hear REAL reasons and I want to hear it from Red Hat guys, because I'm not interested in other people opinions in this case.
    If you want to ask Red Hat's opinions, you will have to find someone in the desktop team to talk to. I am not that person but if you want my personal opinions, I can tell you that.

    I would note that Fedora doesn't modify GNOME upstream default settings much if at all since Fedora in general prefers to work with upstream as closely as possible. Red Hat does have a fairly large KDE team and the work being done within the growing KDE community of contributors in Fedora is exciting as well.

    Red Hat has been a strong contributor to GNOME from the very early days (KDE wasn't a option then because of dependency on Qt which was then proprietary) and has continued to invest heavily including GNOME Shell at the moment. It is important however to recognize that a lot of the desktop investments such as D-Bus, NetworkManager or PulseAudio or PolicyKit to cite some recent examples are not tied to a single desktop environment and benefits everyone.
    So if you are using Linux on the desktop and even if you are using KDE, you still benefit from the work that Red Hat has continued to do. So regardless of your preference, you can be happy about that.

    Leave a comment:


  • yotambien
    replied
    Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
    Besides, this kind of logic doesn't make sense: Kubuntu sucks hence KDE sucks. I'm sure there's a name for this kind of fallacy but I have better things to do than search wikipedia right now.
    Ah, that brought me some memories back.

    "All philosophers are mortal.
    All philosophers are men.
    Therefore, all men are mortal."


    Somehow, philosophers were always involved in the examples they used to make us learn this stuff. And quite often in unfortunate circumstances such as in the one above.

    Leave a comment:


  • BlackStar
    replied
    Originally posted by kraftman View Post
    I'm not interested in such bull. It's not sane, not intuitive and its apps sucks a lot. It's far from being consistent too. Btw. You probably didn't tried Fedora, because Gnome defaults are terrible there. If you try it, you'll probably realize they don't care about desktop. I want to hear REAL reasons and I want to hear it from Red Hat guys, because I'm not interested in other people opinions in this case.
    Gnome is very customizable. If you don't like the defaults of a specific distro, you are free to change them or pick another distro with better defaults.

    Besides, this kind of logic doesn't make sense: Kubuntu sucks hence KDE sucks. I'm sure there's a name for this kind of fallacy but I have better things to do than search wikipedia right now.

    Leave a comment:

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