It's Easy To Guess What Angers GNOME Users

[AnonymousCoward]

It's official now...

It's official now, this is the most boring thread on phoronix ever. Congratulations to all you all, you all get free Augustiner on the house

[Hephasteus]

Are you serious? I can't believe posts this stupid even exist. Gnome 3 is trying to get you to use the keyboard so it can keylog you? That is the most idiodic thing I've heard in some time. Take off your tinfoil hat and get over yourself.

See that's the problem you are facing. What you call information technology the people who create it call it disinformation technology. It works half on real capability and half on perceived capability. Is everyone in on it? Is it some grand consipiracy? No it's full of useful idiots.

Is it a case of the needs of the builders outweigh the needs of the users? That's a part of it too. A huge chunk of linux effort goes into programming and developement tools.

Oh we've evolved deceipt. We've gone from a confident witch doctor throwing bones around that tell them something to a confident statician shoving pie charts around and telling us what's going to happen to a confident geek with a supercomputer and a some kind of proprietary algorythm telling us they know what is going on. It's the same game with increasing complex stage props.

You believe whatever you want to believe. Me i'll be wiresharking the shit out of 192.168.0.x.

[droidhacker]

Hi! You don't mind if skip the "blabla" part, do you?
I also hope you don't mind a few questions.

Not at all....

Why is a composited DE (like KDE, Windows 7 and MacOS use it) unreliable? It's definitely not slow (even on old i915) here.

It may seem fast, but without the compositing, it would be FASTER. MUCH faster. Compositing is very heavy on memory.

It is unreliable because it has much more extensive and less predictable dependencies. There are so many different 3D drivers available, that they all react differently. The more complex something is, the less reliable it becomes. It used to be the "unix way" to make a lot of small, but PERFECT components. These small perfect components fit together to make a complete system, that was fast and reliable.

Gnome-2+compiz was somewhat along these lines. Gnome could operate independently of the compositing if the compositing caused problems. Gnome-shell doesn't offer this option.

I have no problem with compositing being an available OPTION, but it shouldn't be a dependency.

I didn't really get that one. What do you mean? Can you give a (valid) use case? I rarely use my mouse to control the gnome shell.

Gnome-shell is *designed* to be controlled by a mouse. In order to open a program, you hit the applications (or however its labeled) button in the UPPER LEFT CORNER, which expands the thing to take up the ENTIRE screen, you then have to select applications again, then run all the way over the the RIGHT SIDE to select the category, then scroll down until the application you want is showing, then move over and click on it. That's a total of 4 clicks withOUT involving scrolling. Then you add a click/drag or spin the mouse wheel.

Alternatively, you need to manually type in the name of the application you're after. That's a lot of keyboard clicks (I say as I'm typing out an essay....), and could be just as easily (easier, actually) accomplished by typing in the name of the executable to a terminal.

agree with you on that. Luckily - for both of us - it doesn't. I'm able to start Firefox just by hitting the Activities-key (Windows-Key, but reconfigured here for Win+Space, I was a happy user of "Do") and typing F. Maybe your counting skills went wild, the above figures seem to be imprecise.

Have you never heard of exaggeration? The fact that it takes a minimum of FOUR mouse clicks to do what took TWO in gnome-2 means that there are an additional UNNECESSARY TWO mouse clicks added in. Not to mention how far you need to move your mouse.

I agree with you on having an easily accessible list of open programmes is nice. The developers of gnome shell though so as well - that's why there's Alt + Tab and Alt + "Key above tab".

The practical limit of those is having 3 or 4 applications open. Then you start having to run through 20-30 clicks of the "tab" key to flip between applications, whoops, missed it, maybe next time around the loop.

I think they call it "overlay mode". No clicks required by the way (you know, Windows-Key).

That's a click.

In case you are using a fairly modern mouse you might be able to resize those preview windows (referred to as "microscopic overview" by you) by moving the scroll wheel up. Scrolling down will make them smaller again.

You really think I want to hover over every one of those microscopic windows, zoom in, whoops, wrong one, zoom back out, try the next...? That is no more practical than trying to guess.

I never went into a trap using Nautilus before. Maybe because I know how to use the so-called "breadcrumb navigation" below the menu-bar of every Nautilus window.

I see....
File menu,
Location: [/path/]
Back button,
Forward button,
Search button (wtf for?),
Side panel (common targets).

NOTHING that would let me select the parent directory.
So... move focus into the location bar, press the BACKSPACE key until the last directory is removed from the path, then press ENTER.

THIS IS SOMETHING I COULD ACCOMPLISH WITH ONE CLICK ON OLDER VERSIONS!!!

No only does said navigation strip implement a "parent directory button", there's also a "parent of parent directory button", "parent of parent of parent directory button" and even a "parent of parent of parent of parent directory button". Each of them is placed left of their successor giving you an hierarchical navigation choice.

Don't do drugs.

Should your mental capabilities impair you and make it impossible for you to click on the buttons provided by that navigation element - I highly doubt that because, as you already said, I'm the "gnome-is-great 'tard" here and you are perfectly sane - you might also be able to go up one directory by pressing Alt + Up (on your keyboard, no mouse involved).

Back and forwards make not navigation.
And no, keyboard is NOT a practical solution here. You used the mouse to launch nautilus, so your hand is on the mouse. You want to STOP, take your hand OFF the mouse, put them on the keyboard, press a combination of keys to get to the parent directory, take your hands OFF the keyboard, back onto the mouse, click what you're after..... or would it be better to just press a single button with the mouse that says ".."?

I prefer ONE click compared to that absolutely inconvenient sequence of motions.

That's why they called that category "All". "All" is usually prone to being quite a mess, so they also added all the other categories. You might be able to find them in the right column in the applications overview.

Yes, but their design plans involve REMOVING all the OTHER categories, leaving JUST ALL.

I know exactly what you are talking about!
When I'm hungry and I want to order food online I search Google for "food" and clicking through all those 3.250.000.000 results until I find a nearby food-delivery restaurant is such a pain!

No, it would be more analogous to google taking out the input field and leaving ONLY the search button, then scrolling through EVERY google result until you found what you're looking for.

Luckily for both of us gnome shell is a lot more sophisticated here: When in overlay mode (important, or else every keystroke will go the the application that is currently in front!) just start typing let's say "Firefox" with "F". This will narrow down your search results to only a few - unless you have 70 concurrent versions of Firefox installed on your system of course.

How many keys should you have to press to replace TWO MOUSE CLICKS?
You, as well as the gnome-developers, seem to think that a THOUSAND makes sense.

The actual big problems with gnome shell are the result of a bunch of VERY poor users in terms of their mental capabilities.

I'm terribly sorry, but I'm not interested in getting personal here. You've made your mental faculties quite plain for everyone to see. I somehow doubt that you'll have many backing you up on this nonsense.

Nearly every single one of your rants boils down to: I'm not able to use that damn thing because I don't know how to and I'm too stupid to find it out myself. Nevertheless, you could still get a lot of help from various generous users that actually do know how to read so that wouldn't be that big of a problem. Your actual problem is your total lack of an attitude that would make people help you.

I know perfectly well HOW to use it, but the purpose of a computer is to make things MORE EFFICIENT, not less. This "upgrade" makes it LESS efficient. That makes it a FAILURE.

WAAAAAH, I'M TOO STUPID TO ARGUE RATIONALLY AND HAVE TO RESORT TO PERSONAL ATTACKS!!!

That's too bad for you.

[droidhacker]

Maybe Android has no Wikipedia 'app'? I have no smart phone, it can only take/make calls and send sms...

Browser user-agent.

[droidhacker]

I'm using a Dell U2311H, hence a monitor.


7 key strokes is the longest I have to type, because of Firewall vs Firefox (I'm using Fedora 16). For example, Epiphany only needs 4. Besides, keystrokes are much faster than mouse movement, especially if you type quickly. And your comparison of Gnome-Shell vs Terminal is just silly, not everyone uses a Terminal, especially new users. It's true that you have to move the mouse a lot (that's why I gave a possible improvement, by moving the category list to the left side), but if you have a high DPI mouse (I'm using a Steelseries Ikari Laser with custom DPI settings) you don't move the mouse a lot.
And Gnome-panel *should* be able to launch applications with the keyboard, since it's must quicker than moving the damn mouse.


True there, but Gnome 2 didn't have a good solution for this either. You end up with a big window list, without seeing properly the application's names.

You familiar with 'group-by-category'?

Gnome 2 also had this problem. The only solution I can think of is naming your workspace, that way you know what's in there.

True, but the workspaces idea was presented as a solution to lack of an open-applications-panel. *THAT* issue doesn't exist in gnome2, hence no need for a solution.

Try to put the favorite list, the window list, the workspace list and the taskbar into the same bar. You probably don't have any problem, because you use multiple monitors and the bar probably extends to all monitors. But try on a laptop for example, and you'll see that's impossible to use Gnome 2 with only 1 bar, unless you discard some of the lists.

I don't use a favorite list. The rest fit fine *on a single monitor*. On my multi-monitor machines, I use top and bottom bars. I use top-only on my netbook due to only having 600 vertical pixels.

[AnonymousCoward]

The mouse resolution has nothing to do with it. If you have the mouse set to such a high speed that you can slam the thing all over the screen with little more than a thought, then you lose the ability to control it precisely when you're dealing with precision. Sorry, but resolution doesn't help this.

Resolution does help. I went from a 800dpi mouse to a 1600dpi one, and it is exactly as precise as before, I just need to move half the way. Maybe you need to buy a proper mouse, not cheap crap. Or maybe you need to make sure your desk is clean, so the mouse doesn't stick to it?

[LinuxID10T]

Resolution does help. I went from a 800dpi mouse to a 1600dpi one, and it is exactly as precise as before, I just need to move half the way. Maybe you need to buy a proper mouse, not cheap crap. Or maybe you need to make sure your desk is clean, so the mouse doesn't stick to it?

I'm sorry, but this statement is just pure, plain crap. What NORMAL desktop user uses a high performance mouse on what a teflon mouse pad? Seriously, this Gnome-shell is meant for normal users I thought?

[ludovic.silvestre]

You familiar with 'group-by-category'?

I'm familiar with 'group-by-application', it's used by default in Aero, Aqua and Gnome-shell. I presume we're talking about the same thing.

True, but the workspaces idea was presented as a solution to lack of an open-applications-panel. *THAT* issue doesn't exist in gnome2, hence no need for a solution.

You're wrong. Gnome 2 have a finite number of workspaces (those little window icons on the bottom bar, right side) and in Gnome 3 they evolved to an arbitrary number of workspaces. And workspaces aren't a solution to the lack of open-application-panel, since the open applications are in the dock and all windows are grouped by application (talking about Gnome-shell).

I don't use a favorite list. The rest fit fine *on a single monitor*. On my multi-monitor machines, I use top and bottom bars. I use top-only on my netbook due to only having 600 vertical pixels.

My point was that you can't use a single bar for all the information, unless you have a big screen/multiple screen. You have 3 solutions for that problem:
1) Discard some of the information;
2) Use a second bar;
3) Hide the less used information into a secondary screen <-- used in gnome 3.

Now the best solution in my opinion is the third, because 1) is not an option if you want to need all that information and 2) is not an option if you have a small screen. Now, to access the secondary screen (activities screen), gnome-shell allows you 3 ways to do that (slowest to quickest):
1) Pressing the Activities button in the top bar (big movement + precision to press button);
2) Moving the mouse into the top left corner (big movement, but no precision);
3) Pressing the Window Key button (only one keystroke);

Honestly, the drawback of 3) (one more step) is much less important than the drawbacks of 1) and 2).

[ludovic.silvestre]

I'm sorry, but this statement is just pure, plain crap. What NORMAL desktop user uses a high performance mouse on what a teflon mouse pad? Seriously, this Gnome-shell is meant for normal users I thought?

Normal users have small screens (laptops?) with 125DPI mouse and probably no mouse pad, but that combination is enough for gnome-shell (using it on a macbook pro, with the trackpad). Now if you have a big screen (>21 inches), you should have a high performance mouse. Go check out the hardware reviews sites, you'll see that all of them agrees with me

[LinuxID10T]

Normal users have small screens (laptops?) with 125DPI mouse and probably no mouse pad, but that combination is enough for gnome-shell (using it on a macbook pro, with the trackpad). Now if you have a big screen (>21 inches), you should have a high performance mouse. Go check out the hardware reviews sites, you'll see that all of them agrees with me

Sorry, but a 21 inch screen is a medium sized desktop screen anymore. I am rocking a 1000 dpi mouse and I haven't run into a problem yet with multiple 1080p screens with Gnome 2.