It's Easy To Guess What Angers GNOME Users

[Hamish Wilson]

All right, I am sensing a pattern here, if I may make an observation...

An Anti-Gnome Shell person makes a complaint, and receives a rebuttal. The Anti-Gnome Shell guy ignores this and wonders why nobody is responding to his complaint.

A Pro-Gnome Shell person makes a complaint, and receives a rebuttal. The Pro-Gnome Shell guy ignores this and wonders why nobody is responding to his complaint.

Simply put... once a thread has this many posts, it stop being relevant. Move on and try and make your lives better. Thank you and good night.

[ninez]

***I DO USE GNOME 3***, but with a customized version of gnome-panel rather than gnome-shell. In this configuration, it works quite well, but I am concerned that I will eventually have to give it up. At this point, there is no practical alternative.

Gnome-fallback won't go away anytime in the forseable future. I was told this by a gnome developer.

Also, Unity is built on fallback (essentially), so that is another factor.. and i also highly doubt RHEL, CentOS, etc, will be switching to gnome-shell, even when they eventually move to gnome3. (not that that will happen anytime soon). ~ there are vested interests, and practical reasons to keep gnome-fallback alive. So, My point is it's not going anywhere.

Gnome-Shell isn't a requirement for Gnome3, neither is Gnome-Panel for that matter. Gnome's backend, toolkits, etc are nicely separated from things like GS and Gnome-Panel.

you should be able to continue to run whatever you want on top of Gnome, for a long time.

[Hamish Wilson]

Thanks for the post Ninez. Good to know.

[droidhacker]

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 don't know about you, but my hand is simply not capable of controlling an object to 1/1600th of an inch.... It gets to a point where its just numbers with little or no association with actual function. What you experienced from your change from 800 to 1600 dpi mouse, was PLACEBO. The actual resolution didn't make any difference because the accuracy of your hand is still what it was before. Now its compensating by reducing the sensitivity -- effectively ignoring several intermediate steps.

[droidhacker]

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.


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).

You're clearly unfamiliar with the way that gnome-panel worked. The applications bar on the bottom of the screen only displays the applications open on that screen in that workspace.

As far as the number of workspaces, I could care less if the number of them scaled to infinity. There is still a practical limit to the number of workspaces you can keep track of. I find FOUR to be excessive.

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;

First off, it isn't a single bar. Its a single bar PER WORKSPACE PER DISPLAY.
If you have multiple monitors, you get a new bar for the second one, it shows you the application open on THAT MONITOR.

2) Use a second bar;

You can, if you like. A single bar is still more practical to a second screen.

3) Hide the less used information into a secondary screen <-- used in gnome 3.

This is not a solution because you have to change to a second screen in order to see it. That is an extra redundant step, and does NOTHING to solve the problem to begin with. This wasn't done to improve usability, it was done to ADD BLING.

Now the best solution in my opinion is the third, because 1) is not an option if you want to need all that information

Microscopic overview actually implements option (1).....

and 2) is not an option if you have a small screen.

If you have that small of a screen, you aren't going to be running a billion applications simultaneously. Trust me, anyone with a netbook will confirm that this is NOT something to worry about.

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);

ALL of which add an extra step, and DO NOT actually improve over the way it was done in gnome-panel.

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

Except that it STILL implements drawback (1), and drawback (2) doesn't actually apply.

[droidhacker]

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

The resolution of your mouse makes no difference if it exceeds the RESOLUTION OF YOUR HAND, which it does. Those hardware review sites are biased since they are actually PAID BY THE VENDORS!!!!

[droidhacker]

All right, I am sensing a pattern here, if I may make an observation...

An Anti-Gnome Shell person makes a complaint, and receives a rebuttal. The Anti-Gnome Shell guy ignores this and wonders why nobody is responding to his complaint.

A Pro-Gnome Shell person makes a complaint, and receives a rebuttal. The Pro-Gnome Shell guy ignores this and wonders why nobody is responding to his complaint.

Your observations are incorrect.
The anti-gnome-shell persons make complaints, and receive rebuttals that indicate that the pro-gnome-shell person hasn't even read the complaint to understand it. They make up some nonsense and claim ignorance. The pro-gnome-shell person tries to explain in more detail in order to get past the "blinded by bling" state that the pro-gnome-shell person has been sucked into.

The pro-gnome-shell person is still blinded, so they try to make up a whole bunch of excuses, trying to place the blame for getting poor utility out of gnome-shell on the actual user -- suggesting that a graphical interface should be operated by the keyboard.... HUH--SERIOUSLY???!?!? Or that the user's MOUSE is somehow to blame?


None of the pro-gnome-shell person's arguments are explained any more rationally than "but its pretty".

Well, its a barnyard pig, dressed to the 9's and with a full makeover by the most famous homosexual in existence. Thanks, but I'd rather the HUMAN NERDY GIRL with zero fashion sense. At least she is capable of intelligent conversation and knows how to make a sandwich.

[AnonymousCoward]

I don't know about you, but my hand is simply not capable of controlling an object to 1/1600th of an inch.... It gets to a point where its just numbers with little or no association with actual function. What you experienced from your change from 800 to 1600 dpi mouse, was PLACEBO. The actual resolution didn't make any difference because the accuracy of your hand is still what it was before. Now its compensating by reducing the sensitivity -- effectively ignoring several intermediate steps.

You know, I actually measured this. Mouse at the bottom of the screen and table, move it to the top of the screen. 800 dpi needs to move twice as far as 1600 dpi. And I can control it pixel-perfect, though that takes a bit of effort (and a non-sticky surface, and proper gliders under your mouse).

[ludovic.silvestre]

I don't know about you, but my hand is simply not capable of controlling an object to 1/1600th of an inch.... It gets to a point where its just numbers with little or no association with actual function. What you experienced from your change from 800 to 1600 dpi mouse, was PLACEBO. The actual resolution didn't make any difference because the accuracy of your hand is still what it was before. Now its compensating by reducing the sensitivity -- effectively ignoring several intermediate steps.

The resolution of your mouse makes no difference if it exceeds the RESOLUTION OF YOUR HAND, which it does. Those hardware review sites are biased since they are actually PAID BY THE VENDORS!!!!

There's no placebo. I use a 1080p 23" display, with a high performance mouse that allows me to have two DPI settings (high an low). On the high setting I have 1600dpi and on the low I have 1000dpi. I see the difference in my movements, because I need to move my hand a little more to go from one side of the screen to the opposite side. I also play Counter-Strike: Source, and the difference is noticeable. Some of those reviews might be biased, but I bought the mouse and verified by myself that it was true, higher dpi is useful, if you can handle the mouse's precision. Obviously some people can't handle the high precision of the mouse. For now, I can handle it, but who knows when I get older.

You're clearly unfamiliar with the way that gnome-panel worked. The applications bar on the bottom of the screen only displays the applications open on that screen in that workspace.

You just spotted one possible improvement/alternative. Neither gnome-shell or Aqua (Aero doesn't support workspace) separates the window list per workspace. The window list is shared, it shows all windows from all workspaces. Now the question you must ask yourself is "how many different open applications I have at one time" (in all workspaces). If you have <10, then a shared window list is ok, but you must 'group-by-application' (all windows from the same application shared the same icon in the window list).
But I spotted a problem with gnome-shell and Aqua (both have the same behaviour). Consider 2 workspaces, 1 with epiphany, the other with terminal. Now, if I'm in the workspace with epiphany and I launch a terminal window, instead of launching a new window in that workspace, it changes to the workspace with the terminal. That's not what I was expecting (it doesn't launch another window). To create two windows, from the same application, in different workspace, I must create both windows in the same workspace, and then move 1 to the other workspace. That's not acceptable.

First off, it isn't a single bar. Its a single bar PER WORKSPACE PER DISPLAY.
If you have multiple monitors, you get a new bar for the second one, it shows you the application open on THAT MONITOR.

If you read carefully, I said that you can't use a single bar in Gnome 2 without discarding information, unless you have multiple screen or a big screen. And it seems you're confused, it's a single bar, but some of it's elements changes with different workspaces, like the window list. The taskbar doesn't change, the favorite list doesn't change and the workspace list doesn't change. I don't know how it works with multiple monitors, but I assume the bar is either extended (more space) or is only used in the main display (like Aqua). Does the Application/Places/System menu appears on all displays?

This is not a solution because you have to change to a second screen in order to see it. That is an extra redundant step, and does NOTHING to solve the problem to begin with. This wasn't done to improve usability, it was done to ADD BLING.

ALL of which add an extra step, and DO NOT actually improve over the way it was done in gnome-panel.

It improves only if they decide to use a global-menu, like Aqua. Because they freed some space, by putting in background less important information (favorites, windows and workspaces), but it allows them to move to the bar more important information (application menu). What do you use more: the application menu or the several lists I mentioned?

If you have that small of a screen, you aren't going to be running a billion applications simultaneously. Trust me, anyone with a netbook will confirm that this is NOT something to worry about.

You're right, I use a Macbook Pro 13" and I don't use a lot of applications. But since it's a small screen, I don't have the dock visible in Aqua (the dock contains the favorites and window list), the workspaces are also not visible (they are in a secondary/background screen) and the top bar contains the application menu and the taskbar. As you see, only the most important/used information is directly visible. I agree with you that gnome-shell needs to be more flexible, especially for users with big/multiple screens, but they must start by considering small screens, and then extend the DE to support big/multiple screens.

Except that it STILL implements drawback (1), and drawback (2) doesn't actually apply.

Wrong. When you discard the favorite list in gnome-panel, it isn't shown anywhere else. But in gnome-shell, while you discard it visually (not visible in the desktop), it's still available on the activities screen, but with one extra step (the drawback I mentioned).

[locovaca]

You know, I actually measured this. Mouse at the bottom of the screen and table, move it to the top of the screen. 800 dpi needs to move twice as far as 1600 dpi. And I can control it pixel-perfect, though that takes a bit of effort (and a non-sticky surface, and proper gliders under your mouse).

And a 640x480 image looks bigger on a monitor running 640x480 vs one running 1024x768. That doesn't change the fact the image is 640x480.