GNOME 3.0 Laptop Change Frustrates Some Users

[bitu-derr]

Gnome 2 forks

FYI, tried posting this earlier, but for anyone who is interested and likes the Gnome 2 experience, there is at least one fork of Gnome 2 now, it is called EXDE, I am not sure how active it is. It seems to have only been started this past January.

The website has a FAQ, a roadmap, et al:
http://exde.org/

I'm not involved with EXDE, I just would like to see some semblance of my current UI maintained, whatever the most fruitful path for that outcome may be.

[bitu-derr]

what to fork?

I wonder which it would actually make more sense to fork -- Gnome 2, or Unity itself?

Forking Unity would reflect changes like dbus vs bonobo, and perhaps support for panel "applets" could be restored to Unity, the launcher dock could be more customizable (up to and including making it look once again like a 24px wide "panel" that could be on any side of the screen).

One question I would have here would be who would own any fork of Unity, thinking in terms of the Canonical contributor agreement.

[Ulukai]

Well it would be dconf-editor for Gnome 3.

As far as everybody else goes... your all nuts. Closing the lid to suspend is the way it should be and it's impossible to get right otherwise without confusing the average end user. Whether or not there is a check mark to enable or disable the feature is immaterial... there remains a lot of heuristics left to make sure that the system behaves correctly when the laptop lid is closed and it's not something that anybody has gotten correct so far.

Without the option working correctly and being fully supported then there is no point to having that option. It just confuses the issue.

99% of the reason to NOT have your laptop suspend automatically has to do with crappy graphics drivers and the general shittiness of X. So instead of forcing the user to work around shitty drivers in Linux... the drivers need to be fixed.

That is the whole point of this. Fix the fucking graphics drivers.

For too long Linux has depended on users screwing around with their systems trying this or that configuration or different software options to work around broken crap like X crashing on suspend. That has to end _NOW_ if Linux has any hope of being a non-Geek desktop OS.

It has far less to do with making it easy to use for morons and much more to do with not shipping a OS that is broken by default. Nobody wants to put up with this crap anymore.

You can't call 90% of the mass thinking the same nuts, it's the other 10% who's nuts. Gnome devs should make their idea default, but at least leave the option for users to change it if they want to. After all, they are developping it for the end-users so their wishes should be their primary focus. As demonstrated, there are plenty of reasons to blank the screen when closing the lid. I do it all the time with Gnome 2 and _NEVER_ had any problems with overheating, display etc.

It's funny, I would rather consider an OS that doesn't resume after suspend to be broken... There are much more issues with resuming than with blanking screens.

[squirrl]

Gee Thanks

If the distributions don't listen what makes you think developers will?

I found it hard to believe Patrick Volkerding used Slackware 13 or 13.1 with KDE4 and KOffice which lacked a spell checker. Just an example of ignoring users.

vi/aspell I know.

Kubuntu should have stayed with KDE 3.5.10. Mark Shuttleworth can afford to hire a developer to maintain it. Another example of ignoring your users.

SUSE obviously listened for a while, giving a user the option of choice. But ultimately caved in by dropping 3.5.10 to some build system; unsupported.

The point here is enjoy 2.6 gnome while you can.


The distributions sank atlantis, too userfriendly

[Nevertime]

Maybe its because I don't use gnome but I like the idea of major linux gui forcusing on user friendlyness for inexpirianced computer users or people who simply don't want to ever have to ever bother configuring options.

That said I don't totaly buy into this notion that having options has to damage user friendlyness. Just stick it under an advanced tab if its that confusing.

The other issue is as you strip options away, people have to exercute more complex methods when they do want to make changes.

Macs are only any good if you want to limit yourself to interacting with your computer rigidly via the steve jobs method. The design of the gui's are nice and well thought out as long as your prepared to adapt yourself to how they think a gui should be. If you want to make the gui work for you its an issue. Steve jobs owns your mac and its his desktop you have to adapting to.

If gnomes trying to be the mac gui of linux then I'm sure it'll have its place. But its unlikley to drag me off kde.

[deanjo]

So far only Mac OS X gets it right: On lid close, suspend to RAM and as backup in case of battery failure also suspend to disk.

OS X also allows you to use the system with the lid closed by design. It is called clamshell mode.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3131

[deanjo]

Those morons are risking to overheat their laptops. And they are far from the majority.

Lol, believe it or not many laptops are fully capable of cooling that setup and it is expected behavior and by design.

[Awesomeness]

Closing the lid to suspend is the way it should be and it's impossible to get right otherwise without confusing the average end user.

Indeed. If some nerd wants to not suspend his laptop, he sure will be able to edit the blacklist file or use another power manager.
So far only Mac OS X gets it right: On lid close, suspend to RAM and as backup in case of battery failure also suspend to disk.

Well I have to disagree, I see plenty of laptops sitting on a desk attached to a keyboard, mouse and monitor with the laptop display closed. A "sensible default (tm of gnome)" is to allow the user to choose how closing the lid is handled like pretty much every other OS out there.

Those morons are risking to overheat their laptops. And they are far from the majority.

Sorry, but as you have probably noticed there are dozens of users who don't want gnome 3 to behave that shitty way and who want to have a choice (btw. there's always a choice called KDE). Why does gnome devs consider gnome users are freaking idiots?

GNOME users don't want configuration options. If they wanted them, they wouldn't use GNOME.
Ever since GNOME 2.0 ? which is almost 10 years ago ? its users don't want configurability.

It sounds like Linus Torvalds and many others are going to switch back to KDE soon, if they haven't already.

Only retards care about what Linus uses.

[Shining Arcanine]

Phoronix: GNOME 3.0 Laptop Change Frustrates Some Users

On a GNOME 2.x desktop if you are a laptop owner you can control what happens when you close your laptop's lid from the power management preferences whether to suspend the system or simply blank the screen. With GNOME 3.0, when you close your laptop's lid, the system will suspend and there will be no user-interface for changing this policy. It's a design decision for the GNOME 3.0 desktop...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTA3NA

It sounds like Linus Torvalds and many others are going to switch back to KDE soon, if they haven't already.

[kraftman]

99% of the reason to NOT have your laptop suspend automatically has to do with crappy graphics drivers and the general shittiness of X. So instead of forcing the user to work around shitty drivers in Linux... the drivers need to be fixed.

Sorry, but as you have probably noticed there are dozens of users who don't want gnome 3 to behave that shitty way and who want to have a choice (btw. there's always a choice called KDE). Why does gnome devs consider gnome users are freaking idiots?