GNOME 3.0 Laptop Change Frustrates Some Users

[Morpheus]

My 2 cents

For almost 3 years now, I have tried to use different Linux-based distros day-to-day on my laptop. But there always have been some points to stop me, almost all due to power management things :
-First, some problems with CPU speed I couldn't slow down (resolved with recent kernel advancements);
-Second, GPU power management (partially resolved, for GPU but not memory);
-Third, and most important : suspend is working, but resume has always resulted in black screen, and I must reboot to get screen back to work. So I never suspend, and make sure this never happens.

Before taking decision to force some behaviour, and make users lose time and data, they should look at the state of the other projects. And see the problem with suspend-and-resume on laptops.

[Adarion]

Ah wasn't Linus saying something about "interface nazis" in regard to Gnome?

While KDE isn't perfect (it also has it's hard corners) I still like it somewhat better, since some options are really hidden in Gnome or in this case just not available. While a lot of users will probably want to suspend, some might not and you should always leave control to the user.
There is a reason for switching off autopilot in planes. And so we users sometimes know better than any automatism what to do and how to react to certain situations. I mean, it is our hardware and we should be able to deviate from the default path if we need to.

[devius]

Well then. Blame ATI for their non-existent support for Linux. I have a crappy Pentium dual core laptop with intel GMA X4500 graphics and KDE4 couldn't be smoother. I actually installed Xubuntu at first thinking KDE4 will be too much for the crappy "video card". But then I gave KDE4 a chance and never looked back.

Exactly. I'm running KDE on an Atom N270 netbook with GMA950 and it's also very smooth. Even desktop effects run great. It is the best and smoothest desktop environment I had in that pc yet.

[bug77]

Reading this thread, you'd think one DE or another is the son of satan.
Come on guys, both KDE and Gnome get the job done (and they do it pretty well imho) with the added perk that you get to choose and these two are just the leading choices.
The guys behind Gnome made a poor decision making a change that will affect most users, with no apparent good reason at all. I bet there are other changes in Gnome 3.0 that many won't like.
If there's enough demand, someone will develop an app to add the missing GUI back. No need to freak out.

[Nevertime]

Well then. Blame ATI for their non-existent support for Linux. I have a crappy Pentium dual core laptop with intel GMA X4500 graphics and KDE4 couldn't be smoother. I actually installed Xubuntu at first thinking KDE4 will be too much for the crappy "video card". But then I gave KDE4 a chance and never looked back.

in ati's defence i use ati and kde runs great on either open source or catalyst drivers. I honestly think people knock kde because they've not used it since kde 4.2. I've used it on a number of systems and the current porformance is competative, likely better than gnome.

There have been driver issues in the past. like when kde 4.5 came out with blur on by default with cards that supported it. Both the nvidia and ati drivers was crap at blur but the drivers quickly got fixed and their great now. In this case if kde didnt make a blur effect that exposed the crappyness of the drivers then linux drivers would still suck at blur.

[Joe Sixpack]

There have been driver issues in the past. like when kde 4.5 came out with blur on by default with cards that supported it. Both the nvidia and ati drivers was crap at blur but the drivers quickly got fixed and their great now. In this case if kde didnt make a blur effect that exposed the crappyness of the drivers then linux drivers would still suck at blur.

I forget the details but I think it was caused by GL2 claiming more functionality than it actually had. That's one of the biggest problems with Linux: one library can had a deficiency and another program will take the blame for it. Of course this wouldn't be an issue if the OSS community wasn't filled with bloodthirsty idiots on a witch-hunt.

[madjr]

another reason why i'll be using unity.

while i like gnome shell , for most people is not for every day use, unfortunately for now...

even something like this can be a deal breaker, specially the "wont fix" attitude

[liam]

They've made some decisions fairly recently that I really don't like but I think after this initial release you'll see improvements.
The original design docs were/are very interesting, if incredibly ambitious, and I thought early direction was promising but they've been stressed for time, and had very few developers. I'm concerned that this will really hurt Gnome but I'm sure it will gain new people even as it sheds its older ones. This shouldn't have happened.
Part of the problem is.that there is a class of users who are attracted to gnome BECAUSE it LOOKS comfortable and they were always going to be noise in any such desktop evolution. Another part of.the problem is that the design for work was primarily handled in irc. This makes it.impractical for those not employed to work directly on Gnome to contribute meaningfully. Mailing list discussions mostly went nowhere with the end result either dismissal or go to the irc. Again both are problems. They have said that you can use the wiki but ideas placed their by non core members languish. In the end they've gone with the solution that requires the least amt of work(understandably). Unlike kde who had an entire company doing nothing but toolkit work gnome people have had to do that as well (that was certainly THEIR choice to make-- certainly one could argue that they could've moved to but that has problems of its own including the fact the deb's aren't as familiar with it). So what they have is a pretty good base now but the user facing bits(which is only about 3.5megs of code) have essentially languished, or if that is too strong for Richard and Allen, been given uneven treatment.
Still, everyone remember that the panel is STILL THERE and will be for a long while.
The solution for panel lovers is to implore the shell devs to fix their extension system so that alternative shells can be devised. Or move to XFCE.
As for me I'll try to work with the core group and see what can be done.

[gilboa]

Side note: I use XFCE, GNOME and KDE on various machines, depending on their function.

...Also, QT apps in Gnome look good. Gtk apps in KDE look bad.

*Cough Bullshit *Cough.
Unlike GNOME, KDE has native support for GTK application using either QtCurve or Oxygen-GTK.
These two components can be configured using the KDE control center.

On the other hand, GTK has zero native toolkit and configuration support for QT applications.

You don't like KDE, fine. You think it's an epic failure, good for you.
But at least -try- to stick to the facts instead of simply trolling.


=======================

Now to the point at hand: I believe GNOME devs are slowly losing it. GNOME shell looks very interesting and I'm was about to continue using it on machine that currently use GNOME 2, but if indeed this stupid decision is a part of greater move to further remove UI configuration options (Try setting up a global short cut for a certain application and you'll know what I mean), I will most likely migrate all my low(er)-end GNOME machines to XFCE and high(er)-end machines to KDE.

- Gilboa

[smitty3268]

I saw this coming

When KDE4 was coming out and changing the way the desktop worked, there was a near revolt among users. So when it became apparent that GNOME 3 was going to be a fairly major overhaul and not just a minor update, i knew the same thing was going to happen there. Especially since so many gnome users have spent the last 5 years talking about how great the current version is and why no one would ever want to change it, unlike that other desktop environment. Everyone has their own ideas about what needs to be changed and what will completely destroy the usefullness of the desktop if it's changed, and they're all different from one another. This is going to be a disaster, and that's why you have distros like Ubuntu already jumping ship to do their own projects.