GNOME 3.6 To Include Major Revisions 327
supersloshy writes "The launch of the GNOME 3 desktop environment sparked heated debate and criticism. GNOME developers have been listening to the concerns of its users and it is rolling out several significant changes in GNOME 3.6. The message tray, often called hard to use, was made much more visible in addition to being harder to accidentally trigger. The "lock" screen can now optionally control your music player, the system volume, and display notifications so you don't have to type in a password. GNOME will also support different input sources directly instead of requiring an add-on program. Nautilus, the GNOME file browser, is also getting a major face lift with a new, more compact UI, properly working search features, a "move to" and "copy to" option as an alternative to dragging and dropping, and a new "recent files" section. These changes, among many others including improvements to system settings, will be present in GNOME 3.6 when it is released later this month. Any other additions or changes not currently implemented by the GNOME team can be easily applied with only one click at the GNOME Extensions website."
Too late (Score:4, Insightful)
Over 6 releases to have them starting to listen to their user? I am out!
Re:Too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Over 6 releases to have them starting to listen to their user? I am out!
By the 8th release they'll take out the options so why bother in the first place ?
You know what's... (Score:5, Insightful)
the window/desktop manager I'm still using?
WindowMaker.
As I have been since 1998 or so, whenever I originally started using X on linux. It was intended as a clone of the NeXT workspace, and was for a time the official windowmaker of GNUstep. And you know what? They haven't fucked with it beyond a few minor usability improvements in 10 years. Basically the only changes were adding truetype fonts (Which helped with a few font related issues on later X servers, but otherwise hasn't added much), 'live' editable menus (previously text files that required a restart to change the right-click/f12 menu layout), and some inter-desktop fixes that came out whenever the release popped up on slashdot earlier this year.
It doesn't have a desktop shell, and finding updated wmapplets can be a hassle, but the former can be fixed by borrowing thunar from XFCE, the latter by fixing them yourself (or suc...er 'convincing' someone else to), but it'll run on any computer you have dating back to at least the pentium era (and would probably run on older if it wasn't for the 'mandatory' freetype support.)
Point being: What has gnome offered in either the 2.x or 3.x releases that made it so much better than the original versions, and did any of those features make up for it's unusable bloat on legacy systems?
I know nobody bothers to code for legacy systems anymore, unless they already were, but the point is program efficiency and usability is being reduced by wasting cycles on things that.... don't add to the apparent front-end usability! A problem that the GNOME project seems to be embracing from the wrong end wholeheartedly.
Re:Iterations (Score:5, Insightful)
I see these OSs merging in terms of how they perceive user tasks. The old Unix/Windows model was that you had a bunch of applications running simultaneously, which the user had to manage themselves. In Mac, it feels like the emphasis is on working with one application at a time. This can be seen when the (File, Edit, View, etc) menus change context with respect to the selected application. Unity, and it looks like Gnome 3, are moving in this direction.
For users who are used to one style, completely revamping the UI also means revamping and disrupting everyone's personal workflow. What if I want to browse and code simultaneously? If the UI prohibits such behavior, than I'll have a hard time getting work done.
I don't have a problem with the changes, but I do have a problem with these changes getting shoved down everyone's throat without proper support to revert to a classic look. A lot of the 'core' features that are being added, could simply be mods on top of the existing desktop instead of the buggy restructuring that's currently going on.
Why we can't have nice things. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hipsters and people that sway easily to trendiness, are why computers are starting to suck. Whoever let these monkeys program needs to be drawn and quartered. "Oooh, let's take the close button, and not actually close or exit the application, let's just make it disappear but still running in the background, because users don't know what they want to do anyway." (Banshee, Pidgin, just to name a few). Let's just throw away 40+ years of HCI and ergonomics because touch screens are the new rage.
Re:Nautilus? Compact? No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Good lord... One of the developers says that horizontal scrolling is "horrible", and the other says the comments are unhelpful and tells people to go away.
Is there even a point in using GNOME when shit like this happens and with people in charge being such enormous assholes?
Performance? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is my problem with F/OSS in general... (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Write post
2. End with "I'll probably get modded -1 troll for this..."
3. ...
4. Profit!
Windows 8 (Score:5, Insightful)
Excellent For Student/Office Trolls (Score:1, Insightful)
Why even have a lock screen if you can do things on it under the current user?
The point of a lock screen is to prevent other people from using your computer while you're away (if you're not away, then why was it locked?) Say I'm playing some music then pause and lock the computer to go do something. It sounds like another person can just walk by and resume my music and turn up the volume. Not good.
A person could also come by and max out the volume on all locked computers. What a way to troll someone. This feature lets someone physically damage the user's hearing! User keeps his/her volume low as the music is very loud or his headphones amplify the sounds. User pauses music, locks screen and gets up for a break, stupid student/co-worker/random cafe person comes by and maxs out the volume while leaving no traces, user comes back puts on headphones, and unlocks the screen. Then he un-pauses his music expecting it to be as he left it, but BAM! HAY HAY HAY, [NOW YOU HAVE HEARING DAMAGE] GOODBYE
Do people no longer think about their changes or why things are the way they were?
Re:This is my problem with F/OSS in general... (Score:3, Insightful)
Fortunately, FOSS provides a solution as well, called forking. For example, MATE [mate-desktop.org] is a fork from GNOME 2.0 and will continue development the way GNOME SHOULD have.
Unlike proprietary software where the users may find themselves at the mercy of a chair throwing nut case, nobody can actually force the users to follow them down the rabbit hole.
As for usability groups, they must have an uncanny knack for never including people who think the way I do in their focus groups because I find FOSS much easier to use in most cases.
But if neither MATE nor GNOME is your cup of tea, there's also KDE, XFCE, FVWM, and a great many others you can try. This isn't some sort of one size fits none dictatorship, you have choices.
Re:All two (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not explaining well. Everything is hidden when the screen is locked. Unfortunately, notifications are also not displayed when the screen is not locked. You actually have to do something to see any notifications that might have occurred when you were not looking at the screen. For me, this nearly completely defeats the point of having notifications. I would like to see at a glance that I have an email, or a chat request, etc.
Re:Why we can't have nice things. (Score:3, Insightful)
The worst part is that the GNOME team never, ever learns from past mistakes. After all the negative criticism they've gotten since the launch of GNOME 3 they still pull shit like this [gnome.org]. Seriously, I don't even know where to begin with that one. Apparently they think it's too much work to navigate a filesystem so they removed the left directory navigation pane. WHY?!! If it's there - they'll make sure to break it (or remove it) just so they can show off some bizarre "idea" about how things should work in la-la-land. If they had just ported Gnome 2 to Gtk+3 and reworked some stuff under the hood, like replacing CORBA and gconf with something sane, they'd still be the most widely used *NIX desktop. But, no - they had to reinvent Gnome 3 into some pretentious bullshit GUI they have to brainwash people into liking.
Re:Why Linux? (Score:2, Insightful)
You don't really realize what a premium experience means... I don't want to restart the OS when I install a browser, for example. Don't get me wrong, the Linux desktop has way too many kinks, but the problem with the Windows mono-culture is that people don't even see the huge problems because they are so used to them.
Re:And the other side of the problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are not interested in trying something new that may give you a way to do things faster and easier than you are currently doing, why are you using my new UI?
Because you stopped supporting the old one.
Re:Iterations (Score:5, Insightful)
Having the menus at the top of the screen defined by the active window requires extra mouse antics, so I like the menus for each program contained within its window. I do not work in full screen unless I'm watching a video and doing little else. I have lots of windows open at once so I can monitor output simultaneously and provide input when required. How about some code open with an irc client, video/audio player open as well.. IM chat? video/audio editing software with encoders?
Some of us actually use the power we have in our desktops. We don't want that power sucked away with useless animations and idiotic limitations designed for constrained input like tablets. Seriously, it seems the current crop of 'designers' (I use the term loosely) working on gnome has never used a computer for anything more than checking facebook and playing music.
gak...
Re:Iterations (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure I understand. In a desktop environment that supports overlapping windows, how does a global menubar save space?
Re:Don't Care (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed, Xfce on anything is the one to beat now. It's time we all switched gears and started trying to list significant missing features and capabilities in Xfce so they can be added, rather than trying to fix brain dead DE abortions. I don't think there's very much missing from the latest version of Xfce (NOT the outdated version shipping with the spring release of Fedora and Ubuntu).
Re:Iterations (Score:4, Insightful)
So true, on a 30 inch monitor, gnome3 is unusable and a pain in the ass to use. But its build for tablets, even the gnome developers admitted it. Music player on lock screen? Tablet feature. Good portion of my developers at work are still using 10.04 due to gnome 3 and ubuntu unity fiasco. Those not using linux use osx.
Never liked unified menus, hated it with office, hated it with gnome3 and osx.
Solve a problem, don't force fit a solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Me neither, but I'll try to explain anyway.
That's not actually the point. The screen lock is a possible solution to a set of common problems. If you insist on a single solution and then use a rigorous description of that solution as your criteria for whether the problem is solved or not, that's the opposite of good software engineering practice. The point is to define and solve the problem, not force expectations of what the solution should look like to shape your perception of what the problem is.
In most cases, the screen lock exists to prevent other entities from pre-empting your input - for example, I have to protect my keyboard from cats and small children at home, at work I need to prevent other people from sending mail under my username or deleting my local filesystem. I won't give a damn if anyone sees a notice that says "you've got mail" or if they can turn down the volume of my speakers - in fact those are desirable features for nearly all real world users.
In some cases, though, you may also need to prevent others from accessing your output devices - for example if you are carrying on a torrid affair without your spouse's knowledge, performing industrial espionage on your employer, or surfing porn while you're supposed to be babysitting, you'll want your screen completely hidden and you'll want a "hot button" that invokes lockout of all video and audio output instantly. Most people with this use case are also going to be satisfied by a screen lock that displays prominent notifications (without content) and allows control on audio outputs. They aren't going to want to have to type a password to stop the moaning sounds from their speakers - that's not a sufficiently responsive control for them - but they may want the screen lock to automatically mute audio outs.
The least common use case is going to be people who want total input and output device lockdown - when they are away from the computer, they want audio, video and network to be totally inaccessible until they type a password. That use case is important, because it is the highest possible security setting, but almost nobody wants their download to stop when they step away from the computer, almost nobody wants to have to pull the battery out of their kid's laptop to make the music stop.
So instead of focusing on what the meaning of the phrase "screen lock" is, a good solution would probably default to total lock of all inputs and outputs (on the principle of maximum security defaults) but would allow the user to trivially permit notifications and external device controls through a simple settings panel (as well as during any configuration dialog you might provide at setup time).