Gentle People:
Some thoughts from the users prospective on feature innovation
in the Fedora Project:
BTW: I would overall like to congratulate the Fedora developers
for producing some pretty excellent software!
However I do have some concerns about the direction of innovation and
changes to the Fedora Software.
I would like to differentiate between what I feel are a) valuable
improvements
and b) worthless changes. Where I would (of course) like to discourage
( or even ban ) worthless changes.
BTW: Many of these efforts are out dated but will still serve as
excellent
examples.
Some examples of Valuable Improvements:
- Adding support for IPv6, Wireless, VPNs, NAT, and Security,
etc.
- Adding support for real time functions, real time graphic,
and multimedia.
- Adding support for large or even huge file systems, Raid,
and so on.
Some examples of Worthless Changes:
- Changing the look and feel of the Graphical User Interface.
- Changes that harm overall performance.
- Moving the location of well known items in the menus.
- Changing the look, feel, and operation of menu items.
- Changing the function of menu items / mouse keys.
Keeping in mind the the "Worthless Changes" seriously annoy the
user base.
Hope this helps.
Thomas Dineen
On 9/7/2011 4:05 PM, Mark Eggers wrote:
> On Wed, 07 Sep 2011 11:23:26 -0700, Frederick N. Brier wrote:
>
>> On 09/02/2011 07:31 AM, Stefan Held wrote:
>>> Am Freitag, den 02.09.2011, 09:44 -0400 schrieb Darryl L. Pierce:
>>>
>>>> Great points. If we didn't have change and innovation we'd all still
>>>> be using 80x25 monochrome text mode terminals.
>> What was wrong with 80x25 monochrome? I liked the Hercules display :).
>> No, but seriously, Gnome3 is irritating. To have to click on Activities
>> to change and repaint the whole screen, and then select the category of
>> an item you want (if you have not added it to your favorites), then
>> click on it, then repaint the screen again. And the screen real estate
>> for the Activities text does nothing else. Nothing. You can't even
>> right click on it.
>>
>> You also can't right click on the "desktop menu items" and bring up
>> their properties. Can't copy and edit them (I like that for rdesktop
>> and other commands that have parameters). No, you have to find the old
>> MainMenu utility and create an item in the non-existent menu so it will
>> show up. Maybe there is another way, but it ain't intuitive.
>>
>> What's with no right clicks? Only one mouse button? Instead of Unix's
>> 3 buttons? Is this a lowest common denominator solution for someone who
>> installs Linux on a Mac?
>>
>> I have been using Gnome3 for over 3 weeks now. I tried adding AWN.
>> Tweaking different parameters. It is STILL annoying. And SLOOOOWWWWW.
>> There is a reason why menus have been around so long. So yeah, I guess
>> I think the Gnome guys fumbled the ball.
>>
>> I liked Gnome2. Mostly I liked all the nice GUI utilities built on top
>> of it. And now I am not sure what I am going to do.
>>
>>> It was only a change, no innovation .....
>>>
>>> http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/76280/
>>>
>>>
> This is going to be long, and I'm commenting late.
>
> First of all, a few general comments and caveats.
>
> Comment: Notice how the person responsible for starting this flame-fest
> wrote one message and hasn't reappeared?
>
> Caveat: I am a KDE user (mostly) or a WindowMaker user. However, I've
> been using Gnome 3 on and off since Fedora 15 was released. Take my
> comments with the above caveat in mind.
>
> Like many people, I find a lot of the UI changes in Gnome 3 to be a bit
> irritating. However, I have found several reasonable work-arounds.
>
> 1. Switching virtual desktops
>
> The left-screen / right-screen tango with a large monitor is cumbersome.
> Many have commented on this. I find it unpleasant as well.
>
> The work-around I use is Ctrl-Alt up-arrow and down-arrow. This allows me
> to easily page through my virtual desktops. The virtual desktops don't
> wrap around, and they're not labeled, but it's certainly better than the
> mouse equivalents.
>
> 2. Applets
>
> Quite frankly, I don't miss these at all. I have a weather plugin for
> Chrome, and I use gkrellm for system monitoring.
>
> If you alt-right-mouse click on gkrellm, you can choose "Always on
> visible Workspace" which lets you see your machine's suffering on every
> desktop :-p.
>
> 3. Items on desktop
>
> I've never been a fan of items on the desktop. I usually have too many
> things running so double-clicking on a desktop item is counter-productive.
>
> That said, you can probably manage a lot with having Nautilus show up on
> every workspace. Again, just right-mouse click on the title bar and
> select "Always on visible Workspace".
>
> 4. Right-mouse click on the desktop
>
> I've not missed this nearly as much as I thought I would. I find that Alt-
> F2 and entering a command works for most of my needs. I actually use this
> a lot (see Applications menu below).
>
> Things I don't like
>
> 1. Performance
>
> On this old machine (2.6 GHz P4, 1.5 GB memory, overclocked Nvidia 7600GS
> AGPx4 card), Gnome 3 consumes the most memory and renders the slowest of
> KDE 4 / WindowMaker / Gnome 3. Hopefully the Gnome developers will
> improve performance in the upcoming releases. Early versions of KDE 4 had
> performance problems as well, so one can hope.
>
> 2. Uncontrollable workspaces
>
> This one is irritating. I tend to lay out my workspaces in a particular
> order. I group running tasks on particular workspace based on what I'm
> doing. Think of it as an alternative to the KDE activities concept.
>
> I find now that if I don't open programs in a certain order, then they
> get placed on an unfamiliar workspace. While this isn't a huge problem,
> it makes setting up workspaces based on tasks more cumbersome than it
> should be. I can get around some of this with alt-tab (through all
> programs), but this is less than optimal.
>
> 3. Workspace behavior when ending last program
>
> This one is a bit convoluted to explain. I have gkrellm visible on all of
> the workspaces. If I go to the last workspace and start a new program,
> everything works as expected. However, if I close that program, I get the
> same view as if I put my mouse cursor in the upper left-hand corner of
> the screen - the activities view. I have to hit the escape key to bring
> me back to a workspace view.
>
> This also happens if I launch a KDE program - let's say amarok - and send
> it to the system tray.
>
> 4. The applications menu
>
> This one is a real mess. I am a software packrat. I have lots of
> programs. I have a couple of versions of some programs. The default
> behavior of the application menu on a smaller system is pretty much
> unworkable.
>
> 4A. Speed
>
> The first time I bring up the Applications menu, it will take several
> seconds to appear. During that time I can obviously do nothing else on
> the computer.
>
> Scrolling through this mess is also an issue, as well as a CPU hog.
>
> 4B. Organization
>
> Alphabetic? Really? Yes, there are menus on the right hand side, but this
> does not come up by default. Also, there are no tool tip style comments
> when you hover over an icon. If you have several lightly used
> applications, you get to guess what the names are and what they do.
>
> 4C. Icons
>
> Mostly icons are not a problem. However, some icons are still .PNG or
> other bit-mapped graphics. These scale poorly with the default icon size.
>
> Because of this mess, I end up using Alt-F2 / command a lot. While this
> works for my most commonly used programs, it certainly doesn't work
> (being forgetful) for programs I don't use as often. In short, it places
> a barrier to finding the right application for the task at hand.
>
> 5. Playing nicely with KDE
>
> GTK 3 applications no longer play nicely with KDE. Newsreaders like pan
> are ugly (garish background on menus, blocky fonts). Google Chrome
> doesn't automatically start up the key manager, so none of the saved
> passwords are available. You can enter them in and save them, but as soon
> as you start Chrome under Gnome 3 again, you will lose the passwords
> stored while in KDE.
>
> 6. Playing nicely with Java
>
> I do a lot of Java work in NetBeans. The GTK look and feel is quite
> broken with GTK 3. Horizontal positioning is off when using an
> application in full screen. There are no menu shadows. There are no menu
> borders. Font rendering is different than the default GTK applications
> (and spindly).
>
> 7. Multiple open copies or windows
>
> If you have multiple copies of an application open, or multiple windows
> of a single application open, Alt-tab only gets to the most recently
> active window. You have to use the arrow key to maneuver to other windows
> of the same program or other instances of the same program.
>
> This isn't quite so bad. Alt-tab once, and then use the arrow keys for
> everything (this works). It's a bit clumsy, but I'm not sure how else to
> approach this issue.
>
> Nits
>
> Theming is painful. Hopefully I can poke around with the
> gnome-tweak-tool to fix the look of running GTK applications under KDE.
>
> Resource usage is higher than other windowing systems. I realize this is
> the first release. I hope that the Gnome developers will focus on
> performance / efficiency in the upcoming releases.
>
> What is the point of having the active program display on the title bar?
> If I click on the entry (for example gedit), all I get is an option to
> quit. Why is this any more beneficial than using Ctrl-Q from within the
> program? I just trying to figure out why this is a good UI design.
>
> All in all, Gnome 3 has some potential, but there are certain warts that
> really need to be addressed in order to make it useful (IMHO).
>
> . . . . just my two cents.
> /mde/
>
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