aruiz wrote: --- How long is "long time"? Mac OS X was definitively quite a departure from Mac OS 9, and if you compare the early versions of Mac OS X and the current one you will spot quite a bunch of differences.
---
Sorry disregard previous post posted too soon...anyways...
aruiz wrote: --- How long is "long time"? Mac OS X was definitively quite a departure from Mac OS 9, and if you compare the early versions of Mac OS X and the current one you will spot quite a bunch of differences.
However, if you look at a Mac OS X desktop 10 years ago and even today, I think most people would agree it is not the traditional desktop as ---
If you used the Apple II up to Mac OS 9 and then Mac OS X you would see that while it has become more modern and the underlying infrastructure is now Unix based the basic traditional Xerox-style desktop schematic hasn't changed at all. Look at screenshots side by side and you'll see this is obvious. Apple as a desktop developer still maintains design standards that are very traditional and rooted in developments made in the 1980's. Apple's motto is "just works", because the traditional desktop "just works" for workstations Apple lives by it.
aruiz wrote: --- For one thing, the GNOME community has a live on its own, a lot of things happened other than just a new shell, removal of long overdue dependencies, modernization of the toolkit and the developer platform. If GNOME was kept still, I am telling you it would be in a much worse scenario than it is right now. ---
You are already in the WORST CASE scenario with less than 1.5% market-share for all Linux desktops and for Fedora specifically that means 0% market-share if you round up.
aruiz wrote: --- The biggest impact on GNOME's adoption was the move by Canonical from GNOME to Unity, and that was in the making long before GNOME Shell was a thing you could even evaluate. ---
Canonical isn't even profitable and last year they posted even greater losses, they nearly doubled. Apple on the other hand is the most valuable technology company in the world with record breaking profits. Guess which one you should follow?
aruiz wrote: --- To compare a Linux distribution with Apple is not entirely fair, is it? ---
They're competing for exactly the same Unix-oriented workstation user-base. Go to a web-developer office, meeting or conference for web-developers and what do you see? MacBooks everywhere. The whole idea of Fedora Workstation is that you go to a web-developer office, meeting or conference and see Fedora on everything, right?
aruiz wrote: --- Agreed. Can you point to any single GNOME feature that is tailored specifically for tablet devices? ---
Gnome Shell is a feature/product/package focused on mobile interaction for hybrids and touch enabled devices including tablets.
aruiz wrote: --- Again, have you checked GNOME Classic? ---
Yes, I have MATE installed.
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 11:54 AM, Alex GS alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com wrote:
aruiz wrote:
How long is "long time"? Mac OS X was definitively quite a departure from Mac OS 9, and if you compare the early versions of Mac OS X and the current one you will spot quite a bunch of differences.
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 6:22 PM, Alex GS alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com wrote:
aruiz wrote:
Agreed. Can you point to any single GNOME feature that is tailored specifically for tablet devices?
Gnome Shell is a feature/product/package focused on mobile interaction for hybrids and touch enabled devices including tablets.
Argument by repetition does not work. You stated that before and got a response that this is not the case and that you should come up with reasons where you got that from. You simply repeated your statement. This is pointless.
drago01 wrote: --- Argument by repetition does not work. You stated that before and got a response that this is not the case and that you should come up with reasons where you got that from. You simply repeated your statement. This is pointless. ---
His objections where purely rhetorical and not substantive and I was merely pointing that out by echoing his reply. But, I've probably wasted my time posting to this mailing list in the end. The Workstation PRD calls for "user surveys" but I'm getting a feeling that real user input isn't welcome here. Perhaps when it says "users" int the PRD it really means "Fedora/Gnome developers" and not actual end-users who will use the solution in the real world.
Repeating the same actions over and over again expecting a different result does not work, you're right. I guess expecting the Linux workstation to succeed and going to it over and over again is pointless, it's failed, time to buy a Mac.
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 12:31 PM, drago01 drago01@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 6:22 PM, Alex GS alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com wrote:
aruiz wrote:
Agreed. Can you point to any single GNOME feature that is tailored specifically for tablet devices?
Gnome Shell is a feature/product/package focused on mobile interaction
for
hybrids and touch enabled devices including tablets.
Argument by repetition does not work. You stated that before and got a response that this is not the case and that you should come up with reasons where you got that from. You simply repeated your statement. This is pointless. -- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 6:47 PM, Alex GS alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com wrote:
drago01 wrote:
Argument by repetition does not work. You stated that before and got a response that this is not the case and that you should come up with reasons where you got that from. You simply repeated your statement. This is pointless.
His objections where purely rhetorical and not substantive and I was merely pointing that out by echoing his reply. But, I've probably wasted my time posting to this mailing list in the end. The Workstation PRD calls for "user surveys" but I'm getting a feeling that real user input isn't welcome here.
No one said that input is not welcome (in fact it is) but that does not mean that everyone has to agree with you. (neither does everyone agree with me, but that's how things are).
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 12:47 -0500, Alex GS wrote:
But, I've probably wasted my time posting to this mailing list in the end. The Workstation PRD calls for "user surveys" but I'm getting a feeling that real user input isn't welcome here.
No, it is welcome!
This is a very contentious topic, and you're promoting a minority view (I suspect GNOME and KDE are much more popular in Fedora than the other desktops), so lots of disagreement is to be expected.
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 18:31 +0100, drago01 wrote:
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 6:22 PM, Alex GS alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com wrote:
aruiz wrote:
Agreed. Can you point to any single GNOME feature that is tailored specifically for tablet devices?
Gnome Shell is a feature/product/package focused on mobile interaction for hybrids and touch enabled devices including tablets.
Argument by repetition does not work. You stated that before and got a response that this is not the case and that you should come up with reasons where you got that from. You simply repeated your statement. This is pointless.
aruiz wrote:
Agreed. Can you point to any single GNOME feature that is tailored specifically for tablet devices?
I wanted to address this question because I think it's crucial to understand why GNOME 2 is the only suitable default choice for Fedora Workstation.
Let's revisit the original GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell) design document:
Problem Definition:
"The GNOME Project released version 2.0 of the GNOME Desktop in June 2002. It was an important milestone. In the years since then, the developer community has continually and incrementally improved the experience while learning a great deal about what worked and what didn't. The entire personal computing ecosystem has been changing too - partly due to a number of new and disruptive technologies. While we won't dwell on the particulars of those changes it is important to note that there is a growing consensus in the GNOME developer community that we needed to make a leap forward in order to fix many of the flaws in our designs and to generally bring a lot more awesome into the user experience."
https://people.gnome.org/~mccann/shell/design/GNOME_Shell-20091114.pdf
The key phrases in the entire document:
"The entire personal computing ecosystem has been changing too - partly due to a number of new and disruptive technologies."
- and -
"we needed to make a leap forward in order to fix many of the flaws in our designs."
Mac OS X release back in 2001.
GNOME 2 released in 2002.
Apple released the iPhone back in 2007.
This document was created back in 2009.
The "new and disruptive technologies" were mobile devices such as the iPhone. GNOME Shell itself was created as a reaction to the iPhone and mobile form-factors. Clearly the design has that in mind with the focus on touch-screen interaction.
The "flaws in our designs" refers to the traditional desktop workstation designs found in GNOME 2 that they no longer felt could address the new mobile form-factors that were just launched.
Apple released the iPad back in 2010.
GNOME 3 was released in 2011.
Let's look at that in perspective. Mac OS X (10.xx) was released in 2001 and has been in a continually state of development and refinement for over 13 years. If GNOME was Apple then GNOME 2 would still be in active development up to at least 2015. The current version of GNOME 2 would probably be 2.11 or 2.12.
This is why GNOME 2 is the only suitable desktop for Fedora Workstation. It's obvious that GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell) wasn't just created for traditional workstations but was an early attempt at a convergence concept to meld mobile and desktop interfaces together. This convergence concept is still highly experimental and not yet mature. See Ubuntu's Unity and Microsoft's Windows 8.
GNOME 2 is a fully mature and realized traditional desktop workstation concept, battle tested and with wide general appeal to fit the requirements of the Workstation PRD:
"We want to create a stable, integrated, polished and user friendly system that can appeal to a wide general audience."
"Case 3: Small Company Developer"
"Case 4: Developer in a Large Organization"
"Or the work we are doing to provide a high performance graphics workstation would be useful to people who want a linux gaming PC."
"Work towards standardizing and unifying the Linux desktop space"
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/Workstation_PRD
If for some reason it's too controversial to make MATE the default then you should give the user choice at the installation phase of GNOME Shell, MATE or KDE as per the following requirement in the Workstation PRD.
"we want to allow developers to use the tools they prefer for their application development yet make them all feel like a natural fit into our integrated desktop experience."
Key phrase: "we want to allow developers to use the tools they prefer for their application development"
Desktop environments are crucial to developer work-flows and and allowing the developer to pick from a limited list of supported options at install as stated above (GNOME Shell, MATE, KDE) is the best way to optimize that.
On Feb 4, 2014 7:23 AM, "Alexander GS" alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 18:31 +0100, drago01 wrote:
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 6:22 PM, Alex GS alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com wrote:
aruiz wrote:
Agreed. Can you point to any single GNOME feature that is tailored specifically for tablet devices?
Gnome Shell is a feature/product/package focused on mobile
interaction for
hybrids and touch enabled devices including tablets.
Argument by repetition does not work. You stated that before and got a response that this is not the case and that you should come up with reasons where you got that from. You simply repeated your statement. This is pointless.
aruiz wrote:
Agreed. Can you point to any single GNOME feature that is tailored specifically for tablet devices?
I wanted to address this question because I think it's crucial to understand why GNOME 2 is the only suitable default choice for Fedora Workstation.
Let's revisit the original GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell) design document:
Problem Definition:
"The GNOME Project released version 2.0 of the GNOME Desktop in June 2002. It was an important milestone. In the years since then, the developer community has continually and incrementally improved the experience while learning a great deal about what worked and what didn't. The entire personal computing ecosystem has been changing too - partly due to a number of new and disruptive technologies. While we won't dwell on the particulars of those changes it is important to note that there is a growing consensus in the GNOME developer community that we needed to make a leap forward in order to fix many of the flaws in our designs and to generally bring a lot more awesome into the user experience."
https://people.gnome.org/~mccann/shell/design/GNOME_Shell-20091114.pdf
The key phrases in the entire document:
"The entire personal computing ecosystem has been changing too - partly due to a number of new and disruptive technologies."
- and -
"we needed to make a leap forward in order to fix many of the flaws in our designs."
Mac OS X release back in 2001.
GNOME 2 released in 2002.
Apple released the iPhone back in 2007.
This document was created back in 2009.
The "new and disruptive technologies" were mobile devices such as the iPhone. GNOME Shell itself was created as a reaction to the iPhone and mobile form-factors. Clearly the design has that in mind with the focus on touch-screen interaction.
The "flaws in our designs" refers to the traditional desktop workstation designs found in GNOME 2 that they no longer felt could address the new mobile form-factors that were just launched.
Apple released the iPad back in 2010.
GNOME 3 was released in 2011.
Let's look at that in perspective. Mac OS X (10.xx) was released in 2001 and has been in a continually state of development and refinement for over 13 years. If GNOME was Apple then GNOME 2 would still be in active development up to at least 2015. The current version of GNOME 2 would probably be 2.11 or 2.12.
This is why GNOME 2 is the only suitable desktop for Fedora Workstation. It's obvious that GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell) wasn't just created for traditional workstations but was an early attempt at a convergence concept to meld mobile and desktop interfaces together. This convergence concept is still highly experimental and not yet mature. See Ubuntu's Unity and Microsoft's Windows 8.
GNOME 2 is a fully mature and realized traditional desktop workstation concept, battle tested and with wide general appeal to fit the requirements of the Workstation PRD:
"We want to create a stable, integrated, polished and user friendly system that can appeal to a wide general audience."
"Case 3: Small Company Developer"
"Case 4: Developer in a Large Organization"
"Or the work we are doing to provide a high performance graphics workstation would be useful to people who want a linux gaming PC."
"Work towards standardizing and unifying the Linux desktop space"
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/Workstation_PRD
If for some reason it's too controversial to make MATE the default then you should give the user choice at the installation phase of GNOME Shell, MATE or KDE as per the following requirement in the Workstation PRD.
"we want to allow developers to use the tools they prefer for their application development yet make them all feel like a natural fit into our integrated desktop experience."
Key phrase: "we want to allow developers to use the tools they prefer for their application development"
Desktop environments are crucial to developer work-flows and and allowing the developer to pick from a limited list of supported options at install as stated above (GNOME Shell, MATE, KDE) is the best way to optimize that.
Hi, question from a community member just trying to follow along.
Can you provide a citation ( mailing list archive, maybe ) of the discussion within the MATE project that led to MATE's decision to request inclusion in the GNOME Foundation?
--Pete
On Tue, 2014-02-04 at 07:55 -0700, Pete Travis wrote:
On Feb 4, 2014 7:23 AM, "Alexander GS" alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 18:31 +0100, drago01 wrote:
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 6:22 PM, Alex GS alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com
wrote:
aruiz wrote:
Agreed. Can you point to any single GNOME feature that is
tailored
specifically for tablet devices?
Gnome Shell is a feature/product/package focused on mobile
interaction for
hybrids and touch enabled devices including tablets.
Argument by repetition does not work. You stated that before and
got a
response that this is not the case and that you should come up
with
reasons where you got that from. You simply repeated your
statement.
This is pointless.
aruiz wrote:
Agreed. Can you point to any single GNOME feature that is
tailored
specifically for tablet devices?
I wanted to address this question because I think it's crucial to understand why GNOME 2 is the only suitable default choice for
Fedora
Workstation.
Let's revisit the original GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell) design document:
Problem Definition:
"The GNOME Project released version 2.0 of the GNOME Desktop in June 2002. It was an important milestone. In the years since then, the developer community has continually and incrementally improved the experience while learning a great deal about what worked and what didn't. The entire personal computing ecosystem has been changing
too -
partly due to a number of new and disruptive technologies. While we won't dwell on the particulars of those changes it is important to
note
that there is a growing consensus in the GNOME developer community
that
we needed to make a leap forward in order to fix many of the flaws
in
our designs and to generally bring a lot more awesome into the user experience."
https://people.gnome.org/~mccann/shell/design/GNOME_Shell-20091114.pdf
The key phrases in the entire document:
"The entire personal computing ecosystem has been changing too -
partly
due to a number of new and disruptive technologies."
- and -
"we needed to make a leap forward in order to fix many of the flaws
in
our designs."
Mac OS X release back in 2001.
GNOME 2 released in 2002.
Apple released the iPhone back in 2007.
This document was created back in 2009.
The "new and disruptive technologies" were mobile devices such as
the
iPhone. GNOME Shell itself was created as a reaction to the iPhone
and
mobile form-factors. Clearly the design has that in mind with the
focus
on touch-screen interaction.
The "flaws in our designs" refers to the traditional desktop
workstation
designs found in GNOME 2 that they no longer felt could address the
new
mobile form-factors that were just launched.
Apple released the iPad back in 2010.
GNOME 3 was released in 2011.
Let's look at that in perspective. Mac OS X (10.xx) was released in
2001
and has been in a continually state of development and refinement
for
over 13 years. If GNOME was Apple then GNOME 2 would still be in
active
development up to at least 2015. The current version of GNOME 2
would
probably be 2.11 or 2.12.
This is why GNOME 2 is the only suitable desktop for Fedora
Workstation.
It's obvious that GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell) wasn't just created for traditional workstations but was an early attempt at a convergence concept to meld mobile and desktop interfaces together. This
convergence
concept is still highly experimental and not yet mature. See
Ubuntu's
Unity and Microsoft's Windows 8.
GNOME 2 is a fully mature and realized traditional desktop
workstation
concept, battle tested and with wide general appeal to fit the requirements of the Workstation PRD:
"We want to create a stable, integrated, polished and user friendly system that can appeal to a wide general audience."
"Case 3: Small Company Developer"
"Case 4: Developer in a Large Organization"
"Or the work we are doing to provide a high performance graphics workstation would be useful to people who want a linux gaming PC."
"Work towards standardizing and unifying the Linux desktop space"
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/Workstation_PRD
If for some reason it's too controversial to make MATE the default
then
you should give the user choice at the installation phase of GNOME Shell, MATE or KDE as per the following requirement in the
Workstation
PRD.
"we want to allow developers to use the tools they prefer for their application development yet make them all feel like a natural fit
into
our integrated desktop experience."
Key phrase: "we want to allow developers to use the tools they
prefer
for their application development"
Desktop environments are crucial to developer work-flows and and allowing the developer to pick from a limited list of supported
options
at install as stated above (GNOME Shell, MATE, KDE) is the best way
to
optimize that.
Hi, question from a community member just trying to follow along.
Can you provide a citation ( mailing list archive, maybe ) of the discussion within the MATE project that led to MATE's decision to request inclusion in the GNOME Foundation?
--Pete
There was no such decision or discussion. We were discussing the default desktop for the Fedora Workstation project. It was my own individual proposal that MATE is the default desktop. I was discussing details on how that could be achieved and one idea was to merge MATE into GNOME. This does not represent the view of either MATE, GNOME or Fedora, these are my personal views.
On Feb 4, 2014 8:06 AM, "Alexander GS" alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, 2014-02-04 at 07:55 -0700, Pete Travis wrote:
On Feb 4, 2014 7:23 AM, "Alexander GS" alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 18:31 +0100, drago01 wrote:
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 6:22 PM, Alex GS alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com
wrote:
aruiz wrote:
Agreed. Can you point to any single GNOME feature that is
tailored
specifically for tablet devices?
Gnome Shell is a feature/product/package focused on mobile
interaction for
hybrids and touch enabled devices including tablets.
Argument by repetition does not work. You stated that before and
got a
response that this is not the case and that you should come up
with
reasons where you got that from. You simply repeated your
statement.
This is pointless.
aruiz wrote:
Agreed. Can you point to any single GNOME feature that is
tailored
specifically for tablet devices?
I wanted to address this question because I think it's crucial to understand why GNOME 2 is the only suitable default choice for
Fedora
Workstation.
Let's revisit the original GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell) design document:
Problem Definition:
"The GNOME Project released version 2.0 of the GNOME Desktop in June 2002. It was an important milestone. In the years since then, the developer community has continually and incrementally improved the experience while learning a great deal about what worked and what didn't. The entire personal computing ecosystem has been changing
too -
partly due to a number of new and disruptive technologies. While we won't dwell on the particulars of those changes it is important to
note
that there is a growing consensus in the GNOME developer community
that
we needed to make a leap forward in order to fix many of the flaws
in
our designs and to generally bring a lot more awesome into the user experience."
https://people.gnome.org/~mccann/shell/design/GNOME_Shell-20091114.pdf
The key phrases in the entire document:
"The entire personal computing ecosystem has been changing too -
partly
due to a number of new and disruptive technologies."
- and -
"we needed to make a leap forward in order to fix many of the flaws
in
our designs."
Mac OS X release back in 2001.
GNOME 2 released in 2002.
Apple released the iPhone back in 2007.
This document was created back in 2009.
The "new and disruptive technologies" were mobile devices such as
the
iPhone. GNOME Shell itself was created as a reaction to the iPhone
and
mobile form-factors. Clearly the design has that in mind with the
focus
on touch-screen interaction.
The "flaws in our designs" refers to the traditional desktop
workstation
designs found in GNOME 2 that they no longer felt could address the
new
mobile form-factors that were just launched.
Apple released the iPad back in 2010.
GNOME 3 was released in 2011.
Let's look at that in perspective. Mac OS X (10.xx) was released in
2001
and has been in a continually state of development and refinement
for
over 13 years. If GNOME was Apple then GNOME 2 would still be in
active
development up to at least 2015. The current version of GNOME 2
would
probably be 2.11 or 2.12.
This is why GNOME 2 is the only suitable desktop for Fedora
Workstation.
It's obvious that GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell) wasn't just created for traditional workstations but was an early attempt at a convergence concept to meld mobile and desktop interfaces together. This
convergence
concept is still highly experimental and not yet mature. See
Ubuntu's
Unity and Microsoft's Windows 8.
GNOME 2 is a fully mature and realized traditional desktop
workstation
concept, battle tested and with wide general appeal to fit the requirements of the Workstation PRD:
"We want to create a stable, integrated, polished and user friendly system that can appeal to a wide general audience."
"Case 3: Small Company Developer"
"Case 4: Developer in a Large Organization"
"Or the work we are doing to provide a high performance graphics workstation would be useful to people who want a linux gaming PC."
"Work towards standardizing and unifying the Linux desktop space"
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/Workstation_PRD
If for some reason it's too controversial to make MATE the default
then
you should give the user choice at the installation phase of GNOME Shell, MATE or KDE as per the following requirement in the
Workstation
PRD.
"we want to allow developers to use the tools they prefer for their application development yet make them all feel like a natural fit
into
our integrated desktop experience."
Key phrase: "we want to allow developers to use the tools they
prefer
for their application development"
Desktop environments are crucial to developer work-flows and and allowing the developer to pick from a limited list of supported
options
at install as stated above (GNOME Shell, MATE, KDE) is the best way
to
optimize that.
Hi, question from a community member just trying to follow along.
Can you provide a citation ( mailing list archive, maybe ) of the discussion within the MATE project that led to MATE's decision to request inclusion in the GNOME Foundation?
--Pete
There was no such decision or discussion. We were discussing the default desktop for the Fedora Workstation project. It was my own individual proposal that MATE is the default desktop. I was discussing details on how that could be achieved and one idea was to merge MATE into GNOME. This does not represent the view of either MATE, GNOME or Fedora, these are my personal views.
--
Okay, thank you for clarifying your position. If you haven't already, it would be a good idea to take the proposal to the MATE folks as well, if you want it to get traction.
-- Pete
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 12:22 -0500, Alex GS wrote:
Gnome Shell is a feature/product/package focused on mobile interaction for hybrids and touch enabled devices including tablets.
GNOME (capitals please, same for MATE) is focused on desktop and laptop computers, including laptops with touchscreens. GNOME has to support touchscreens well because Windows has gone that route, and 90% of laptops ship with Windows.
Tablets are a secondary concern because very, very few people are running GNOME on tablets. They're basically touchscreen laptops without keyboards, though, so I don't think they're much of a stretch.
Typically I associate the word mobile with phones, and nobody runs GNOME on phones. A new startup, Endless Mobile, is trying to. I wish them well, but I've yet to see reason to believe that will work well. (Which is fine, since they're new.)
Anyway, it sounds like you're spot-on part of the target audience for GNOME Classic. I'm sure the developers would be interested in feedback on why that environment doesn't currently meet your needs, and how it might be improved to do so.
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 19:04 -0600, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 12:22 -0500, Alex GS wrote:
Gnome Shell is a feature/product/package focused on mobile interaction for hybrids and touch enabled devices including tablets.
GNOME (capitals please, same for MATE) is focused on desktop and laptop computers, including laptops with touchscreens. GNOME has to support touchscreens well because Windows has gone that route, and 90% of laptops ship with Windows.
Tablets are a secondary concern because very, very few people are running GNOME on tablets. They're basically touchscreen laptops without keyboards, though, so I don't think they're much of a stretch.
Typically I associate the word mobile with phones, and nobody runs GNOME on phones. A new startup, Endless Mobile, is trying to. I wish them well, but I've yet to see reason to believe that will work well. (Which is fine, since they're new.)
Anyway, it sounds like you're spot-on part of the target audience for GNOME Classic. I'm sure the developers would be interested in feedback on why that environment doesn't currently meet your needs, and how it might be improved to do so.
If you look at MATE's road-map you'll quickly see most objections against it aren't valid. They're actively moving closer to core GNOME infrastructure such as GTK3, systemd and Wayland as well as defaulting to current GNOME packages in increasing numbers. Several GNOME packages from git.gnome.org have also been adopted by MATE's developers such as gnome-main-menu.
If you look at www.ohloh.com below MATE is a "very active" project with over 2 million lines of code, 64 contributors and the last commit was made 4 days ago. GNOME 2 is alive and thriving and evolving with a large user-base among the top distributions Arch Linux, Linux Mint, Debian, Ubuntu 14.04, OpenSUSE and many others including Fedora. Compare this to GNOME Shell which has only around 81K lines of code, twice as many contributors at 157 and the last commit was 2 days ago.
http://www.ohloh.net/p?ref=homepage&q=mate+desktop http://www.ohloh.net/p?query=gnome+shell&sort=relevance
This presents a very complex situation for GNOME. What does does GNOME do if they have two active thriving desktop products on the market coexisting in parallel? Clearly GNOME Classic hasn't addressed the traditional desktop use-case and isn't seen as a GNOME 2 replacement.
GNOME 2 was released back in 2002 - 12 years ago GNOME 3 was released back in 2011 - 3 years ago
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/02/06/26/1813231/gnome-20-released https://mail.gnome.org/archives/devel-announce-list/2011-April/msg00004.html
Then look at Apple with Mac OS X:
Mac OS X was released back in 2001 - 13 years ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_os_x
Mac OS X is a contemporary of GNOME 2 and is still in active development and supported indefinitely by regularly released minor versions 10.xx as long as Apple is solvent as a company.
If GNOME was like Apple they would have launched GNOME 3 along-side GNOME 2 and simply updated and supported GNOME 2 in minor versions. Today we would be on GNOME 2.9 or 2.10. The point is that when you have an installed user-base that's as large as GNOME 2 the default of most prominent commercial Linux distributions and even Unix platforms you don't just drop support and development like that. You have to keep that massive user-base happy while you continue to develop GNOME 3 and then eventually when it's ready you slowly transition your GNOME 2 users to it.
When you abandon active and popular products like that you cause developers to fork your product and keep it in active development. Just like the MATE team is doing today. In reality MATE is providing the free support and development that GNOME should really be doing.
That's why I propose the following:
Proposal: GNOME Foundation adopts GNOME 2 (MATE) as an official GNOME desktop alongside GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell).
"Work towards standardizing and unifying the Linux desktop space" https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/Workstation_PRD
You have to think of your brand GNOME as a collection of desktops in what is really a meta-desktop. Effectively GNOME 2 (MATE) is still an active GNOME product despite not being an official GNOME project it technically is one. The current thinking at GNOME is that GNOME Shell represents this flagship product and having alternative environments somehow represents failure of the GNOME project as a whole. This is far from the reality because success of one desktop environment GNOME 2 means success for GNOME 3 and GNOME as a whole, it means people still love your products and want to support you.
GNOME 2 (workstation desktop) and GNOME 3 (mobile-desktop) should have a healthy symbiotic relationship.
Take the recent strategic move of making CentOS an official part of the Red Hat family. The reaction in the Linux community was overwhelmingly positive. It was a sensible business move by Red Hat and will probably swing the Linux server market in their favor as a result. CentOS installations will become a powerful way to promote and expand the RHEL business and standardize the Linux server space.
Well, I think Fedora Workstation is an opportunity to do the same thing for GNOME based Linux desktops. MATE much like CentOS represents a community fork that's become incredibly popular. Much like CentOS it also serves a very conservative end-user community. There would be an equally and overwhelmingly positive Linux community reaction if MATE was adopted by the GNOME Foundation and put on equal footing as GNOME 3 in terms of development and support. A fully modern and up-to-date GNOME 2 could be a powerful vehicle to promote GNOME 3 and Fedora Workstation.
The user-base for what we know today as GNOME would be huge. There would be a large scale migration back to GNOME 2 by former users. GNOME would cease to be a single desktop product and become a meta-desktop. Competing against GNOME in this form would be extremely difficult. GNOME could address several different form-factors and user-experiences simultaneously.
This can be achieved by having both GNOME 2 (MATE) and GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell) be parallel but related branches of the same GNOME desktop product.
1. Have the GNOME Foundation adopt MATE as a GNOME 2 re-development project. Provide development and support resources to accelerate MATE's efforts to transition to GTK3, systemd and Wayland. Make sure that both GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 are based on the same modern infrastructure.
2. Modify Mutter so that it can become the official compositor of MATE and replace the practice of bundling GNOME 2 with Compiz which is now a legacy Ubuntu product. This would ensure that GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 have similar bounce, behavior and feel. Another option is to use Compton but that could be seen as a short-term fix until Mutter was fully integrated into GNOME 2.
3. Keep GNOME 3 as is in the present. The GNOME 2 sub-project will not interfere with the GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell) project or dictate design to them. GNOME 3 will exist as a sort of "skunk-works" style advanced project focused on innovation, experimentation and creativity. Their focus would continue to be on pushing desktop boundaries and exploring alternative paradigms. If appropriate, innovations developed in the GNOME Shell would be occasionally fed back into GNOME 2. This will create a healthy GNOME innovation cycle.
4. Make GNOME 2 the default desktop for Fedora Workstation with Fedora branding and themes as well as the current GNOME default applications. Make sure GNOME default applications integrate seamlessly with GNOME 2. Also make GNOME 3 and KDE installation extras to be fair.
5. Promote GNOME 3 to GNOME 2 users directly. When the user runs GNOME 2 for the first time have a prompt that says "Would you like to see the future? Try out GNOME 3". And it would be installed side-by-side with GNOME 2 users could participate in GNOME 3 testing and surveys.
I'm willing to bring this before the GNOME Foundation board or have someone more senior to myself advocate on my behalf and am committed to seeing it realized. I can also work as Marketing to engage developers in discussions and elicit interest. This is an opportunity that's too valuable for GNOME to let slip by.
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 21:25 -0500, Alexander GS wrote:
That's why I propose the following:
Proposal: GNOME Foundation adopts GNOME 2 (MATE) as an official GNOME desktop alongside GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell).
You appear to be confused. This is the Fedora desktop mailing list. It is not the GNOME Foundation mailing list.
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 18:28 -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 21:25 -0500, Alexander GS wrote:
That's why I propose the following:
Proposal: GNOME Foundation adopts GNOME 2 (MATE) as an official GNOME desktop alongside GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell).
You appear to be confused. This is the Fedora desktop mailing list. It is not the GNOME Foundation mailing list. -- Adam Williamson Fedora QA Community Monkey IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net http://www.happyassassin.net
I was addressing Michael's comments and replying directly. Perhaps this is the wrong mailing list I'll make sure to post this to the Gnome Desktop list as well. Thanks for letting me know.
Anyway, it sounds like you're spot-on part of the target audience for GNOME Classic. I'm sure the developers would be interested in feedback on why that environment doesn't currently meet your needs, and how it might be improved to do so.
On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 3:25 AM, Alexander GS alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com wrote:
If you look at www.ohloh.com below MATE is a "very active" project with over 2 million lines of code, 64 contributors and the last commit was made 4 days ago. GNOME 2 is alive and thriving and evolving with a large user-base among the top distributions Arch Linux, Linux Mint, Debian, Ubuntu 14.04, OpenSUSE and many others including Fedora. Compare this to GNOME Shell which has only around 81K lines of code, twice as many contributors at 157 and the last commit was 2 days ago.
http://www.ohloh.net/p?ref=homepage&q=mate+desktop http://www.ohloh.net/p?query=gnome+shell&sort=relevance
How about comparing 'caja' to all of KDE? GNOME is more than GNOME Shell, and MATE forked more than just the parts GNOME Shell is replacing ...
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 5:04 PM, Michael Catanzaro mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote:
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 12:22 -0500, Alex GS wrote:
Gnome Shell is a feature/product/package focused on mobile interaction for hybrids and touch enabled devices including tablets.
GNOME (capitals please, same for MATE) is focused on desktop and laptop computers, including laptops with touchscreens. GNOME has to support touchscreens well because Windows has gone that route, and 90% of laptops ship with Windows.
Tablets are a secondary concern because very, very few people are running GNOME on tablets. They're basically touchscreen laptops without keyboards, though, so I don't think they're much of a stretch.
Typically I associate the word mobile with phones, and nobody runs GNOME on phones. A new startup, Endless Mobile, is trying to. I wish them well, but I've yet to see reason to believe that will work well. (Which is fine, since they're new.)
Anyway, it sounds like you're spot-on part of the target audience for GNOME Classic. I'm sure the developers would be interested in feedback on why that environment doesn't currently meet your needs, and how it might be improved to do so.
Sorry. GNOME classic is out of the question.
It is less functional than MATE or Cinamon.
I really don't know anyone that enjoys using GNOME classic. No offense.
One of the main points of using MATE is all the backwards compatibility that comes along with it.
As the person that brought MATE to the official Fedora repos I'm all for having MATE be the official DE for the distribution. But let's be realistic here. It's never going to happen.
As I said before, I think the best choice is just to give the user the option.
All of the DEs are practically interchangeable. GNOME3, MATE, Cinnamon are practically just GTK+ Window/Session managers. They all do the same things, some better at certain things than others.
This discussion is really pointless. While many good points have been brought up by Alex GS and I applaud and thank him for them the only real and BEST way for Fedora to move forward is to think about the user first.
It is a well known fact that one DE does not fit all.
Once again, I reiterate that the only BEST way for Fedora to move forward is just to give the end user the option. Stop tricking them into using GNOME and advertise a few good options to them and move on.
We cannot continue to act like the only DE we care about is GNOME. This is a losing strategy.
Dan
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 23:51 -0800, Dan Mashal wrote:
As I said before, I think the best choice is just to give the user the option.
At that point, we don't have a product, we just have another way to choose your own adventure. We *already* have that; it's called Fedora. AFAICS, re-implementing choose-your-own-adventure within one of the Products is a great way to spend several months achieving nothing much at all.
How would any of the stuff in the PRD actually work if you could choose any desktop you liked and still be running Fedora Workstation?
On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 12:01 AM, Adam Williamson awilliam@redhat.com wrote:
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 23:51 -0800, Dan Mashal wrote:
As I said before, I think the best choice is just to give the user the option.
At that point, we don't have a product, we just have another way to choose your own adventure. We *already* have that; it's called Fedora. AFAICS, re-implementing choose-your-own-adventure within one of the Products is a great way to spend several months achieving nothing much at all.
How would any of the stuff in the PRD actually work if you could choose any desktop you liked and still be running Fedora Workstation?
I think you missed my point that we really don't have "choose your own adventure".
Most of our installed base is already GNOME.
I also made the point earlier that I feel like all this Fedora.next stuff is going to do is take Fedora and GNOME and simply put a label of "workstation" on it.
Can you quite honestly tell me how you think things will be different in Fedora.next?
Can you give me some concrete bullet points on how you think Fedora.next will be any more attractive to third parties?
Once again, I can't stress enough and say that I seriously am not seeing any difference between Fedora.now and Fedora.next.
Besides taking what we currently have and saying "There, now we have Fedora.next". What do you really think the rest of the world will think? I'll tell you what they will think. They'll say things like:
"OK, so what?"
"Something something lipstick on a pig"
"The more things change.."
"That's nice Fedora, so what's new?"
Sorry. I'm just not buying it.
Dan
On Tue, 2014-02-04 at 00:09 -0800, Dan Mashal wrote:
Can you give me some concrete bullet points on how you think Fedora.next will be any more attractive to third parties?
https://www.happyassassin.net/2014/01/31/good-morning-bugfixing-and-thinking...
On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 10:17 AM, Adam Williamson awilliam@redhat.com wrote:
On Tue, 2014-02-04 at 00:09 -0800, Dan Mashal wrote:
Can you give me some concrete bullet points on how you think Fedora.next will be any more attractive to third parties?
https://www.happyassassin.net/2014/01/31/good-morning-bugfixing-and-thinking...
I read this. I mentioned this in my first response
Dan
On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 10:17:42 -0800, you wrote:
On Tue, 2014-02-04 at 00:09 -0800, Dan Mashal wrote:
Can you give me some concrete bullet points on how you think Fedora.next will be any more attractive to third parties?
https://www.happyassassin.net/2014/01/31/good-morning-bugfixing-and-thinking...
Third parties, and to a certain extent the large market of consumers, don't want choice, and often don't want change.
Linux, in terms of Desktop, is everything those people don't want, and has gotten worse with time with the fracturing of the GTK based community (we have gone from GNOME 2 -> GNOME 3 / MATE / Cinnamon) in addition to the other desktop environments.
I fail to see how this new workstation product is going to change things given that Fedora.next.workstation will basically be the same thing as Fedora is now. How is it any different to say your product works with Fedora.next.workstation vs saying it works with Fedora? You perhaps get a little more clarity, in the sense that (if GNOME is chosen) Fedora.workstation.next = Fedora GNOME, but how much different is that to what we have today?
If you want 3rd parties to target Fedora (or users to move to Fedora), you have to provide what they want.
3rd parties want a single target to aim for, with a large enough number of users.
Users want a desktop environment that works for them, and most will accept the default if it satisfies that.
Fedora's problem is that GNOME 3 doesn't work for the majority of users. The fact that you have to provide instruction on how to use the product on first login tells you all you need to know. GNOME Classic was predictable, in that there was no way Red Hat would be able to sell GNOME Shell to the corporate buyers.
The creation of MATE and Cinnamon, and the fact that they have continued to exist despite the effort involved, is the GNOME equivalent to Windows users continuing to buy Windows 7 instead of moving to Windows 8.
If you want Fedora to attract those 3rd parties, you need to solve the fragmentation issue either by moving to the Qt world (and hence KDE), or by finding a way to find a compromise that brings back the users to one GTK based environment.
Microsoft just announced it's new CEO Satya Nadella who has an extensive background as the former rain-maker of their enterprise and server business with Bill Gates is going to act as his technology advisor.
Just wanted to add that if your thinking about continuing to ignore GNOME 2 and experiment with GNOME 3 and it's unproven philosophy now is not the right time. The window of opportunity for Linux to get into the desktop workstation market in a serious way is closing fast.
On Tue, 2014-02-04 at 14:46 -0500, Gerald Henriksen wrote:
On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 10:17:42 -0800, you wrote:
On Tue, 2014-02-04 at 00:09 -0800, Dan Mashal wrote:
Can you give me some concrete bullet points on how you think Fedora.next will be any more attractive to third parties?
https://www.happyassassin.net/2014/01/31/good-morning-bugfixing-and-thinking...
Third parties, and to a certain extent the large market of consumers, don't want choice, and often don't want change.
Linux, in terms of Desktop, is everything those people don't want, and has gotten worse with time with the fracturing of the GTK based community (we have gone from GNOME 2 -> GNOME 3 / MATE / Cinnamon) in addition to the other desktop environments.
I fail to see how this new workstation product is going to change things given that Fedora.next.workstation will basically be the same thing as Fedora is now. How is it any different to say your product works with Fedora.next.workstation vs saying it works with Fedora? You perhaps get a little more clarity, in the sense that (if GNOME is chosen) Fedora.workstation.next = Fedora GNOME, but how much different is that to what we have today?
If you want 3rd parties to target Fedora (or users to move to Fedora), you have to provide what they want.
3rd parties want a single target to aim for, with a large enough number of users.
Users want a desktop environment that works for them, and most will accept the default if it satisfies that.
Fedora's problem is that GNOME 3 doesn't work for the majority of users. The fact that you have to provide instruction on how to use the product on first login tells you all you need to know. GNOME Classic was predictable, in that there was no way Red Hat would be able to sell GNOME Shell to the corporate buyers.
The creation of MATE and Cinnamon, and the fact that they have continued to exist despite the effort involved, is the GNOME equivalent to Windows users continuing to buy Windows 7 instead of moving to Windows 8.
If you want Fedora to attract those 3rd parties, you need to solve the fragmentation issue either by moving to the Qt world (and hence KDE), or by finding a way to find a compromise that brings back the users to one GTK based environment.
On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 9:48 PM, Alex GS alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com wrote:
Microsoft just announced it's new CEO Satya Nadella [...]
"Our industry does not respect tradition - it only respects innovation," -- Satya Nadella
On Tue, 2014-02-04 at 22:31 +0100, drago01 wrote:
On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 9:48 PM, Alex GS alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com wrote:
Microsoft just announced it's new CEO Satya Nadella [...]
"Our industry does not respect tradition - it only respects innovation," -- Satya Nadella
Innovation is about solving problems not creating more, completely ignoring the problems exist and then compounding the problems to the point of failure.
On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 15:48:15 -0500, you wrote:
The window of opportunity for Linux to get into the desktop workstation market in a serious way is closing fast.
There is no window of opportunity per say, and a hasty decision is just as likely to be the wrong decision.
While it is guesswork, there is an opportunity for Fedora though it is more of a long haul possibility.
It does appear that we are going to have a return of the "workstation" style product as the mainstream market moves towards alternatives to Windows.
Whether this market segment is dominated by Windows, Mac, or some form of Linux is up in the air, but if Fedora wants in on this then a compelling product needs to be produced, ideally by talking to the people who need this segment of the market, and those who provide software to it.
On Tue, 4 Feb 2014 00:09:21 -0800, you wrote:
On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 12:01 AM, Adam Williamson awilliam@redhat.com wrote:
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 23:51 -0800, Dan Mashal wrote:
As I said before, I think the best choice is just to give the user the option.
At that point, we don't have a product, we just have another way to choose your own adventure. We *already* have that; it's called Fedora. AFAICS, re-implementing choose-your-own-adventure within one of the Products is a great way to spend several months achieving nothing much at all.
How would any of the stuff in the PRD actually work if you could choose any desktop you liked and still be running Fedora Workstation?
I think you missed my point that we really don't have "choose your own adventure".
There are different ways of looking at it.
One is that the choose your adventure occurs but at the distribution level - they try Fedora, don't like GNOME 3, and move on to Mint, Suse, etc.
Another is that the default desktop is disliked by enough people that they go looking for the alternate downloads or change desktops after installation is finished.
Most of our installed base is already GNOME.
I wouldn't be so sure of that, though I don't think there is any way of measuring it.
On Mon, 03 Feb 2014 19:04:12 -0600, you wrote:
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 12:22 -0500, Alex GS wrote:
Gnome Shell is a feature/product/package focused on mobile interaction for hybrids and touch enabled devices including tablets.
GNOME (capitals please, same for MATE) is focused on desktop and laptop computers, including laptops with touchscreens. GNOME has to support touchscreens well because Windows has gone that route, and 90% of laptops ship with Windows.
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
Microsoft is backing up as fast as a large company can from touch support on the base use case of Windows, and it wouldn't suprise me to see touch screens disappear from laptops soon (ignoring the laptop/tablet hybrids). The Windows base has made it clear they don't want Metro, and they aren't going to pay the extra for a touch screen they never use.
The biggest shift that is coming is high DPI, that matters far more than touch.
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