I just pushed a set of changes to the desktop-effects repository on fedorahosted to add support for GNOME Shell.
The basic idea can be seen in the screenshot attached - instead of a single "Enable Desktop Effects" button, the user is now presented with a three-way choice of "Standard" "Compiz" and "GNOME Shell", with short explanations for each. As before the choice is instant-apply and when the user is switching to a compositor, they are presented with a count-down dialog that they have to click on to confirm their choice.
UI suggestions, small and large, appreciated.
The dialog will be split out of the compiz-gnome package into a separate package required by both compiz-gnome and gnome-shell.
If compiz-gnome or gnome-shell is not installed the option is simply not shown. It would be neat to instead have a "Not installed. _Install Now_" message with a package-kit enabled link, but:
A) I'd have to implement it
B) I'm not completely sure that we want to make it quite that easy to try out GNOME Shell with out any context. If people have to read about it somewhere and install gnome-shell as a separate step, then they'll have the opportunity to get some context.
C) I'd have to implement it
Longer-term, maybe even in Fedora 13, the idea is that desktop-effects goes away. Switching between gnome-panel/metacity and gnome-shell will be done through standard GNOME dialogs, for as long as gnome-panel is still supported. gnome-shell won't have the inter-distribution differences that made a unified switcher to Compiz impossible.
For Compiz, Fedora should stop using the GConf plugin and ship a Compiz that is more natively "Compiz" and uses the standard Compiz configuration tools. Presumably those tools already provide the opportunity to switch your session to use Compiz, if it is not currently running, or will do so in the future.
- Owen
On Sun, 2009-08-23 at 23:36 -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:
I just pushed a set of changes to the desktop-effects repository on fedorahosted to add support for GNOME Shell.
The basic idea can be seen in the screenshot attached - instead of a single "Enable Desktop Effects" button, the user is now presented with a three-way choice of "Standard" "Compiz" and "GNOME Shell", with short explanations for each. As before the choice is instant-apply and when the user is switching to a compositor, they are presented with a count-down dialog that they have to click on to confirm their choice.
UI suggestions, small and large, appreciated.
The dialog will be split out of the compiz-gnome package into a separate package required by both compiz-gnome and gnome-shell.
Review request for the split-out package at:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=518900
- Owen
2009/8/24 Owen Taylor otaylor@redhat.com:
A) I'd have to implement it
const gchar *packages[] = {"gnome-shell", "gnome-shell-extras", NULL};
connection = dbus_g_bus_get (DBUS_BUS_SESSION, NULL); proxy = dbus_g_proxy_new_for_name (connection, "org.freedesktop.PackageKit", "/org/freedesktop/PackageKit", "org.freedesktop.PackageKit.Modify");
ret = dbus_g_proxy_call (proxy, "InstallPackageNames", &error, G_TYPE_UINT, xid, /* window xid, 0 for none */ G_TYPE_STRV, packages, G_TYPE_STRING, "show-confirm-search,hide-finished", G_TYPE_INVALID, G_TYPE_INVALID); if (!ret) { g_warning ("failed: %s", error->message); g_error_free (error); }
Richard.
On 08/24/2009 09:06 AM, Owen Taylor wrote:
I just pushed a set of changes to the desktop-effects repository on fedorahosted to add support for GNOME Shell.
The basic idea can be seen in the screenshot attached - instead of a single "Enable Desktop Effects" button, the user is now presented with a three-way choice of "Standard" "Compiz" and "GNOME Shell", with short explanations for each.
Why isn't this part of the appearance capplet instead of cluttering the long preferences menu? My preference menu doesn't even fit on the screen and I have to scroll to see all the items which is clumsy.
Rahul
On Wed, 2009-08-26 at 23:08 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
On 08/24/2009 09:06 AM, Owen Taylor wrote:
I just pushed a set of changes to the desktop-effects repository on fedorahosted to add support for GNOME Shell.
The basic idea can be seen in the screenshot attached - instead of a single "Enable Desktop Effects" button, the user is now presented with a three-way choice of "Standard" "Compiz" and "GNOME Shell", with short explanations for each.
Why isn't this part of the appearance capplet instead of cluttering the long preferences menu? My preference menu doesn't even fit on the screen and I have to scroll to see all the items which is clumsy.
We have not just removed irrelevant crap from the appearance capplet to make room for more....
This switching mechanism is temporary to facilitate trying out the shell while it is in beta. It will go away when the shell becomes the primary interface.
Also, if you use the switch you are complaining about, your menu problems will be solved by way of the shell not having menus :-)
Matthias
On 08/27/2009 02:13 AM, Matthias Clasen wrote:
We have not just removed irrelevant crap from the appearance capplet to make room for more....
This switching mechanism is temporary to facilitate trying out the shell while it is in beta. It will go away when the shell becomes the primary interface.
Considering that it serves a useful purpose even if it temporary and it is not irrelevant crap, it seems it would have fit into the appearance capplet rather than as a separate preferences menu item. It wouldn't bother me much if not for the fact that there is no categorization by default and it is long enough not to fit into my screen completely. That is a very visible item that needs improvement but I suppose the development is focused on GNOME Shell instead.
Also, if you use the switch you are complaining about, your menu problems will be solved by way of the shell not having menus :-)
I am not complaining about the switch itself but the placement of it. Using it btw just gives me a blank desktop and all I can is the desktop background and I have to restart X to get my session back. However gnome-shell --replace on the command line works and the shell still has menus in the side bar even though it seems to missing many application entries. I worked with the shell for a few days, the parts that work are very well done but there are still some obvious problems that make it hard to use it on a more permanent basis. I will keep a tab on it and write up the details if the issues I see linger. I understood from the comments on IRC in response to my post in fedora-test list about GNOME shell that you aren't keen to take bug reports just yet.
Rahul
On Wed, 2009-08-26 at 23:08 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
On 08/24/2009 09:06 AM, Owen Taylor wrote:
I just pushed a set of changes to the desktop-effects repository on fedorahosted to add support for GNOME Shell.
The basic idea can be seen in the screenshot attached - instead of a single "Enable Desktop Effects" button, the user is now presented with a three-way choice of "Standard" "Compiz" and "GNOME Shell", with short explanations for each.
Why isn't this part of the appearance capplet instead of cluttering the long preferences menu? My preference menu doesn't even fit on the screen and I have to scroll to see all the items which is clumsy.
Well, a big reason for not doing that is that the "desktop-effects" functionality is not upstream and managing translations for something that is added to an existing component in a patch is really hard.
It's much easier to simply have a separate repository and tarball (and now a separate package) that the Fedora translators can translate.)
Why is it not upstream?
- Neither Compiz nor GNOME Shell is part of a GNOME Release yet - Starting and configuring Compiz differs wildly between distributions, so coming up with a standard way to switch it has always been a problem.
But in addition, I'm just not sure it makes sense to merge it into the appearance capplet: especially with the GNOME Shell addition to desktop effects, it's not a visual tweak - it's not about the appearance of your desktop; instead we are pretty fundamentally changing things about. So a separate tool makes sense to me.
(And as people have said, it's temporary, while the appearance capplet is something that's going to stick around.)
The name "Desktop Effects" obviously isn't very descriptive, but Fedora users will already be used to it in the context of "how do I switch to Compiz" and I don't immediately have a better name for what's going on. It's pretty hard to explain what we are replacing in user-friendly terms, since neither gnome-panel or the window manager is something that the user has any real idea about.
- Owen
On Thu, 2009-08-27 at 03:22 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
On 08/27/2009 02:13 AM, Matthias Clasen wrote:
We have not just removed irrelevant crap from the appearance capplet to make room for more....
This switching mechanism is temporary to facilitate trying out the shell while it is in beta. It will go away when the shell becomes the primary interface.
Considering that it serves a useful purpose even if it temporary and itt is not irrelevant crap, it seems it would have fit into the appearance capplet rather than as a separate preferences menu item. It wouldn't bother me much if not for the fact that there is no categorization by default and it is long enough not to fit into my screen completely. That is a very visible item that needs improvement but I suppose the development is focused on GNOME Shell instead.
"Instead" here isn't really an appropriate characterization. It all fits together. In gnome-shell, you have two options for preferences:
- they show up when searching - you can get to the "gnome-control-center" shell under the user status menu.
We might not eventually be using something different from the current gnome-control-center, but the basic plan will be along those lines.
Also, if you use the switch you are complaining about, your menu problems will be solved by way of the shell not having menus :-)
I am not complaining about the switch itself but the placement of it. Using it btw just gives me a blank desktop and all I can is the desktop background and I have to restart X to get my session back. However gnome-shell --replace on the command line works
Does it fix itself if you wait long enough for desktop-effects to time out? (I think it's 35 seconds or so now ... give it a minute.)
Can you file a bug about this against desktop-effects in Red Hat bugzilla (include information about your video card.). I don't have many immediate ideas why this could be happening, since all desktop-effects does is run 'gnome-shell --replace' but it definitely needs to be investigated.
and the shell still has menus in the side bar even though it seems to missing many application entries.
The missing applications was fixed shortly after 2.27.0 release; I'm really hoping to get through everything and have updated gnome-shell packages tomorrow.
I worked with the shell for a few days, the parts that work are very well done but there are still some obvious problems that make it hard to use it on a more permanent basis. I will keep a tab on it and write up the details if the issues I see linger. I understood from the comments on IRC in response to my post in fedora-test list about GNOME shell that you aren't keen to take bug reports just yet.
We certainly welcome bug reports, but:
- For stuff that isn't packaging, we'd prefer upstream bug reports: if the reporter files the bug upstream themselves, they can check if it's a duplicate see previous discussion, get updates when it is fixed, etc. Which is not available if we are upstreaming the bug reports ourselves.
- It's not too useful to have bug reports on 3 week old packages; I'm shooting for weekly releases, though so far I haven't come close to that.
- Owen
On 08/27/2009 10:05 PM, Owen Taylor wrote:
Does it fix itself if you wait long enough for desktop-effects to time out? (I think it's 35 seconds or so now ... give it a minute.)
The switch took a long time before and since there was no progress indication of any sort, I assumed it was hung. Now it takes a shorter time with the recent set of updates.
The missing applications was fixed shortly after 2.27.0 release; I'm really hoping to get through everything and have updated gnome-shell packages tomorrow.
Yep. That fixed the problem I was talking about. Thanks. I think there is somewhat of a lag. When I quit a application, the icon doesn't disappear immediately, when I delete some text, it still appears on the screen even though the editor itself does delete the text and so on.
For linking from the release notes, I added some info to
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/GNOME_Shell
A review and more content would be useful.
Rahul
On Mon, 2009-08-31 at 21:22 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
On 08/27/2009 10:05 PM, Owen Taylor wrote:
Does it fix itself if you wait long enough for desktop-effects to time out? (I think it's 35 seconds or so now ... give it a minute.)
The switch took a long time before and since there was no progress indication of any sort, I assumed it was hung. Now it takes a shorter time with the recent set of updates.
Unfortunately, there is no good way of getting progress indication - the compositor has control of the display, so if it hasn't finished starting, we can't show a dialog.
The missing applications was fixed shortly after 2.27.0 release; I'm really hoping to get through everything and have updated gnome-shell packages tomorrow.
Yep. That fixed the problem I was talking about. Thanks. I think there is somewhat of a lag. When I quit a application, the icon doesn't disappear immediately, when I delete some text, it still appears on the screen even though the editor itself does delete the text and so on.
Sounds like you have severe performance problems going on:
- What video card? - Does compiz work well?
For linking from the release notes, I added some info to
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/GNOME_Shell
A review and more content would be useful.
Thanks! We'll take a look and see if we can enhance it a bit.
- Owen
On 08/31/2009 10:25 PM, Owen Taylor wrote:
Yep. That fixed the problem I was talking about. Thanks. I think there is somewhat of a lag. When I quit a application, the icon doesn't disappear immediately, when I delete some text, it still appears on the screen even though the editor itself does delete the text and so on.
Sounds like you have severe performance problems going on:
- What video card?
- Does compiz work well?
It is a Dell D420 box.
http://www.smolts.org/client/show/pub_bfe9ff6f-dc6d-438f-ab34-fa62834f0da3
Compiz is ok. GNOME Shell isn't consistently bad either but I seem to have more of a lag.
Rahul
On Mon, 2009-08-31 at 12:55 -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:
Sounds like you have severe performance problems going on:
- What video card?
- Does compiz work well?
GeForce 9500 GT Compiz doesn't work.
I tried the gnome-shell as of few minutes ago, it turned black background with some writing at the top but nothing ever came in real clear and guess it never worked. It never did ask me if I could see anything or if it was ok to use. Maybe it's my card, not sure. I do know if I was on F11 and using the propr. driver from nvidia, compiz does work. So maybe I would have to use that for this as well?
On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 12:40 AM, Mike Chambersmike@miketc.net wrote:
On Mon, 2009-08-31 at 12:55 -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:
Sounds like you have severe performance problems going on:
- What video card? - Does compiz work well?
GeForce 9500 GT Compiz doesn't work.
There is no 3D support for this card, which is required for both gnome-shell and compiz. You can get this by installing the binary driver thought.
2009/8/24 Owen Taylor wrote: [..]
UI suggestions, small and large, appreciated.
The dialog will be split out of the compiz-gnome package into a separate package required by both compiz-gnome and gnome-shell.
If compiz-gnome or gnome-shell is not installed the option is simply not shown. It would be neat to instead have a
[..]
This is wonderful work. I did some testing and found just one bug:
If one is in gnome-shell and wants to go to Compiz: after opening the desktop-effects window selecting compiz on first go never works (fails with usual message "Failed to start compiz. Reverting back to previous settings") But if you use same window again (not yet closed) it works.
In case one presses close and again retries it is reproducible.
It short: shifting to compiz from gnome-shell on first click in "desktop effects" always fails but using the same window again makes it happen.
[rakesh@rocky ~]$ rpm -qa gnome-shell gnome-shell-2.27.1-4.x86_64 [rakesh@rocky ~]$ rpm -qa desktop-effects desktop-effects-0.8.1-1.fc12.x86_64 [rakesh@rocky ~]$
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