Re: A call to drop gnome

[Peter Ehlert]

On April 18, 2019 7:56:06 PM Jimmy Johnson  wrote:


On 4/17/19 5:57 AM, songbird wrote:


what?  synaptic is a GUI interface to package installation
and removal.  why should this block anything?  dpkg and apt
do those tasks just fine in a terminal.  i only used synaptic
in the past to get a quick access to lists of files installed
and locations which i now get another way.  it certainly isn't
a requirement...



Synaptic is able to install different versions of packages, allowing a
Disabled User who is not a keyboard jockey to test Debian release's and
a lot more.  But I no longer care because it hurts to care, Deb has been
raped and will never be mentally or usably the same and Microsoft is
happy, I'm glad someone is happy.
--
Jimmy Johnson

Current - KDE - AMD A8-7600 - EXT4 at sda11
Registered Linux User #380263


I too depend on Synaptic.
Lucky me, I use Mate and it does not conflict, no Wayland or Gnome.
I have been successfully installing the Synaptic .deb from the sid 
archive... so I am good, but it is a bothersome task I would prefer to avoid.
I think the typical KDE or Gnome users want their own simplified package 
manager, or they have a great memory and type skillfully... I do not.

Hopefully the installer team can package it properly for us, less work.

Re: A call to drop gnome

[songbird]

Jimmy Johnson wrote:
> songbird wrote:
>
>>what?  synaptic is a GUI interface to package installation
>> and removal.  why should this block anything?  dpkg and apt
>> do those tasks just fine in a terminal.  i only used synaptic
>> in the past to get a quick access to lists of files installed
>> and locations which i now get another way.  it certainly isn't
>> a requirement...
>
>
> Synaptic is able to install different versions of packages, allowing a 
> Disabled User who is not a keyboard jockey to test Debian release's and 
> a lot more.  But I no longer care because it hurts to care, Deb has been 
> raped and will never be mentally or usably the same and Microsoft is 
> happy, I'm glad someone is happy.

  i'm sorry your experience isn't what you'd like but i
don't understand your language or what you are talking
about.

  i can install or remove different versions of packages
or do installs of different versions of debian in 
different partitions or using virtual machines (but i've
not had to do this as of yet).  this has nothing to do 
with synaptic or being a "keyboard jockey" (whatever
that means).

  if you can type a message as you've done above you
can type package names on a command line and you can
specify different versions to apt or apt-get or dpkg.
the learning curve isn't impossible.


  songbird

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Jimmy Johnson]

On 4/17/19 5:57 AM, songbird wrote:


   what?  synaptic is a GUI interface to package installation
and removal.  why should this block anything?  dpkg and apt
do those tasks just fine in a terminal.  i only used synaptic
in the past to get a quick access to lists of files installed
and locations which i now get another way.  it certainly isn't
a requirement...



Synaptic is able to install different versions of packages, allowing a 
Disabled User who is not a keyboard jockey to test Debian release's and 
a lot more.  But I no longer care because it hurts to care, Deb has been 
raped and will never be mentally or usably the same and Microsoft is 
happy, I'm glad someone is happy.

--
Jimmy Johnson

Current - KDE - AMD A8-7600 - EXT4 at sda11
Registered Linux User #380263

Re: A call to drop gnome as the default desktop

[Keith Bainbridge]

On 17/4/19 5:26 pm, Ansgar Burchardt wrote:

Keith Bainbridge writes:

I see the point that people who like gnome should be allowed to use it
-
so withdraw the drop gnome from debian.  I believe the change to the
subject line will keep the discussion together. I'll re-send if it
opens a new topic.


Why should GNOME not stay the default desktop?  Because it supports
using either of Wayland or X11?

To quote your original mail this was one of the two main reasons you
proposed GNOME to be dropped after all (besides not being able to move
some toolbar):

| [...] gnome is insisting that we like a new video process, just
| because the team have decided to like it lots.
|
| I say this is NOT freedom.

How is supporting *only* X11 freedom, but supporting *both* Wayland and
X11 NOT freedom?

Wouldn't it be more logical to drop all desktop environments that
support *only* X11 to give more freedom?

Ansgar



Ansgar

The snips in my original post were other peoples' quotes. I used them to 
support my reason to claim that gnome does not allow users who can't 
write very high level code, at least one option that I consider 
important. It is this extreme difficulty to do what is simple elsewhere 
that I am calling out - it is NOT freedom.



If I wanted to try Wayland I'd have to accept the restrictions that come 
with it. I recall that one live .iso I tried, offered it as an option. 
That was so long ago that I forget if I get around to trying it - maybe 
early last year, like Feb, with pre-release ubuntu 18.04.   It wouldn't 
really count anyway, as it was in vbox.


Hence, I relented from my position of removing gnome from debian; I 
accepted that I was denying those who wanted it, the option.



I felt a twinge when I read that Wayland needs testers; but I run 
developer versions of office and Firefox and similar Thunderbird as my 
contribution to testing. I'd answer more questions here, but clearly 
most users here know more than I do.   (perhaps the questions about 
super key were tongue in cheek?)


I also drew some comfort from people who said end users shouldn't be 
guinea pigs.



I think that it's ironical that I use a desktop that was gnome just a 
couple of years ago.



--
Keith Bainbridge

ke1th3...@gmail.com
+61 (0)447 667 468

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Keith Bainbridge]

On 18/4/19 5:11 am, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

What is the magic Super key, and / or how do I find it on a typical 104 (or
similar) key keyboard?



It is another 'shift' key, like ctrl, alt. Generally near the left set 
of these. My laptop also has a fn key here.   It can be set to act on 
its own as well - often opens the Menu


--
Keith Bainbridge

ke1th3...@gmail.com
+61 (0)447 667 468

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Ric Moore]

On 4/16/19 11:32 PM, Keith Bainbridge wrote:

I tried java about 15 years ago, and failed miserably. Perhaps a bad 
choice, but what the Uni course I was trying to get into required. I can 
write a script and alias's in .bashrc, the odd macro in Calc. I keep 
telling my friends it's never too late to learn, but at 71, I figure I 
can serenely claim that's enough.



I'm pushing 70 and the last time I programmed anything was "Hunt the 
Wumpus" in AppleSoft basic on a plugin card on my Integer Basic Apple][ 
in 1978. Yoho! Ric

Re: A call to drop gnome

[rhkramer]

On Tuesday, April 16, 2019 01:32:38 PM Ansgar Burchardt wrote:
> You press the magic Super key, 

What is the magic Super key, and / or how do I find it on a typical 104 (or 
similar) key keyboard?


> then type "Terminal" on the keyboard (or
> at least the beginning), then press Enter.  GNOME feels pretty much
> designed to not be used by a mouse alone ;-)
> 
> Ansgar

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Kenneth Parker]

On Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 11:13 AM 황병희 
wrote:

> > So, I am asking that gnome be dropped as an installation option (not
>
> FYI; Ubuntu 18.04 use GNOME as default desktop. Ah yes i'm fan of GNOME.
>

Only if it's called "Ubuntu".   One of my Machines runs Xubuntu, with
XFCE.  And there are quite a variety of "leading letters", including K (for
KDE) and L (LXCD).

>
> Sincerely, Byung-Hee from South Korea.
>
> --
> ^고맙습니다 _地平天成_ 감사합니다_^))//
>

Kenneth Parker

>
>

Re: A call to drop gnome

[황병희]

> So, I am asking that gnome be dropped as an installation option (not

FYI; Ubuntu 18.04 use GNOME as default desktop. Ah yes i'm fan of GNOME.

Sincerely, Byung-Hee from South Korea.

-- 
^고맙습니다 _地平天成_ 감사합니다_^))//

Re: A call to drop gnome

[songbird]

Gene Heskett wrote:
...
> This is still wheezy, because except for firefox, it Just Works.  Theres 
> another 2T drive with the latest stretch installed on it in this machine 
> and I was in the process of moving my stuff to it with the intention of 
> updating to Buster when it was declared stable. That came to a 
> screeching halt when I read that synaptic was gone from buster.

  what?  synaptic is a GUI interface to package installation
and removal.  why should this block anything?  dpkg and apt
do those tasks just fine in a terminal.  i only used synaptic
in the past to get a quick access to lists of files installed 
and locations which i now get another way.  it certainly isn't
a requirement...

  as far as a windowing desktop that does what i want i have
been using MATE since i got whiplashed by KDE (i liked it
and finally got my desktop set up how i wanted it and then
they ruined that so i switched to GNOME and just had that
set up and going how i wanted it and they f'd that up too).

  i don't need a lot of flashy window stuff, i just want it
to work and be reliable enough that i don't have to relearn
a new interface or keystrokes every time the next version
comes along.


> What I 
> do next is still open for discussion. 3 of the 4 other machine tool 
> driving machines on my network are also on wheezy, with the 4th, an 
> r-pi-3b running a 3/4 ton lathe, running jessie, poorly. Good, realtime 
> kernels and armhf are not on the best of terms, yet I get power failure 
> to power failure uptimes.

  you must be on fairly good power supply if running that 
large a machine...

  also above i'm not sure what you mean by tabbed?  i have
text terminal windows here with tabs without problems.


  songbird

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Reco]

On Wed, Apr 17, 2019 at 07:11:52AM +, Gian Uberto Lauri wrote:
> > "R" == Reco   writes:
> 
> R> That's very simplistic point of view.  What about Wayland on
> R> non-x86, like ARM or MIPS (a hint - it does not work there, X
> R> does)?
> 
> MIPS (Silicon Graphics), SPARC (Sun)...

A good point. I have sparc64 server with this:

https://pci-ids.ucw.cz/read/PC/1a03/2000

Reco

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Keith Bainbridge]

On 17/4/19 9:37 am, Patrick Bartek wrote:

On Tue, 16 Apr 2019 16:54:02 +1000
Keith Bainbridge  wrote:


I've never been a fan of gnome, and I can only say that in the beginning
it was simply because I didn't yet know about themes etc. I settled for
KDE, in the 1990's.  I now know that it was the slowest of all, but I
found my way around easiest.

[snip]


So, don't install GNOME.  Choose another DE.  Just because it's "the
default" means nothing. Or do what I did 7 years ago when I first
installed Wheezy after using Fedore/GNOME for a number of years: Abandon
the desktop environment all-together and use a window manager. (I chose
Openbox.) You'll be amazed at how much smoother and more responsive
everything is without doing anything other than getting rid of all
DE background crap you don't really need.

B



I see a few others agree that I need only a window manager. I will try 
this, in the interest of 'looking for a better way'.



I don't believe I'm not looking for smother performance. My hardware is 
more than capable: 8G ram, 2016 version i7 processor, ssd claims 5x 
Faster than hdd Often as not vbox guests run as quick/smooth as the 
guest system.


But I am up for a surprise.



--
Keith Bainbridge

ke1th3...@gmail.com
+61 (0)447 667 468

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 17 April 2019 03:17:22 Ansgar Burchardt wrote:

> Gene Heskett writes:
> > On Tuesday 16 April 2019 13:32:38 Ansgar Burchardt wrote:
> >> Gene Heskett writes:
> >> > Where the heck in its confusing menu's can I find a tab
> >> > supporting terminal so I can get something done? Go ahead, find
> >> > it, my coffee needs to cool anyway..
> >>
> >> You press the magic Super key, then type "Terminal" on the keyboard
> >> (or at least the beginning), then press Enter.  GNOME feels pretty
> >> much designed to not be used by a mouse alone ;-)
> >
> > And that magic Super key is?
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_key_(keyboard_button)
>
> On many keyboards it is also known as this:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_key
>
> In my opinion GNOME is not really usable without using that key, so
> that might partly explain you being uncomfortable with it.
>
> > And does it do tabs?
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Terminal#Tabs
>
> Ansgar

Thats nice.  The terminals it has offered me from its menu's however have 
been stripped of such useful features. And since I've not owned a 
windows machine since 2002 that key with the squares on it has never 
been a usefull key to me. And I just checked, it does nothing here.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Curt]

On 2019-04-16, Matthew Crews  wrote:
>
> On this mailing list, though, I could see a progression from "why is
> synaptic removed from Debian Buster?" to "Lets remove Gnome", hence why
> I brought it up.

You saw an obvious troll post supported by a large party of one and
decided to run with it, in point of fact.

Re: A call to drop gnome as the default desktop

[Ansgar Burchardt]

Keith Bainbridge writes:
> I see the point that people who like gnome should be allowed to use it
> - 
> so withdraw the drop gnome from debian.  I believe the change to the
> subject line will keep the discussion together. I'll re-send if it
> opens a new topic.

Why should GNOME not stay the default desktop?  Because it supports
using either of Wayland or X11?

To quote your original mail this was one of the two main reasons you
proposed GNOME to be dropped after all (besides not being able to move
some toolbar):

| [...] gnome is insisting that we like a new video process, just
| because the team have decided to like it lots.
|
| I say this is NOT freedom.

How is supporting *only* X11 freedom, but supporting *both* Wayland and
X11 NOT freedom?

Wouldn't it be more logical to drop all desktop environments that
support *only* X11 to give more freedom?

Ansgar

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Ansgar Burchardt]

Gene Heskett writes:
> On Tuesday 16 April 2019 13:32:38 Ansgar Burchardt wrote:
>> Gene Heskett writes:
>> > Where the heck in its confusing menu's can I find a tab supporting
>> > terminal so I can get something done? Go ahead, find it, my coffee
>> > needs to cool anyway..
>>
>> You press the magic Super key, then type "Terminal" on the keyboard
>> (or at least the beginning), then press Enter.  GNOME feels pretty
>> much designed to not be used by a mouse alone ;-)
>
> And that magic Super key is?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_key_(keyboard_button)

On many keyboards it is also known as this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_key

In my opinion GNOME is not really usable without using that key, so that
might partly explain you being uncomfortable with it.

> And does it do tabs?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Terminal#Tabs

Ansgar

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Joe]

On Wed, 17 Apr 2019 13:58:34 +1000
Keith Bainbridge  wrote:

> On 17/4/19 12:06 am, Reco wrote:
> > They write and distribute free (as in freedom) software. It's
> > popular, whenever it's due to the design or in spite of it.  
> 
> I happened across this a Wikipedia while clarifying another comment
> here: <<
> GNOME 3 is the default desktop environment on many major Linux 
> distributions including Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, SUSE Linux Enterprise 
> (exclusively), Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Oracle Linux, 
> Scientific Linux, SteamOS, Tails, Kali Linux, Antergos and Endless
> OS; it is also default on Solaris, a major Unix operating system.
> Also, the continued fork of the last GNOME 2 release that goes under
> the name MATE is default on many distributions that targets low usage
> of system resources.
>  >>  
> If so many distro's ship with gnome as default, no wonder it is
> popular.
> 

To say that something is 'default' for many distributions is not the
same thing as saying 'many, many people use it'. I still use a few bits
of Gnome, including Network Manager on my portables, but the last time I
used the DE was at the introduction of Gnome 3, when a sid upgrade left
me with a command prompt. I do expect sid to have occasional issues,but
not to the extent of the complete and permanent loss of graphical
capability. 'We won't support legacy video hardware', said Gnome, and I
said 'fair enough, I won't support Gnome'.

I found later that my video stuff did have hardware acceleration, that
I had never known about or needed, but that isn't the point. Debian is
first and foremost known for its continuous upgrade path, which is
unusual, but then also for its ability to use old hardware. Gnome 3
cannot by definition use hardware which is moderately old.

-- 
Joe

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Gian Uberto Lauri]

> "R" == Reco   writes:

R> That's very simplistic point of view.  What about Wayland on
R> non-x86, like ARM or MIPS (a hint - it does not work there, X
R> does)?

MIPS (Silicon Graphics), SPARC (Sun)...


-- 
 /\   ___Ubuntu: ancient
/___/\_|_|\_|__|___Gian Uberto Lauri_   African word
  //--\| | \|  |   Integralista GNUslamicomeaning "I can
\/ coltivatore diretto di software   not install
 già sistemista a tempo (altrui) perso...Debian"

Warning: gnome-config-daemon considered more dangerous than GOTO

Re: A call to drop gnome as the default desktop

[Keith Bainbridge]

On 17/4/19 3:53 am, Matthew Crews wrote:

As long as the Debian installer gives us a choice (and
as long as a variety of Live images for each major DE are available), it
doesn't really matter in the end.

I do not think that Gnome should be removed from Debian as long as Gnome
works fine. As far as I'm concerned, it does work fine. Perfect? No, but
good enough IMO.

On this mailing list, though, I could see a progression from "why is
synaptic removed from Debian Buster?" to "Lets remove Gnome", hence why
I brought it up.


I'll address these in reverse order, hoping to make the responses make 
some sense.


Let me say only that I used a couple of snips from the synaptic 
discussion as support for my own thoughts about gnome not being free 
software - in the sense that they seem to want to control how we use our 
monitors.


I see the point that people who like gnome should be allowed to use it - 
so withdraw the drop gnome from debian.  I believe the change to the 
subject line will keep the discussion together. I'll re-send if it opens 
a new topic.



Perhaps gnome can be available as a live distro and in the repo - 
without being an option on the netInstall.iso  I accept that gnome is 
popular, and figured that by seeking to drop it, I am trying to remove 
their freedom to use it.



--
Keith Bainbridge

ke1th3...@gmail.com
+61 (0)447 667 468

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Keith Bainbridge]

On 17/4/19 12:06 am, Reco wrote:

They write and distribute free (as in freedom) software. It's popular,
whenever it's due to the design or in spite of it.


I happened across this a Wikipedia while clarifying another comment here:
<<
GNOME 3 is the default desktop environment on many major Linux 
distributions including Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, SUSE Linux Enterprise 
(exclusively), Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Oracle Linux, 
Scientific Linux, SteamOS, Tails, Kali Linux, Antergos and Endless OS; 
it is also default on Solaris, a major Unix operating system. Also, the 
continued fork of the last GNOME 2 release that goes under the name MATE 
is default on many distributions that targets low usage of system 
resources.

>>
If so many distro's ship with gnome as default, no wonder it is popular.


I also think there is something odd (perhaps ironic?) that my preferred 
desktop is Mate - when I am protesting the desktop that is/was related 
to Mate so closely.



As somebody said - things change.


--
Keith Bainbridge

ke1th3...@gmail.com
+61 (0)447 667 468

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Keith Bainbridge]

On 16/4/19 9:01 pm, Reco wrote:



And for those there should be at least a good document about doing
it.

Agreed.


+1 - as long as somebody with a good dollop of Asperger syndrome can 
interpret it.


--
Keith Bainbridge

ke1th3...@gmail.com
+61 (0)447 667 468

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Keith Bainbridge]

On 16/4/19 8:38 pm, Gian Uberto Lauri wrote:

I say this is NOT freedom.

R> The usual arguments apply.  Don't like it - patch it. Patches are
R> welcome.

Say, "can you translate Odissey from ancient greek to Rovigo dialect?"

That is a petty example (if you can, my kudos!), patching is not a
thing this easy to do. You have to be a programmer good enought, then
you have to understando how the program works and how to change
it. Then you have to write the changes and possibly test it against
existing test cases, it requires skills, it requires time.

Gnome goal is noble, to let unskilled users use it. But there are
other users, not this unskilled but lacking, who knows, time and
wishing nevertheless that some option was available, say, running
WindowMaker on top of Gnome daemons. And for those there should be at
least a good document about doing it. And not leaving them being
forced to do something like a "triple backward sommersault" for doing
these changes.

This is more a "distribution level" choice, like "install Debian
Desktop something like a (better and improved) 1999 machine", at
least with the configuration working the old way.

It is not easy, it requires resources too. But these are my two cents.



Come on - I claimed 2 bob. You must be worth more


I fall right into that description - no way could I construct a patch. I 
buckled at the knees when I found that I could edit CSS code to achieve 
the tool-bar at the side.


I tried java about 15 years ago, and failed miserably. Perhaps a bad 
choice, but what the Uni course I was trying to get into required. I can 
write a script and alias's in .bashrc, the odd macro in Calc. I keep 
telling my friends it's never too late to learn, but at 71, I figure I 
can serenely claim that's enough.



--
Keith Bainbridge

ke1th3...@gmail.com
+61 (0)447 667 468

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Dekks Herton]

Reco  writes:

>   Hi.
>
> On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 04:54:02PM +1000, Keith Bainbridge wrote:
>> On 15/4/19 9:31 pm, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:> Because GNOME. GNOME's upstream
>> said their word loud and clear, and that
>> > word is - 'thou shall use Wayland for it is our favorite toy now'.
>
> I wrote it, in reply to Thomas e-mail. Please watch who you quote.
>
>
>> Now Tomas quips about gnome is insisting that we like a new video process,
>> just because the team have decided to like it lots.
>
> No. What I wrote that for several years you had the possibility to run
> GNOME on Wayland. And it will be the default in the next stable Debian.
> Because (and here you're correct) - upstream wants that everyone use the
> GNOME that way.

Wayland as default will be by and large OK as far as GNOME is concerned
IMO from the 2 years i've ran it as default. The last few gnome releases
are very solid. Waylands real problem is the DE/OS devs love it but
users and apparently most app devs couldn't care less.

> You have the ability to run GNOME over X. For now. I predicted that such
> ability may disappear in unspecified future (probably - years). Because
> GNOME upstream is (in)famous for feature removal.
>
>
>> I say this is NOT freedom.
>
> The usual arguments apply.
> Don't like it - patch it. Patches are welcome. They have the commit bit
> - you do not. Etc.
> And yes, there are some who did exactly that - Mate DE, Cinnamon DE to
> name a few examples.
>
>
>> So, I am asking that gnome be dropped as an installation option (not
>> just as the default desktop) until they encourage freedom.
>
> There's an appropriate place for such wishes, it's called
> https://bugs.debian.org.
>
> Reco
>

-- 
Regards.
 
PGP Fingerprint: 3DF8 311C 4740 B5BC 3867  72DF 1050 452F 9BCE BA00

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Francisco M Neto]

On Tue, 2019-04-16 at 18:48 +, Curt wrote:
> On 2019-04-16, Matthew Crews  wrote:
> > This all stems back to Synaptic being removed from Debian Buster
> > right?
> > Well, all someone needs to do is update Synaptic with proper Wayland
> > support. But judging by the upstream development, it appears that
> > Synaptic might be abandoned?
> > https://launchpad.net/synaptic
> 
> https://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2019/02/14/packagekit-is-dead-long-live-well-something-else/
> 
> Ditto PackageKit, according to the maintainer, it would appear.

Also, that's not the correct address for Synaptic's development
repo. The Debian page on it is embarrasingly outdated. It's hosted on
github now:

https://github.com/mvo5/synaptic
 
-- 
[]'s,

Francisco M Neto 

GPG: 4096R/D692FBF0


signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Patrick Bartek]

On Tue, 16 Apr 2019 16:54:02 +1000
Keith Bainbridge  wrote:

> Good afternoon
> 
> 
> I've copied 2 bits from the discussion on synaptic and adding my 2 bobs' 
> worth towards the next review of whether gnome remains the default desktop.
> 
> 
> 
> On 15/4/19 9:31 pm, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:> Because GNOME. GNOME's 
> upstream said their word loud and clear, and that
>  > word is - 'thou shall use Wayland for it is our favorite toy now'.  
> 
> 
> 
> On 16/4/19 12:23 am, Jonathan Dowland wrote:>
>  > The decision to ship GNOME as the default desktop is regularly
>  > revisited: And
>  > if a future GNOME release dropped X support altogether, you can be sure
>  > that
>  > would be a factor in the re-evaluation that would follow.  
> 
> 
> I've never been a fan of gnome, and I can only say that in the beginning 
> it was simply because I didn't yet know about themes etc. I settled for 
> KDE, in the 1990's.  I now know that it was the slowest of all, but I 
> found my way around easiest.
> 
> [snip]

So, don't install GNOME.  Choose another DE.  Just because it's "the
default" means nothing. Or do what I did 7 years ago when I first
installed Wheezy after using Fedore/GNOME for a number of years: Abandon
the desktop environment all-together and use a window manager. (I chose
Openbox.) You'll be amazed at how much smoother and more responsive
everything is without doing anything other than getting rid of all
DE background crap you don't really need.

B

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 16 April 2019 14:13:31 Stephan Seitz wrote:

> On Di, Apr 16, 2019 at 07:53:40 +0200, Matthew Crews wrote:
> >Off the top of my head, Fedora, SUSE and Ubuntu (as of 18.10) use
> >Wayland by default.
>
> I thought Ubuntu dropped Wayland and returned to X11?
>
> Concerning Wayland: as long as it doesn’t have some kind of X11
> forwarding feature (easy to use with „ssh -X”), it’s useless for me.
>
Precisely...

> Shade and sweet water!
>
>   Stephan


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 16 April 2019 13:32:38 Ansgar Burchardt wrote:

> Gene Heskett writes:
> > Where the heck in its confusing menu's can I find a tab supporting
> > terminal so I can get something done? Go ahead, find it, my coffee
> > needs to cool anyway..
>
> You press the magic Super key, then type "Terminal" on the keyboard
> (or at least the beginning), then press Enter.  GNOME feels pretty
> much designed to not be used by a mouse alone ;-)
>
> Ansgar

And that magic Super key is?  And does it do tabs? 

I have 4 workspaces with terminals, each of which has 4 or 7 tabs 
available right now on this Wheezy box running TDE R14.x. Opening a 
separate new terminal on the same workspace like gnome does on stretch 
is a total non-starter for me. So one of the earlier things I did before 
I found synaptic was to be the orphan that starved to death, and brought 
my conversion to stretch to a screeching halt, was to convert it to TDE 
R14.x from gnome.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 16 April 2019 12:54:00 Matthew Crews wrote:

> On 4/16/19 6:54 AM, Reco wrote:
> >> I see Linus is drifting back to his older style, issuing the
> >> desktop people a whipping they are in need of over the weekend,
> >> saying 90% of why linux doesn't control the desktop is that there
> >> is not a standardized, one size fits all because it can do all
> >> things desktop.
> >
> > A link please, LKML will suffice. If Linus is back after that CoC
> > story in all his former glory - I need to see this.
>
> Old news. He posted two days ago about Linux Kernel 5.1-rc5:
>
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/4/14/265
>
None of those messages are related to what I read late last week.
>
> As far as Gnome on Wayland, X.org's days are numbered, and for good
> reason.
>
> The major DEs are all pushing for the move to Wayland, but they
> continue to support X because Wayland isn't fully ready. However it
> cannot be made ready unless people are actually using it in the wild,
> and submitting feedback.
>
> Additionally, every major Linux distro supports Wayland, provided
> their chosen DE supports Wayland. Some major ones even USE Wayland by
> default where possible. It will not be long before X is deprecated,
> and then fully removed.
>
> This all stems back to Synaptic being removed from Debian Buster
> right? Well, all someone needs to do is update Synaptic with proper
> Wayland support. But judging by the upstream development, it appears
> that Synaptic might be abandoned?
>
> https://launchpad.net/synaptic
>
> Well, it's maintained by an Ubuntu developer, and Ubuntu doesn't even
> ship Synaptic anymore.
>
> All the same, hardly a reason to drop Gnome.
>
> My 2¢
>
> -Matt


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Curt]

On 2019-04-16, Matthew Crews  wrote:
>
> This all stems back to Synaptic being removed from Debian Buster right?
> Well, all someone needs to do is update Synaptic with proper Wayland
> support. But judging by the upstream development, it appears that
> Synaptic might be abandoned?

> https://launchpad.net/synaptic

https://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2019/02/14/packagekit-is-dead-long-live-well-something-else/

Ditto PackageKit, according to the maintainer, it would appear.

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Alexander V. Makartsev]

On 16.04.2019 22:54, Matthew Crews wrote:
> I will concede that as long as Nvidia drivers do not play nicely with
> Wayland (and they don't AFAIK), X will still be required. But I did just
> read that Plasma 5.16 landed Nvidia patches that let it work under
> Wayland with Nvidia, so maybe not that much longer in the future?
You could run Gnome with nvidia back in 2017 already. Run a console and
a browser with hardware acceleration support, but that was about it.
Unless Nvidia will make stable drivers with Wayland support and there
will be some kind of back compatibility layer implemented in Wayland, to
allow to run "legacy" software, I'll stay on X and on Stretch.
I agree with the fact that we must migrate to Wayland to test it and
provide feedback, but it needs to be a build house, just without
furniture, not a mere scaffolding that being build last 10 years.
>
> (and unfortunately, people will still buy and use Nvidia cards, and want
> support for them whether or not the drivers are FOSS).
There are no alternatives. Red cards, despite their flashy marketing,
still don't have drivers to fully support them and games with native
Linux ports don't support them officially.
Blue cards are simply out of the league.
> Fair enough. I personally think KDE or even XFCE should be the default
> DE for Debian, but thats just my opinion and the the topic of endless
> debate. We will be in circles debating what we think the default DE for
> Debian should be. As long as the Debian installer gives us a choice (and
> as long as a variety of Live images for each major DE are available), it
> doesn't really matter in the end.
>
> I do not think that Gnome should be removed from Debian as long as Gnome
> works fine. As far as I'm concerned, it does work fine. Perfect? No, but
> good enough IMO.
>
Gnome is not just a DE, so it surely won't go anywhere. There is too
much ecosystem that couldn't be just thrown away.
And every other DE (except maybe KDE) uses parts from Gnome.
As for Synaptic, if I really want something going on my system, I'll
backport it and throw it's deb package into special folder with the rest
of backported things I use.
But for now, I plan to stay on oldstable (stretch) for a couple of years
and watch how things will be developed from a distance.

-- 
With kindest regards, Alexander.

⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ 
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org
⠈⠳⣄ 

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Reco]

On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 07:54:18PM +0200, Matthew Crews wrote:
> I will concede that as long as Nvidia drivers do not play nicely with
> Wayland (and they don't AFAIK), X will still be required.

That's very simplistic point of view.
What about Wayland on non-x86, like ARM or MIPS (a hint - it does not
work there, X does)?
Or, for example, whatever they put instead of videocards in servers
these days. Before you ask - I personally saw people putting X on
servers.
Or, something deceptively simple. Debian 10 in QEMU running Wayland.


> But I did just read that Plasma 5.16 landed Nvidia patches that let it
> work under Wayland with Nvidia, so maybe not that much longer in the
> future?

That's just scratching the surface of it. Contrary to the popular
option, video card world does not ends at Intel, AMD and Nvidia.


> (and unfortunately, people will still buy and use Nvidia cards, and want
> support for them whether or not the drivers are FOSS).
> 
> >> Some major ones even USE Wayland by default where possible.
> > 
> > [Scratches head] SUSE? Surely that's what you meant?
> 
> Off the top of my head, Fedora, SUSE and Ubuntu (as of 18.10) use
> Wayland by default.

Ok, I stand corrected.


> >> This all stems back to Synaptic being removed from Debian Buster right?
> > 
> > In this particular thread we discuss a wish of a Debian User, who in no
> > uncertain terms expressed that GNOME should be dropped from the Debian.
> > I mean, look at the Subject.
> 
> Fair enough. I personally think KDE or even XFCE should be the default
> DE for Debian, but thats just my opinion and the the topic of endless
> debate.

I see no debate. GNOME is a primary DE for Debian on i386 and amd64 for
now, and had been for many years, barring that XFCE hiccup back in 2010
(only sid was affected).


> We will be in circles debating what we think the default DE for
> Debian should be. As long as the Debian installer gives us a choice (and
> as long as a variety of Live images for each major DE are available), it
> doesn't really matter in the end.

[Carefully looks at synaptic] Does it?


> I do not think that Gnome should be removed from Debian as long as Gnome
> works fine. As far as I'm concerned, it does work fine. Perfect? No, but
> good enough IMO.

Such trolling topics are a rare source of pure entertainment here.
I do not take them seriously, YMMV.


> On this mailing list, though, I could see a progression from "why is
> synaptic removed from Debian Buster?" to "Lets remove Gnome", hence why
> I brought it up.

Different topics, different OPs. Mostly the same participants, sure.

Reco

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Stephan Seitz]

On Di, Apr 16, 2019 at 07:53:40 +0200, Matthew Crews wrote:

Off the top of my head, Fedora, SUSE and Ubuntu (as of 18.10) use
Wayland by default.


I thought Ubuntu dropped Wayland and returned to X11?

Concerning Wayland: as long as it doesn’t have some kind of X11 
forwarding feature (easy to use with „ssh -X”), it’s useless for me.


Shade and sweet water!

Stephan

--
| Public Keys: http://fsing.rootsland.net/~stse/keys.html |


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Matthew Crews]

On 4/16/19 10:36 AM, Reco wrote:
>> The major DEs are all pushing for the move to Wayland,
> 
> All two of them, I assume?

Call me lazy, but I'm not going to cite every article under the Sun
explaining why we *should* be moving to Wayland over X. Here are a few
starting points.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_%28display_server_protocol%29
https://wayland.freedesktop.org/

In the end it comes down to Wayland will be the future way of doing
things, and there are headaches along the way.

I will concede that as long as Nvidia drivers do not play nicely with
Wayland (and they don't AFAIK), X will still be required. But I did just
read that Plasma 5.16 landed Nvidia patches that let it work under
Wayland with Nvidia, so maybe not that much longer in the future?

(and unfortunately, people will still buy and use Nvidia cards, and want
support for them whether or not the drivers are FOSS).

>> Some major ones even USE Wayland by default where possible.
> 
> [Scratches head] SUSE? Surely that's what you meant?

Off the top of my head, Fedora, SUSE and Ubuntu (as of 18.10) use
Wayland by default.

>> This all stems back to Synaptic being removed from Debian Buster right?
> 
> In this particular thread we discuss a wish of a Debian User, who in no
> uncertain terms expressed that GNOME should be dropped from the Debian.
> I mean, look at the Subject.

Fair enough. I personally think KDE or even XFCE should be the default
DE for Debian, but thats just my opinion and the the topic of endless
debate. We will be in circles debating what we think the default DE for
Debian should be. As long as the Debian installer gives us a choice (and
as long as a variety of Live images for each major DE are available), it
doesn't really matter in the end.

I do not think that Gnome should be removed from Debian as long as Gnome
works fine. As far as I'm concerned, it does work fine. Perfect? No, but
good enough IMO.

On this mailing list, though, I could see a progression from "why is
synaptic removed from Debian Buster?" to "Lets remove Gnome", hence why
I brought it up.

> Nope, looks alive to me.

Noted, thanks for the correction.




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Re: A call to drop gnome

[Matthew Crews]

On 4/16/19 10:36 AM, Reco wrote:
>> The major DEs are all pushing for the move to Wayland,
> 
> All two of them, I assume?

Call me lazy, but I'm not going to cite every article under the Sun
explaining why we *should* be moving to Wayland over X. Here are a few
starting points.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_%28display_server_protocol%29
https://wayland.freedesktop.org/

In the end it comes down to Wayland will be the future way of doing
things, and there are headaches along the way.

I will concede that as long as Nvidia drivers do not play nicely with
Wayland (and they don't AFAIK), X will still be required. But I did just
read that Plasma 5.16 landed Nvidia patches that let it work under
Wayland with Nvidia, so maybe not that much longer in the future?

(and unfortunately, people will still buy and use Nvidia cards, and want
support for them whether or not the drivers are FOSS).

>> Some major ones even USE Wayland by default where possible.
> 
> [Scratches head] SUSE? Surely that's what you meant?

Off the top of my head, Fedora, SUSE and Ubuntu (as of 18.10) use
Wayland by default.

>> This all stems back to Synaptic being removed from Debian Buster right?
> 
> In this particular thread we discuss a wish of a Debian User, who in no
> uncertain terms expressed that GNOME should be dropped from the Debian.
> I mean, look at the Subject.

Fair enough. I personally think KDE or even XFCE should be the default
DE for Debian, but thats just my opinion and the the topic of endless
debate. We will be in circles debating what we think the default DE for
Debian should be. As long as the Debian installer gives us a choice (and
as long as a variety of Live images for each major DE are available), it
doesn't really matter in the end.

I do not think that Gnome should be removed from Debian as long as Gnome
works fine. As far as I'm concerned, it does work fine. Perfect? No, but
good enough IMO.

On this mailing list, though, I could see a progression from "why is
synaptic removed from Debian Buster?" to "Lets remove Gnome", hence why
I brought it up.

> Nope, looks alive to me.

Noted, thanks for the correction.




signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Ansgar Burchardt]

Gene Heskett writes:
> Where the heck in its confusing menu's can I find a tab supporting
> terminal so I can get something done? Go ahead, find it, my coffee needs
> to cool anyway..

You press the magic Super key, then type "Terminal" on the keyboard (or
at least the beginning), then press Enter.  GNOME feels pretty much
designed to not be used by a mouse alone ;-)

Ansgar

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Reco]

Hi.

On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 06:54:00PM +0200, Matthew Crews wrote:
> On 4/16/19 6:54 AM, Reco wrote:
> >> I see Linus is drifting back to his older style, issuing the desktop 
> >> people a whipping they are in need of over the weekend, saying 90% of 
> >> why linux doesn't control the desktop is that there is not a 
> >> standardized, one size fits all because it can do all things desktop. 
> > 
> > A link please, LKML will suffice. If Linus is back after that CoC story
> > in all his former glory - I need to see this.
> 
> Old news. He posted two days ago about Linux Kernel 5.1-rc5:
> 
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/4/14/265

Nah, that's not Linus. A double, probably.
I mean, there's the expression? Colorful language? Some profanity, at
the very least?


> As far as Gnome on Wayland, X.org's days are numbered, and for good reason.

And now it gets interesting.


> The major DEs are all pushing for the move to Wayland,

All two of them, I assume?


> but they continue to support X because Wayland isn't fully ready.

Ok.


> However it cannot be made ready unless people are actually using it in
> the wild, and submitting feedback.

That's understandable. I mean, code tests and Continuous Integration are
for the cowards, right? Real developers test their code on users. Both
GNOME and KDE are famous in this regard.


> Additionally, every major Linux distro supports Wayland, provided their
> chosen DE supports Wayland.

[Carefully looks at Debian 9, Ubuntu 18.10 and RHEL 7.5].
Sure. That's why they're offering X by default. To test Wayland. That's
a really cunning plan.


> Some major ones even USE Wayland by default where possible.

[Scratches head] SUSE? Surely that's what you meant?


> It will not be long before X is deprecated, and then
> fully removed.

All these sentences, but I failed to see this "good reason" of yours.


> This all stems back to Synaptic being removed from Debian Buster right?

In this particular thread we discuss a wish of a Debian User, who in no
uncertain terms expressed that GNOME should be dropped from the Debian.
I mean, look at the Subject.


> Well, all someone needs to do is update Synaptic with proper Wayland
> support.

And the reason for this being exactly what?


> But judging by the upstream development, it appears that
> Synaptic might be abandoned?

$ x-www-browser https://packages.debian.org/source/sid/synaptic
$ git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/mvo5/synaptic
$ cd synaptic
$ git log
commit 449180d2d1abbd49e113d882e8b9b6387321c4fa
Author: Michael Vogt 
Date:   Mon Apr 15 11:14:51 2019 +0200

Nope, looks alive to me.

Reco

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Matthew Crews]

On 4/16/19 6:54 AM, Reco wrote:
>> I see Linus is drifting back to his older style, issuing the desktop 
>> people a whipping they are in need of over the weekend, saying 90% of 
>> why linux doesn't control the desktop is that there is not a 
>> standardized, one size fits all because it can do all things desktop. 
> 
> A link please, LKML will suffice. If Linus is back after that CoC story
> in all his former glory - I need to see this.

Old news. He posted two days ago about Linux Kernel 5.1-rc5:

https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/4/14/265


As far as Gnome on Wayland, X.org's days are numbered, and for good reason.

The major DEs are all pushing for the move to Wayland, but they continue
to support X because Wayland isn't fully ready. However it cannot be
made ready unless people are actually using it in the wild, and
submitting feedback.

Additionally, every major Linux distro supports Wayland, provided their
chosen DE supports Wayland. Some major ones even USE Wayland by default
where possible. It will not be long before X is deprecated, and then
fully removed.

This all stems back to Synaptic being removed from Debian Buster right?
Well, all someone needs to do is update Synaptic with proper Wayland
support. But judging by the upstream development, it appears that
Synaptic might be abandoned?

https://launchpad.net/synaptic

Well, it's maintained by an Ubuntu developer, and Ubuntu doesn't even
ship Synaptic anymore.

All the same, hardly a reason to drop Gnome.

My 2¢

-Matt



signature.asc
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Re: A call to drop gnome

[Reco]

Hi.

On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 10:54:06AM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> Like, for example, fvwm has an installed-size of
> about 6.5 megabytes.  How big is GNOME?  I wouldn't be surprised if it's
> two orders of magnitude larger than that, just for its "core" components,
> not counting a bunch of games or whatever else can be added on.

# apt install -o APT::Install-Recommends=0 gnome-core
...
Need to get 187 MB of archives.
After this operation, 654 MB of additional disk space will be used.

I'd say that your estimate hit bullseye.

And adding the bells and whistles, it's four orders of magnitude of your
fvwm install:

# apt install -o APT::Install-Recommends=1 -o APT::Install-Suggests=1 gnome
...
Need to get 5,260 MB of archives.
After this operation, 18.4 GB of additional disk space will be used.

Reco

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Gian Uberto Lauri]

> "R" == Reco   writes:

>> Add one more reason to use X.

R> My main reason to continue to use X in buster. I got used to my
R> openbox setup.

Same here. Switched to WindoMaker in 1996 because we had only 256
colors available and it could "render many color using a little number
of elements in a colormap" by doing what pointillist painters did with
the few allowed colors. Maybe younger users never experienced some
strange effects we had when some programs, like netscape, resorted to
use a special colormap, WindowMaker reduced these things a lot
allowing you to have a colorful desktop. 

One of the demo color theme was "Rainbow", and it was possible to use
it without overloading the standard colormap. I still use that color
theme, even if I have to recreate it.

-- 
 /\   ___Ubuntu: ancient
/___/\_|_|\_|__|___Gian Uberto Lauri_   African word
  //--\| | \|  |   Integralista GNUslamicomeaning "I can
\/ coltivatore diretto di software   not install
 già sistemista a tempo (altrui) perso...Debian"

Warning: gnome-config-daemon considered more dangerous than GOTO

P.S.
And now instead of a single daemon we have a herd of daemons.

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Greg Wooledge]

On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 03:41:28PM +0100, mick crane wrote:
> Not sure what this is about.
> Isn't a desktop manager, display environment whatever its called a way to
> present icons that you can click on and it starts a program you want to use
> and then gets out of the way ?

A window manager is a program that allows the placement and resizing of
windows, and controls which one is "on top", and so on.  There are lot of
window managers, and many of them offer a whole bunch of features like
menus, icons, program activation from either of those, binding of keys
to actions, etc.

A desktop environment is a window manager PLUS a whole crapload of
additional stuff that I do not personally understand.  But it's really big
and really complicated.  Like, for example, fvwm has an installed-size of
about 6.5 megabytes.  How big is GNOME?  I wouldn't be surprised if it's
two orders of magnitude larger than that, just for its "core" components,
not counting a bunch of games or whatever else can be added on.

Re: A call to drop gnome

[mick crane]

Not sure what this is about.
Isn't a desktop manager, display environment whatever its called a way 
to present icons that you can click on and it starts a program you want 
to use and then gets out of the way ?
Is this about having common libraries that control what appears on the 
screen ?

Am I likely to not be able to use Xming at some future date ?

mick


--
Key ID4BFEBB31

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 16 April 2019 09:54:19 Reco wrote:

>   Hi.
>
> On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 09:35:32AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > > R> The usual arguments apply.  Don't like it - patch it. Patches
> > > > are R> welcome.
> >
> > I wondered how long it would take for that phrase to emerge, so
> > everyone in a position of control can hide behind it yet again.
> >
> > > > Say, "can you translate Odissey from ancient greek to Rovigo
> > > > dialect?"
> > >
> > > Nope. But I can pay to someone who does, assuming that I want such
> > > translation. Same as everyone else.
> > >
> > > > That is a petty example (if you can, my kudos!), patching is not
> > > > a thing this easy to do. You have to be a programmer good
> > > > enought, then you have to understando how the program works and
> > > > how to change it. Then you have to write the changes and
> > > > possibly test it against existing test cases, it requires
> > > > skills, it requires time.
> > >
> > > ... and there are those who did it already. But then again, for me
> > > GNOME project went off-rails (usability POV, not a technical one)
> > > long time ago. Patching the GNOME to restore sane behaviour is
> > > harder than avoiding it.
> >
> > +1000!
>
> Um, Gene. You are aware that I wrote both arguments, are you?

I thought it was a bit odd, but so many are using broken quoting, so I 
shrugged it off.
>
> > > > Gnome goal is noble, to let unskilled users use it.
> > >
> > > I recall hearing similar rhetoric 25 years ago. Some Operating
> > > System who's name starts with big W, and it had 4-color flag for
> > > logo. Some say that rise in popularity of said OS involved an
> > > unspecified amount of unconventional off-market negotiations and a
> > > bag of dirty tricks.
> >
> > We all heard the same "sermon" and ran like hell because we already
> > were familiar with both their market controlling efforts and this
> > same bag of dirty tricks a bar of good soap has little effect
> > because you simply cannot make them palatable in a free market.
> >
> > I see Linus is drifting back to his older style, issuing the desktop
> > people a whipping they are in need of over the weekend, saying 90%
> > of why linux doesn't control the desktop is that there is not a
> > standardized, one size fits all because it can do all things
> > desktop.
>
> A link please, LKML will suffice. If Linus is back after that CoC
> story in all his former glory - I need to see this.
>
> Reco

I got unsubbed from lkml a couple years back for "interference". Seems 
like I read it on /. 2, maybe 3 days back. I don't think I'd call it 
former glory, but some leakage and frustration are quite evident. He was 
IMO. overdoing the nice guy bit just a bit. He needs to add a bit more 
iron to his control. I see the lack of that over the last year as being 
partially responsible for this present bruhaha. Or maybe thats just me?  
Your call. :)

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Reco]

Hi.

On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 12:35:29PM +, Gian Uberto Lauri wrote:
> > "R" == Reco   writes:
> 
> 
> R> As we saw two weeks ago, the decision to run GNOME on Wayland
> R> backfired at synaptic. To rephrase, why bother running X if there
> R> are no applications left to run on X?
> 
> Because I like and I use a lot remote display. Because I prefer it
> user program.

So do I, occasionally. It's not a silver bullet, but does the job if the
target host two-three hops from you. Unless you're doing something
really strange like trying to watch the video via "ssh -X" (a hint -
don't).


> If you have only your machine, having or not having "network
> transparency" does not matter. If you live in a network, it matters.

And that's the thing. The network transparency some of us love and use
does not exist in Wayland.
They do offer some bastardized version of RDP, but it has no ability to
connect to an existing session, and there's nothing even remotely close
to my favorite "ssh -X".


> >> Gnome goal is noble, to let unskilled users use it.
> 
> R> I recall hearing similar rhetoric 25 years ago. Some Operating
> R> System who's name starts with big W, and it had 4-color flag for
> R> logo. Some say that rise in popularity of said OS involved an
> R> unspecified amount of unconventional off-market negotiations and a
> R> bag of dirty tricks.
> 
> And a band of rebels gathering around a penguin totem in the name of
> freedom. 
> 
> Gnome at least should not chain them in proprietary software.

I never said that members of GNOME project are Satan incarnates.
They write and distribute free (as in freedom) software. It's popular,
whenever it's due to the design or in spite of it.
What does ring some warning bells are methods (see above) that some of
those people utilize to gain that popularity, and a collateral damage to
non-GNOME software.

> 
> R> The way things go right now with the GNOME all those impressive
> R> tricks will be obsolete. Unless, of course, some kind soul moves
> R> that "sway" thing from the experimental to sid.  Because AFAIK
> R> there are only four "Wayland window managers" (it's techically
> R> incorrect to call them that, I know), and only two of them made
> R> into buster so far (GNOME's mutter and weston, the reference one).
> 
> Add one more reason to use X.

My main reason to continue to use X in buster. I got used to my openbox
setup.

Reco

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Reco]

Hi.

On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 09:35:32AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > R> The usual arguments apply.  Don't like it - patch it. Patches are
> > > R> welcome.
> 
> I wondered how long it would take for that phrase to emerge, so everyone 
> in a position of control can hide behind it yet again.
> 
> > > Say, "can you translate Odissey from ancient greek to Rovigo
> > > dialect?"
> >
> > Nope. But I can pay to someone who does, assuming that I want such
> > translation. Same as everyone else.
> >
> > > That is a petty example (if you can, my kudos!), patching is not a
> > > thing this easy to do. You have to be a programmer good enought,
> > > then you have to understando how the program works and how to change
> > > it. Then you have to write the changes and possibly test it against
> > > existing test cases, it requires skills, it requires time.
> >
> > ... and there are those who did it already. But then again, for me
> > GNOME project went off-rails (usability POV, not a technical one) long
> > time ago. Patching the GNOME to restore sane behaviour is harder than
> > avoiding it.
> 
> +1000!

Um, Gene. You are aware that I wrote both arguments, are you?


> > > Gnome goal is noble, to let unskilled users use it.
> >
> > I recall hearing similar rhetoric 25 years ago. Some Operating System
> > who's name starts with big W, and it had 4-color flag for logo. Some
> > say that rise in popularity of said OS involved an unspecified amount
> > of unconventional off-market negotiations and a bag of dirty tricks.
> 
> We all heard the same "sermon" and ran like hell because we already were 
> familiar with both their market controlling efforts and this same bag of 
> dirty tricks a bar of good soap has little effect because you simply 
> cannot make them palatable in a free market.
> 
> I see Linus is drifting back to his older style, issuing the desktop 
> people a whipping they are in need of over the weekend, saying 90% of 
> why linux doesn't control the desktop is that there is not a 
> standardized, one size fits all because it can do all things desktop. 

A link please, LKML will suffice. If Linus is back after that CoC story
in all his former glory - I need to see this.

Reco

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 16 April 2019 07:01:25 Reco wrote:

>   Hi.
>
> On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 10:38:38AM +, Gian Uberto Lauri wrote:
> > > "R" == Reco   writes:
>
> I *have* to object to this ☺ In C this comparison equals false.
> Have you meant '"R" = Reco' (i.e. assignment)?
>
> > R> No. What I wrote that for several years you had the possibility
> > to R> run GNOME on Wayland. And it will be the default in the next
> > stable R> Debian.  Because (and here you're correct) - upstream
> > wants that R> everyone use the GNOME that way.
> >
> > As long as using X is supported without requiring triple backward
> > sommersault to install it, fine. Almost fine. Because HW support
> > stuff should be independent from the user front end.

Agreed.

> As we saw two weeks ago, the decision to run GNOME on Wayland
> backfired at synaptic. To rephrase, why bother running X if there are
> no applications left to run on X?

I think that must be in the back of their minds. But that is something 
you never ever tell the frogs.

> > >> I say this is NOT freedom.

So do I.

> > R> The usual arguments apply.  Don't like it - patch it. Patches are
> > R> welcome.

I wondered how long it would take for that phrase to emerge, so everyone 
in a position of control can hide behind it yet again.

> > Say, "can you translate Odissey from ancient greek to Rovigo
> > dialect?"
>
> Nope. But I can pay to someone who does, assuming that I want such
> translation. Same as everyone else.
>
> > That is a petty example (if you can, my kudos!), patching is not a
> > thing this easy to do. You have to be a programmer good enought,
> > then you have to understando how the program works and how to change
> > it. Then you have to write the changes and possibly test it against
> > existing test cases, it requires skills, it requires time.
>
> ... and there are those who did it already. But then again, for me
> GNOME project went off-rails (usability POV, not a technical one) long
> time ago. Patching the GNOME to restore sane behaviour is harder than
> avoiding it.

+1000!

Where the heck in its confusing menu's can I find a tab supporting 
terminal so I can get something done? Go ahead, find it, my coffee needs 
to cool anyway..

> > Gnome goal is noble, to let unskilled users use it.
>
> I recall hearing similar rhetoric 25 years ago. Some Operating System
> who's name starts with big W, and it had 4-color flag for logo. Some
> say that rise in popularity of said OS involved an unspecified amount
> of unconventional off-market negotiations and a bag of dirty tricks.

We all heard the same "sermon" and ran like hell because we already were 
familiar with both their market controlling efforts and this same bag of 
dirty tricks a bar of good soap has little effect because you simply 
cannot make them palatable in a free market.

I see Linus is drifting back to his older style, issuing the desktop 
people a whipping they are in need of over the weekend, saying 90% of 
why linux doesn't control the desktop is that there is not a 
standardized, one size fits all because it can do all things desktop. 

> > But there are other users, not this unskilled but lacking, who
> > knows, time and wishing nevertheless that some option was available,
> > say, running WindowMaker on top of Gnome daemons.
>
> A neat idea BTW.
>
> > And for those there should be at least a good document about doing
> > it.
>
> Agreed.

+10 or more.

> > And not leaving them being forced to do something like a "triple
> > backward sommersault" for doing these changes.
>
> The way things go right now with the GNOME all those impressive tricks
> will be obsolete. Unless, of course, some kind soul moves that "sway"
> thing from the experimental to sid.
> Because AFAIK there are only four "Wayland window managers" (it's
> techically incorrect to call them that, I know), and only two of them
> made into buster so far (GNOME's mutter and weston, the reference
> one).
>
> Reco

I'm not advocating that TDE is THAT desired standardized desktop, but so 
far it its  given me the tools to get the job done AND ITS STABLE. TDE 
is a fork of kde at the 3.5 level, with litterally thousands of its bugs 
fixed, something KDE has steadfastly refused to do unless it outright 
crashed the machine in the life of KDE since 1.0.

So let me say this: If I can't run a desktop I am familiar with, AND 
productive with, because wayland won't run it, theres always mke2fs.

This is still wheezy, because except for firefox, it Just Works.  Theres 
another 2T drive with the latest stretch installed on it in this machine 
and I was in the process of moving my stuff to it with the intention of 
updating to Buster when it was declared stable. That came to a 
screeching halt when I read that synaptic was gone from buster. What I 
do next is still open for discussion. 3 of the 4 other machine tool 
driving machines on my network are also on wheezy, with the 4th, an 
r-pi-3b running a 3/4 ton lathe, running jessie, 

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Gian Uberto Lauri]

> "R" == Reco   writes:


R> As we saw two weeks ago, the decision to run GNOME on Wayland
R> backfired at synaptic. To rephrase, why bother running X if there
R> are no applications left to run on X?

Because I like and I use a lot remote display. Because I prefer it
user program.

If you have only your machine, having or not having "network
transparency" does not matter. If you live in a network, it matters.

>> Say, "can you translate Odissey from ancient greek to Rovigo
>> dialect?"

R> Nope. But I can pay to someone who does, assuming that I want such
R> translation. Same as everyone else.

Theoretically true. I have no idea on how well did perform "feature
rewards"

R> ... and there are those who did it already. But then again, for me
R> GNOME project went off-rails (usability POV, not a technical one)
R> long time ago. Patching the GNOME to restore sane behaviour is
R> harder than avoiding it.

And that's usually my option.

>> Gnome goal is noble, to let unskilled users use it.

R> I recall hearing similar rhetoric 25 years ago. Some Operating
R> System who's name starts with big W, and it had 4-color flag for
R> logo. Some say that rise in popularity of said OS involved an
R> unspecified amount of unconventional off-market negotiations and a
R> bag of dirty tricks.

And a band of rebels gathering around a penguin totem in the name of
freedom. 

Gnome at least should not chain them in proprietary software.

R> The way things go right now with the GNOME all those impressive
R> tricks will be obsolete. Unless, of course, some kind soul moves
R> that "sway" thing from the experimental to sid.  Because AFAIK
R> there are only four "Wayland window managers" (it's techically
R> incorrect to call them that, I know), and only two of them made
R> into buster so far (GNOME's mutter and weston, the reference one).

Add one more reason to use X.

I use WindowMaker. My wife Afterstep maybe.

Our next project is re-building a new box that plays videos[*] in
sequence. The box has to play a video, them a short slideshow, then a
video...

Proto version is my laptop. 4 kg and lately has some issues with booting.

First production version, made by my wife, used a custom AfterStep
configuration to create the interface to start the loop, stop the loop
and stop the machine. Sadly HW died.

Next version should add the feature to add movies and pics from your
phone over Wifi. Recreating the UI because there is no configurable
window manager available is... ahem... undesired.

Give us X, mplayer, the slideshow module from xscreensaver and some django
stuff, and we are ready to run the box.

-- 
 /\   ___Ubuntu: ancient
/___/\_|_|\_|__|___Gian Uberto Lauri_   African word
  //--\| | \|  |   Integralista GNUslamicomeaning "I can
\/ coltivatore diretto di software   not install
 già sistemista a tempo (altrui) perso...Debian"

Warning: gnome-config-daemon considered more dangerous than GOTO

P.S.

[*] for those curious about which videos, here are some:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoamkaBjQ3o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGX3wCTAc5U 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdluU1ROpjI

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Jude DaShiell]

On Tue, 16 Apr 2019, Keith Bainbridge wrote:

> Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2019 02:54:02
> From: Keith Bainbridge 
> To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> Subject: A call to drop gnome
> Resent-Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2019 07:12:08 + (UTC)
> Resent-From: debian-user@lists.debian.org
>
> Good afternoon
>
>
> I've copied 2 bits from the discussion on synaptic and adding my 2 bobs' worth
> towards the next review of whether gnome remains the default desktop.
>
>
>
> On 15/4/19 9:31 pm, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:> Because GNOME. GNOME's upstream
> said their word loud and clear, and that
> > word is - 'thou shall use Wayland for it is our favorite toy now'.
>
>
>
> On 16/4/19 12:23 am, Jonathan Dowland wrote:>
> > The decision to ship GNOME as the default desktop is regularly
> > revisited: And
> > if a future GNOME release dropped X support altogether, you can be sure
> > that
> > would be a factor in the re-evaluation that would follow.
>
>
> I've never been a fan of gnome, and I can only say that in the beginning it
> was simply because I didn't yet know about themes etc. I settled for KDE, in
> the 1990's.  I now know that it was the slowest of all, but I found my way
> around easiest.
>
> I changed desktops several times over the years, settling on Mate since about
> 2014.
>
> I'm always looking for a better way, so gave gnome a run. It lasted until I
> found that I am not meant to be able to put the tool-bar where I like it. It
> is possible, but...   Smacks of os/x desktop; some flexibility, but
> not everything is changeable. (Gore, even MS allows me to move the tool-bar.)
>
> Now Tomas quips about gnome is insisting that we like a new video process,
> just because the team have decided to like it lots.
>
> I say this is NOT freedom.
>
> Of course new users accept the defaults on a fresh install - I guess that like
> me 20 years ago, they presume the defaults will work best.
>
>
> So, I am asking that gnome be dropped as an installation option (not just as
> the default desktop) until they encourage freedom. Will I ever try it again
> when it is a truly free?  Probably - in the name of looking for a better way.
> Never know - there maybe something that changes my computing life totally.
>
>
> By the bye, it's 16:52, and Autumn in my back yard. There are leaves all over
> our footpaths.
>
>
>

-- 

Wayland if what I read on debian-accessibility list is correct has
unsolved screen reader accessibility problems.  Since I came into Linux
mostly using the command line such a switch would have a limited impact
since when I do use any part of the graphical user interface environment
it's to do things the command line environment can't.  I have X with mate
running on this machine now and a case in point came up yesterday.
Logging into youtube-viewer has to be done with a graphical browser since
the command line alternatives do not do javascript.  Now the log in url
google requires is over 200 characters long which is no picnic typing.
So with the help of others on the blinux-list I came up with a set of
instructions to get this done.  For me, only possible since X works as
well as it now does.  So unless or until Wayland gets its accessibility
act cleaned up, removal of X will not be a minor event for me and others
in the screen reader accessibility user community.  Linux is getting more
and more like Microsoft in this respect.  Those who used to use MSdos 6.22
and remember what happened afterwards with MSDOS 7.0 with Microsoft and
how Microsoft mishandled that know what I'm talking about here.  Earlier
much in Linux was based on real choices users could make now Linus
Torvalds is arguing for standardization of the linux desktop.  Earlier I
worked for the Navy before NMCI came into existence and that was back in
the day when depending on what base you called home you'd likely be
running different software and different operating systems.  That
non-standardization from a security perspective probably made it more
difficult for the malware writers to do their work.  With NMCI and what
NMCI emanated it's either a specific version of windows or Linux for the
really important equipment system-wide.

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Reco]

Hi.

On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 10:38:38AM +, Gian Uberto Lauri wrote:
> > "R" == Reco   writes:

I *have* to object to this ☺ In C this comparison equals false.
Have you meant '"R" = Reco' (i.e. assignment)?


> R> No. What I wrote that for several years you had the possibility to
> R> run GNOME on Wayland. And it will be the default in the next stable
> R> Debian.  Because (and here you're correct) - upstream wants that
> R> everyone use the GNOME that way.
> 
> As long as using X is supported without requiring triple backward
> sommersault to install it, fine. Almost fine. Because HW support stuff
> should be independent from the user front end.

As we saw two weeks ago, the decision to run GNOME on Wayland backfired
at synaptic. To rephrase, why bother running X if there are no
applications left to run on X?


> >> I say this is NOT freedom.
> 
> R> The usual arguments apply.  Don't like it - patch it. Patches are
> R> welcome. 
> 
> Say, "can you translate Odissey from ancient greek to Rovigo dialect?"

Nope. But I can pay to someone who does, assuming that I want such
translation. Same as everyone else.


> That is a petty example (if you can, my kudos!), patching is not a
> thing this easy to do. You have to be a programmer good enought, then
> you have to understando how the program works and how to change
> it. Then you have to write the changes and possibly test it against
> existing test cases, it requires skills, it requires time.

... and there are those who did it already. But then again, for me GNOME
project went off-rails (usability POV, not a technical one) long time
ago. Patching the GNOME to restore sane behaviour is harder than
avoiding it.


> Gnome goal is noble, to let unskilled users use it.

I recall hearing similar rhetoric 25 years ago. Some Operating System
who's name starts with big W, and it had 4-color flag for logo. Some
say that rise in popularity of said OS involved an unspecified amount of
unconventional off-market negotiations and a bag of dirty tricks.


> But there are other users, not this unskilled but lacking, who knows,
> time and wishing nevertheless that some option was available, say,
> running WindowMaker on top of Gnome daemons.

A neat idea BTW.


> And for those there should be at least a good document about doing
> it.

Agreed.


> And not leaving them being forced to do something like a "triple
> backward sommersault" for doing these changes.

The way things go right now with the GNOME all those impressive tricks
will be obsolete. Unless, of course, some kind soul moves that "sway"
thing from the experimental to sid.
Because AFAIK there are only four "Wayland window managers" (it's
techically incorrect to call them that, I know), and only two of them
made into buster so far (GNOME's mutter and weston, the reference one).

Reco

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Gian Uberto Lauri]

> "AS" == Andy Smith  writes:

AS> Hello, On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 04:54:02PM +1000, Keith Bainbridge
AS> wrote:
>> I say this is NOT freedom.
>> 
>> Of course new users accept the defaults on a fresh install - I
>> guess that like me 20 years ago, they presume the defaults will
>> work best.
>> 
>> 
>> So, I am asking that gnome be dropped as an installation option
>> (not just as the default desktop) until they encourage freedom.

AS> Just so I understand correctly, is this a serious request to
AS> remove the freedom of the current GNOME user base to install it,
AS> in order to encourage the GNOME project to be more free?

I think that is more "let there an option to have a desktop machine
without gnome as default". Something like this:

"Gnome Desktop (suggested)"
"Desktop box w/o gnome (brave experienced users"). 

The second option should probably ask for more options.

-- 
 /\   ___Ubuntu: ancient
/___/\_|_|\_|__|___Gian Uberto Lauri_   African word
  //--\| | \|  |   Integralista GNUslamicomeaning "I can
\/ coltivatore diretto di software   not install
 già sistemista a tempo (altrui) perso...Debian"

Warning: gnome-config-daemon considered more dangerous than GOTO

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Gian Uberto Lauri]

> "R" == Reco   writes:

R> No. What I wrote that for several years you had the possibility to
R> run GNOME on Wayland. And it will be the default in the next stable
R> Debian.  Because (and here you're correct) - upstream wants that
R> everyone use the GNOME that way.

As long as using X is supported without requiring triple backward
sommersault to install it, fine. Almost fine. Because HW support stuff
should be independent from the user front end.

>> I say this is NOT freedom.

R> The usual arguments apply.  Don't like it - patch it. Patches are
R> welcome. 

Say, "can you translate Odissey from ancient greek to Rovigo dialect?"

That is a petty example (if you can, my kudos!), patching is not a
thing this easy to do. You have to be a programmer good enought, then
you have to understando how the program works and how to change
it. Then you have to write the changes and possibly test it against
existing test cases, it requires skills, it requires time.

Gnome goal is noble, to let unskilled users use it. But there are
other users, not this unskilled but lacking, who knows, time and
wishing nevertheless that some option was available, say, running
WindowMaker on top of Gnome daemons. And for those there should be at
least a good document about doing it. And not leaving them being
forced to do something like a "triple backward sommersault" for doing
these changes.

This is more a "distribution level" choice, like "install Debian
Desktop something like a (better and improved) 1999 machine", at
least with the configuration working the old way.

It is not easy, it requires resources too. But these are my two cents.

-- 
 /\   ___Ubuntu: ancient
/___/\_|_|\_|__|___Gian Uberto Lauri_   African word
  //--\| | \|  |   Integralista GNUslamicomeaning "I can
\/ coltivatore diretto di software   not install
 già sistemista a tempo (altrui) perso...Debian"

Warning: gnome-config-daemon considered more dangerous than GOTO

Re: A call to drop gnome

[tomas]

On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 04:54:02PM +1000, Keith Bainbridge wrote:
> Good afternoon

[...]

> On 15/4/19 9:31 pm, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:> Because GNOME. GNOME's
> upstream said their word loud and clear, and that
> > word is - 'thou shall use Wayland for it is our favorite toy now'.

As Reco said, this wasn't me.

> I've never been a fan of gnome [...]

Similar for me (well, I was a fan shortly up to Gnome 2).

[...]

> Now Tomas quips about gnome is insisting that we like a new video
> process, just because the team have decided to like it lots.

This sentence doesn't make much sense to me. What do you want to
say there?

> I say this is NOT freedom.

Hm.

> So, I am asking that gnome be dropped as an installation option (not
> just as the default desktop) [...]

Thanks $DEITY you aren't taking decisions. It seems to me that your
"freedom" would be much more restrictive that what we have now.

Hey. Debian's not perfect, by a long stretch. But anyone can
contribute. Forbidding to package a piece of free software,
as you suggest above, won't fly in Debian, and this is a Good
Thing.

What have you packaged for Debian?

> By the bye, it's 16:52, and Autumn in my back yard. There are leaves
> all over our footpaths.

Amen.

Cheers
-- tomás


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Andy Smith]

Hello,

On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 04:54:02PM +1000, Keith Bainbridge wrote:
> I say this is NOT freedom.
> 
> Of course new users accept the defaults on a fresh install - I guess that
> like me 20 years ago, they presume the defaults will work best.
> 
> 
> So, I am asking that gnome be dropped as an installation option (not just as
> the default desktop) until they encourage freedom.

Just so I understand correctly, is this a serious request to remove
the freedom of the current GNOME user base to install it, in order
to encourage the GNOME project to be more free?

As in, it is not enough that an ignorant GNOME user might stumble
across something they can't configure and decide to explore other
desktop environments: they must be prevented from initially using
GNOME, instead being forcibly introduced to some other DE and only
able to use GNOME by installing it later with the package manager?

Perhaps I have misunderstood, but if I haven't, which DE do you
think should be the new default? Would it be Mate as you use now, or
some other?

Cheers,
Andy

-- 
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

Re: A call to drop gnome

[Reco]

Hi.

On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 04:54:02PM +1000, Keith Bainbridge wrote:
> On 15/4/19 9:31 pm, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:> Because GNOME. GNOME's upstream
> said their word loud and clear, and that
> > word is - 'thou shall use Wayland for it is our favorite toy now'.

I wrote it, in reply to Thomas e-mail. Please watch who you quote.


> Now Tomas quips about gnome is insisting that we like a new video process,
> just because the team have decided to like it lots.

No. What I wrote that for several years you had the possibility to run
GNOME on Wayland. And it will be the default in the next stable Debian.
Because (and here you're correct) - upstream wants that everyone use the
GNOME that way.

You have the ability to run GNOME over X. For now. I predicted that such
ability may disappear in unspecified future (probably - years). Because
GNOME upstream is (in)famous for feature removal.


> I say this is NOT freedom.

The usual arguments apply.
Don't like it - patch it. Patches are welcome. They have the commit bit
- you do not. Etc.
And yes, there are some who did exactly that - Mate DE, Cinnamon DE to
name a few examples.


> So, I am asking that gnome be dropped as an installation option (not
> just as the default desktop) until they encourage freedom.

There's an appropriate place for such wishes, it's called
https://bugs.debian.org.

Reco

A call to drop gnome

[Keith Bainbridge]

Good afternoon


I've copied 2 bits from the discussion on synaptic and adding my 2 bobs' 
worth towards the next review of whether gnome remains the default desktop.




On 15/4/19 9:31 pm, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:> Because GNOME. GNOME's 
upstream said their word loud and clear, and that

> word is - 'thou shall use Wayland for it is our favorite toy now'.



On 16/4/19 12:23 am, Jonathan Dowland wrote:>
> The decision to ship GNOME as the default desktop is regularly
> revisited: And
> if a future GNOME release dropped X support altogether, you can be sure
> that
> would be a factor in the re-evaluation that would follow.


I've never been a fan of gnome, and I can only say that in the beginning 
it was simply because I didn't yet know about themes etc. I settled for 
KDE, in the 1990's.  I now know that it was the slowest of all, but I 
found my way around easiest.


I changed desktops several times over the years, settling on Mate since 
about 2014.


I'm always looking for a better way, so gave gnome a run. It lasted 
until I found that I am not meant to be able to put the tool-bar where I 
like it. It is possible, but...   Smacks of os/x desktop; some 
flexibility, but not everything is changeable. (Gore, even MS allows me 
to move the tool-bar.)


Now Tomas quips about gnome is insisting that we like a new video 
process, just because the team have decided to like it lots.


I say this is NOT freedom.

Of course new users accept the defaults on a fresh install - I guess 
that like me 20 years ago, they presume the defaults will work best.



So, I am asking that gnome be dropped as an installation option (not 
just as the default desktop) until they encourage freedom. Will I ever 
try it again when it is a truly free?  Probably - in the name of looking 
for a better way.  Never know - there maybe something that changes my 
computing life totally.



By the bye, it's 16:52, and Autumn in my back yard. There are leaves all 
over our footpaths.



--
Keith Bainbridge

ke1th3...@gmail.com
+61 (0)447 667 468