Re: The Apology of GNOME 3 (an analogy to the Apology of Socrates by Plato)

[Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl>]

On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 09:58:36AM -0500, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:
> >GNOME 2 experience can be achieved with GNOME 3 fallback mode.
> 
> One feature of GNOME 2 which a number of existing users took
> advantage of was "configurability".  GNOME3 is less configurable,
> __including__ that GNOME 3 'fallback mode'.

The same happened in almost each GNOME 2.x release. The redesign of e.g.
gnome-control-center + wish for an tweak tool was "planned" (wanted by
maintainers) for various years (documented in various bugreports). The
talk about GNOME 3 triggered the work to actually happen. It could've
also been happened during a GNOME 2.x release, but due to "3" talk it is
more logical to do it at a 2->3 version change.

> In GNOME2 I could use the Right-Mouse-Button within the panels to
> move icons around (or delete them);  I could also add panels, or
> change a panel's thickness.

You can still mouse icons around. To fix a bug (the one where icons are
randomly moved), instead of placing stuff anywhere you like, you can now
only align it to left/middle/right. This to solve that "screen
resolution change bug messes up gnome-panel" bug.

And I haven't used the version 3 of the panel, but I'm pretty sure you
can still add/remove panels and so on. Did you press alt?

> Some developers might not be considering such features to be part of
> 'the GNOME 2 experience' -- but in my opinion they were for some
> users an important part of "arranging what I look at to be the way I
> like it" -- resulting in a pleasurable sense of "GNOME 2 gives me
> the facilities that fit into the way I do things".  The absence of
> such customizable details is what leaves me with less pleasure when
> working with GNOME 3.

The examples you gave for the gnome panel I cannot relate to; though I
do have to test. Some settings (e.g. focus-follows-mouse) have been
moved to gnome-tweak-tool instead of being visible by default.

But it is an interesting perspective. Though I just don't see the logic
in the need to support GNOME 2, while nothing should change.
-- 
Regards,
Olav