Ubuntu 10.10 To Not Use GNOME Shell By Default

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu 10.10 To Not Use GNOME Shell By Default

Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu and its parent company Canonical, has answered a number of questions via IRC from the Ubuntu community today during the Ubuntu Open Week. The first question asked to Mark was whether the GNOME Shell would be used by default in Ubuntu 10.10 (a.k.a. the Maverick Meerkat) and here is the response:..

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=ODIxNg

[thefirstm]

cue the flamewar

[ethana2]

I hate how ubuntu wikis are https, I can never see them from this HTC Incredible or my dad's Droid.

[cl333r]

Reminds me of the "new Ubuntu theme" which has been postponed several times with the "next time for sure" motto. Gnome 3 was about to be released last year, but since then "next time for sure, we'll have time to fix more bugs". Obviously the time schedules and plans have been unrealistic right from the beginning. Remember how Gnome devs planned by 2010 to have 10% world market share? haha

[V!NCENT]

2014 might be realistic. No I am not kidding.

[unimatrix]

Good. Gnome shell is pointless. I vote never to use it at all.

[mugginz]

If there's one benefit to come out of the KDE 4.0 debacle it's the clear demonstration that some things (especially base infrastructure) shouldn't be deployed too early.

While I'm keen to have Gnome 3 for my desktop I'm not interested in using it day to day till it's ready and am glad it'll not be deployed as default too early. Because KDE 3.5 had some fundamental flaws for my particular uses and Gnome at the time wasn't very compelling to me, I was one of the many early adopters of KDE 4.0 and paid for that mistake with much instability and quirkiness. I think the Ubuntu guy's have rightly delayed it until 11.04 at least. It's going to save a lot of damage to the Ubuntu brand, that's for sure.

[KAMiKAZOW]

If there's one benefit to come out of the KDE 4.0 debacle it's the clear demonstration that some things (especially base infrastructure) shouldn't be deployed too early.

I don't know what you're talking about KDE 4.0.
All major Linux distributions except Fedora kept KDE 3.5 and did not ship 4.0 by default. Kubuntu had an unsupported Technology Preview with 4.0, but it was clearly marked as such. Similar for openSUSE and Debian.
If you chose to use a technology preview and override the defaults, it's your fault. Don't whine about it then.

As for Gnome 3.0: The base infrastructure is still basically the same as Gnome 2.x.
Gnome 3.0 is not a massive rewrite.
It's still the same old stuff, just will a new desktop panel.

[mugginz]

I don't know what you're talking about KDE 4.0.

Well there's certainly a story to be told regarding the wisdom of giving a technology preview a .0 release number but this has been discussed to death in other places. Anyone who sees value in doing that isn't going to be able to take on board my view of that so probably doesn't bear discussion here.

All major Linux distributions except Fedora kept KDE 3.5 and did not ship 4.0 by default. Kubuntu had an unsupported Technology Preview with 4.0, but it was clearly marked as such. Similar for openSUSE and Debian.

Yes, in Kubuntu 8.04 I believe. For Kubutnu 8.10 there was KDE 4.1.2 which was better the the .0 version, but was still far from usable in many peoples opinion. Many who are prepared to put up with breakage will defend 4.1 and 4.2 but for those who use there computers to get some work done instead of experiment with OS's, they were still unimpressed. The broken releases of the KDE 4 series weren't just restricted to tech preview distros.

If you chose to use a technology preview and override the defaults, it's your fault. Don't whine about it then.

If you're going to try to argue that the KDE 4 series was viable before 4.3 (some will even argue not until 4.4) then you probably have fairly flexible usage requirements I'd say.

As for Gnome 3.0: The base infrastructure is still basically the same as Gnome 2.x.
Gnome 3.0 is not a massive rewrite.
It's still the same old stuff, just will a new desktop panel.

But dosn't mean there's not breakage in it, and when your desktop environment is buggy it will usually impact the day to day things you use a computer for.

[pdusen]

If you're going to try to argue that the KDE 4 series was viable before 4.3 (some will even argue not until 4.4) then you probably have fairly flexible usage requirements I'd say.

Some of us would argue it's STILL unusable. I know that I personally can't get the plasma desktop to work correctly in my monitor setup (dual-monitor, different sizes). It might switch resolution correctly, but it's glitches galore once it does.

Anyway, on the subject of Gnome Shell, I think it's fantastic and can't wait to see it used as the default.

That said, I think Mark is making the right choice here. I know from personal experience that Gnome Shell currently only works in very narrow circumstances; it seems to only work when video settings out-of-the-box are already perfect, and in my experience it won't run properly at all with fglrx.