The Future Of GNOME: Very Optimistic?

[rrohbeck]

Fun fact: We already had a "rock solid desktop environment" - GNOME 2.2x/2.3x. It's sad to see how things changed.

Servers generally have unaccelerated graphics with *old* graphics graphic controllers and IPMI and I don't see that changing any time soon.
Which means that RHEL will not use Gnome3 in its current state.
I expect RedHat/Fedora to switch to Mate pretty soon.
And then Gnome will have a bright future indeed.

[ninez]

Servers generally have unaccelerated graphics with *old* graphics graphic controllers and IPMI and I don't see that changing any time soon.
Which means that RHEL will not use Gnome3 in its current state.

You mean that you don't think they will use Gnome-Shell (which is the part of gnome 3 that needs a decent PGU). I doubt RHEL and friends will be using GS anytime soon, but when they do switch to Gnome3 - there is no reason why they can't use fallback/classic mode.

I expect RedHat/Fedora to switch to Mate pretty soon.
And then Gnome will have a bright future indeed.

That seems more like fantasy than reality. While it is true that MATE will be available in the repos (for fedora), as far as i can tell they don't have plans of making it the default (anymore than fedora having plans to make Unity the default). I also don't see how you believe 'gnome will have a bright future' - with MATE - when that project doesn't have anything to do with gnome, other than being a fork of deprecated Gnome software.

[bkor]

Servers generally have unaccelerated graphics with *old* graphics graphic controllers and IPMI and I don't see that changing any time soon.
Which means that RHEL will not use Gnome3 in its current state.

Using a GUI on servers? Why? Even on Windows that is somewhat frowned upon these days.

In any case, fallback mode exists, intel is including good enough graphics (you don't need much) and llvmpipe works well enough.

[rrohbeck]

You mean that you don't think they will use Gnome-Shell (which is the part of gnome 3 that needs a decent PGU). I doubt RHEL and friends will be using GS anytime soon, but when they do switch to Gnome3 - there is no reason why they can't use fallback/classic mode.



That seems more like fantasy than reality. While it is true that MATE will be available in the repos (for fedora), as far as i can tell they don't have plans of making it the default (anymore than fedora having plans to make Unity the default). I also don't see how you believe 'gnome will have a bright future' - with MATE - when that project doesn't have anything to do with gnome, other than being a fork of deprecated Gnome software.

I think Mate with Gtk3 and some selectively merged Gnome3 changes/apps would be the right thing to do for RedHat.
Gnome3 classic is unusable at the moment. *Maybe* if they put some real work into it and re-introduce the features they cut out (and get rid of the non-features.)

[rrohbeck]

Using a GUI on servers? Why? Even on Windows that is somewhat frowned upon these days.

In any case, fallback mode exists, intel is including good enough graphics (you don't need much) and llvmpipe works well enough.

Intel graphics? Modern servers have IPMI which excludes built-in Intel graphics at the moment AFAIK.
How about Matrox G200? ATI ES1000?

[liam]

"Christian sees advancing the Linux desktop as working on the underlying components rather than just hacking on the GNOME Shell."

that is exactly how i best see gnome improving ~ GS is great (for those who think so) and so is every other Shell or DE built on Gnome, but it is the underlying stuff that should be focused on, as the underlying stuff is what will make gnome better and better. I also like Christian's critique (in his blog post) about 'duplicated efforts', using Gnome's Online Accounts vs. Ubuntu's online accounts as an example.



Speak for yourself, rather than asserting your opinion as 'fact'... i prefer Gnome 3 (not using GS) over the old Gnome stack any day of the week

As usual I agree with you. Gnome made huge strides with the move from 2->3. Gtk itself has seen big improvements (like the rather long running project width-for-height), and gdk looks to become more modern by incorporating clutter (the actual way this will be achieved seems unclear, though). Cairo is always improving, and harfbuzz might officially replace the pango shaper. The strength of Gnome is that it is built in a unix like way. The problem for devs is that it has been built in a unix like way but not well enough abstracted so a dev ends up having to understand various libraries that were not developed with tight interoperability in mind. That is the advantage Qt brings. Of course Qt is rather monolithic and it makes the most sense to stay in that ecosystem rather than search out best of breed components. The later is something Gnome should be striving for (the best example I can think of would be offering up skia rather than cairo).
Regarding duplication of effort, you mentioned goa and ubuntu online, but apparently kde has its own version as well. Does that not seem like a good fdo project? I would love to see fdo work on more standards so we can really reduce this wasted design effort and focus on implementations, or even standalone xplatform .so's if at all possible.

[ninez]

I think Mate with Gtk3 and some selectively merged Gnome3 changes/apps would be the right thing to do for RedHat.
Gnome3 classic is unusable at the moment. *Maybe* if they put some real work into it and re-introduce the features they cut out (and get rid of the non-features.)

explain this idea of being 'unusable'?!? I could log into classic mode right now, and be able to use my computer just fine - comparably to if i was to use Gnome2 in CentOS at work. but interestingly as someone else pointed out - why do you need gnome on your server? (ie: i never use a GUI on my servers, nor does any other anyone else that i know).

I think it would make more sense for Redhat to stick with Gnome3 and not be concerned about Mate Desktop, at all. :\ sure, if there is a feature or two that may be needed, re-implement them or provide an alternative. What is even the point of porting Mate to gtk3 - to duplicate work that was already done over the last couple of years? with the time they spent fixing build errors, renaming software to stop conflicts, while also making small changes to nautilus - they could have written the missing components they wanted for Gnome 3 and had time to spare ~ Fork gnome-panel, add a few missing features, etc. Mate at best is a band-aid.

I highly doubt we will see Redhat take it on, rather than improving Gnome 3 for their purposes.

[bkor]

Intel graphics? Modern servers have IPMI which excludes built-in Intel graphics at the moment AFAIK.
How about Matrox G200? ATI ES1000?

Could you first answer the whole post instead of being selective.

Why use a GUI on a server? Why ignore llvmpipe? Why ignore fallback mode?

[finalzone]

I think Mate with Gtk3 and some selectively merged Gnome3 changes/apps would be the right thing to do for RedHat.
Gnome3 classic is unusable at the moment. *Maybe* if they put some real work into it and re-introduce the features they cut out (and get rid of the non-features.)

MATE is a dead-software walking. All these times working on a depreciated desktop environment could be done on gnome-shell extensions, some of them fully replicate legacy gnome-panel by taking advantage of GTK3. Gnome-shell was designed to be quasi barebone which can be extended. Panel configuration is in progress, meanwhile gnome-tweak-tools does a decent job to provide more customization.

[1c3d0g]

Which is why Cinnamon is taking the bull by its horns and leading with GTK+3. If you don't like GNOME, give Cinnamon a try. It's quite tasty, actually.