[opensuse-gnome] What is the top 5 things that should be fixed/improved for GNOME in openSUSE 11.2?

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Magnus Boman

12 Mar 2009 12 Mar '09

23:32

Hello, Since we have 8 months before the 11.2 release, would it be possible to compile a list with the top 5 most annoying things in GNOME/openSUSE and try to fix them? We obviously need to be realistic about these goals. Issues might include stuff like, "Panel should be at the top of the screen", "We should use the default GNOME menu", "Tomboy should not be started by default" etc? Other annoying things might not be as simple as I just mentioned but, you get the idea... Also, please don't include PA in this discussion... It's being discussed/fixed elsewhere :-) Cheers, Magnus -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org

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Wolfgang Rosenauer

13 Mar 13 Mar

08:05

Hi, Magnus Boman schrieb:

...

Since we have 8 months before the 11.2 release, would it be possible to compile a list with the top 5 most annoying things in GNOME/openSUSE and try to fix them? We obviously need to be realistic about these goals. Issues might include stuff like, "Panel should be at the top of the screen", "We should use the default GNOME menu", "Tomboy should not be started by default" etc? Other annoying things might not be as simple as I just mentioned but, you get the idea...

Fix printing: my own example is gimp (but I could imagine that it affects more gtk apps). http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=564051 https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=465213 Probably it's gimp-only what I doubt but an app like gimp which can't print because you can't set the page size is completely useless. And there is one other thing which drives me mad about metacity's behaviour: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=231334 And what annoys me most is that I don't expect that any of the above is getting fixed in the forseeable future since nobody cared in the past. Please note that I'm only a 10% Gnome user (when travelling on the laptop) mostly because of those things which make Gnome unusable for effective work for me. (and its slowness as just using Alt-F2 to bring up the "command line app launcher" (however it is called) is taking ages. To sum up, Gnome appears quite unpolished in usability (I always thought Gnome was designed to be easy and intuitive but quite some dialogs I just don't understand fully (check the powermanagement dialogs and probably run them in german since there are more options which describe the same thing in text so it's the highest confusing dialog possible).

...

Also, please don't include PA in this discussion... It's being discussed/fixed elsewhere :-)

Fix PulseAudio <scnr> Wolfgang -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org

Michael Meeks

10:01

On Fri, 2009-03-13 at 09:05 +0100, Wolfgang Rosenauer wrote:

...

And there is one other thing which drives me mad about metacity's behaviour: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=231334

Grief yes, I just started to notice this, and the current behaviour is a plague on people with a lot of workspaces; it's a "hunt the firefox" problem :-) [ where has it gone now ... ]. It'd be wonderful to have a fix :-) Regards, Michael. -- michael.meeks@novell.com <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org

Sankar P

10:15

On Fri, 2009-03-13 at 09:05 +0100, Wolfgang Rosenauer wrote:

...

and its slowness as just using Alt-F2 to bring up the "command line app launcher" (however it is called) is taking ages.

(off-topic) Use Gnome-Do . It is an addictive application, which has made me kick out the start menu and the need for alt+f2 -- Sankar -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org

Nagappan A

10:29

New subject: [opensuse-gnome] What is the top 5 things that should be fixed/improved for GNOME in openSUSE 11.2?

Hello Magnus, On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 4:32 PM, Magnus Boman wrote:

...

Hello,

Since we have 8 months before the 11.2 release, would it be possible to compile a list with the top 5 most annoying things in GNOME/openSUSE and try to fix them? We obviously need to be realistic about these goals. Issues might include stuff like, "Panel should be at the top of the screen", "We should use the default GNOME menu", "Tomboy should not be started by default" etc? Other annoying things might not be as simple as I just mentioned but, you get the idea...

It will be nice to have just one repository for all gnome applications to the end user, apart from the one available default with openSUSE. Say something like Contrib repository. This repository should have multi-media or any package that gnome user is interested in. Thanks Nagappan

...

Also, please don't include PA in this discussion... It's being discussed/fixed elsewhere :-)

Cheers, Magnus

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org

-- Linux Desktop (GUI Application) Testing Project - http://ldtp.freedesktop.org http://nagappanal.blogspot.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org

Magnus Boman

13:19

Naggapan, Fair suggestion. My only thing then is, what apps do one expect to have installed? And what apps do you think we're missing from either the GNOME repo and/or Contrib? Cheers, Magnus On Fri, 2009-03-13 at 03:29 -0700, Nagappan A wrote:

...

Hello Magnus,

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 4:32 PM, Magnus Boman wrote:

...
Hello,

Since we have 8 months before the 11.2 release, would it be possible to compile a list with the top 5 most annoying things in GNOME/openSUSE and try to fix them? We obviously need to be realistic about these goals. Issues might include stuff like, "Panel should be at the top of the screen", "We should use the default GNOME menu", "Tomboy should not be started by default" etc? Other annoying things might not be as simple as I just mentioned but, you get the idea...

It will be nice to have just one repository for all gnome applications to the end user, apart from the one available default with openSUSE. Say something like Contrib repository. This repository should have multi-media or any package that gnome user is interested in.

Thanks Nagappan

...
Also, please don't include PA in this discussion... It's being discussed/fixed elsewhere :-)

Cheers, Magnus

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org

-- Linux Desktop (GUI Application) Testing Project - http://ldtp.freedesktop.org http://nagappanal.blogspot.com

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org

Nagappan A

15:06

New subject: [opensuse-gnome] What is the top 5 things that should be fixed/improved for GNOME in openSUSE 11.2?

Hello Magnus, On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 6:19 AM, Magnus Boman wrote:

...

Naggapan,

Fair suggestion. My only thing then is, what apps do one expect to have installed? And what apps do you think we're missing from either the GNOME repo and/or Contrib?

We have openSUSE build service, that's really awesome and other repositories mentioned over here http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_YaST_Package_Repositories, http://en.opensuse.org/Package_Repositories I have some end user scenario: Now in gnome itself, we have 2 repositories available (stable and contrib) listed in the above link. If the user wants to add some other package, which exist in another repository, then that also has to be added explicitly by the user to the list of repositories, correct ? If something works out of the box with just adding one repository will be good. Take a case of Ubuntu, most of the time just regular repository should be fine. In some cases, you may need to add just (max) 1 external repository. That ease the process for end users. Thanks Nagappan

...

Cheers, Magnus

On Fri, 2009-03-13 at 03:29 -0700, Nagappan A wrote:

...
Hello Magnus,

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 4:32 PM, Magnus Boman wrote:

...
Hello,

Since we have 8 months before the 11.2 release, would it be possible to compile a list with the top 5 most annoying things in GNOME/openSUSE and try to fix them? We obviously need to be realistic about these goals. Issues might include stuff like, "Panel should be at the top of the screen", "We should use the default GNOME menu", "Tomboy should not be started by default" etc? Other annoying things might not be as simple as I just mentioned but, you get the idea...

It will be nice to have just one repository for all gnome applications to the end user, apart from the one available default with openSUSE. Say something like Contrib repository. This repository should have multi-media or any package that gnome user is interested in.

Thanks Nagappan

...
Also, please don't include PA in this discussion... It's being discussed/fixed elsewhere :-)

Cheers, Magnus

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org

-- Linux Desktop (GUI Application) Testing Project - http://ldtp.freedesktop.org http://nagappanal.blogspot.com

Bryen

15:41

On Fri, 2009-03-13 at 08:06 -0700, Nagappan A wrote:

...

Hello Magnus,

On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 6:19 AM, Magnus Boman wrote:

...
Naggapan,

Fair suggestion. My only thing then is, what apps do one expect to have installed? And what apps do you think we're missing from either the GNOME repo and/or Contrib?

We have openSUSE build service, that's really awesome and other repositories mentioned over here http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_YaST_Package_Repositories, http://en.opensuse.org/Package_Repositories

I have some end user scenario: Now in gnome itself, we have 2 repositories available (stable and contrib) listed in the above link. If the user wants to add some other package, which exist in another repository, then that also has to be added explicitly by the user to the list of repositories, correct ? If something works out of the box with just adding one repository will be good. Take a case of Ubuntu, most of the time just regular repository should be fine. In some cases, you may need to add just (max) 1 external repository. That ease the process for end users.

Thanks Nagappan

...

I agree that the myriad of repositories can be mind boggling even to the experienced user. What's not clear in this sub-thread is the *what* part. For the standard user, we have OSS/NonOSS/Contrib. We also have GNOME:Community. In addition, we have GNOME:Stable and GNOME:Factory (+related Factory Repos.) In past discussions, Nagappan has pointed out the challenge for developers using openSUSE platforms and trying to grab the latest and greatest for their work. I think G:F is a good place for them to go, as it seems quite stable to me. But that probably isn't the place to include for regular users. Regular users, however, might be interested in G:S which is not enabled by default. How does the system know and deliver the proper stuff to the user? System can't detect if you're a dev or regular user. I still think the ultimate solution is to create a Dev version of openSUSE-GNOME in SUSEStudio with all the latest and greatest repositories enabled. It's easy enough to do that, I think.

...

Bryen Yunashko openSUSE Board Member openSUSE-GNOME Team Member GNOME-A11y Team Member

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Atri

11:02

On Friday 13 March 2009 05:02:03 Magnus Boman wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Since we have 8 months before the 11.2 release, would it be possible to
> compile a list with the top 5 most annoying things in GNOME/openSUSE 
and
> try to fix them? We obviously need to be realistic about these goals.
> Issues might include stuff like, "Panel should be at the top of the
> screen", "We should use the default GNOME menu", "Tomboy should not 
be
> started by default" etc? Other annoying things might not be as simple as
> I just mentioned but, you get the idea...
>
> Also, please don't include PA in this discussion... It's being
> discussed/fixed elsewhere :-)
>
> Cheers,
> Magnus
The gnome-main-menu (SLAB) is quite a nice part of openSUSE's gnome in 
my opinion. However a few things relating to the menu are quite annoying:- 
1. No way to clear recently used documents
2. Load up time of application-browser is still not as good (this does keep 
improving with every release though) as the default pop-up upstream gnome 
menu. This should be looked into very seriously as the menu is one of 
openSUSE's most distinctive addition to gnome.

Other suggestions:-
3. Improve the Alt+F2 responsiveness. The launcher is very unresponsive 
when started up.
4. General look, appeal, etc. It might be useful to have a new icon theme, for 
example (I have nothing against the present icons, but it might do to add 
some freshness to the gnome desktop), and add some eye-candy to panel 
as well.
-- 
Atri
-- 
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Bryen

15:33

On Fri, 2009-03-13 at 16:32 +0530, Atri wrote:

...

3. Improve the Alt+F2 responsiveness. The launcher is very unresponsive when started up.

+1 on this one. I've completely abandoned using Alt+F2 in favor of the Command Line applet. What I've noticed is that upon fresh install, Alt +F2 works wonderfully with almost instant pop-up. But after a few weeks of use, it degrades to the point of being quite unbearable. (Presumably after adding more and more apps that the system has to scan a larger set of desktop.files than after installation.) I'm sure the slowness of Application Browser and Alt+F2 are related. (Nautilus?) -- Bryen Yunashko openSUSE Board Member openSUSE-GNOME Team Member GNOME-A11y Team Member -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org

Michael Meeks

16:53

On Fri, 2009-03-13 at 10:33 -0500, Bryen wrote:

...

I'm sure the slowness of Application Browser and Alt+F2 are related. (Nautilus?)

Sure - it's a pretty fundamental problem of the job it does - parsing a ton of (often) huge .desktop files - with lots of translations merged into them, which are carefully scattered all over the disk - and get more fragmented as you upgrade apps, and the seek latency that involves. Of course, if you use an SSD system, one of the things that is most noticable is that Alt-F2 becomes almost instant, regardless of system age - due to the much reduced seek time. The only real solution here is to cache some pre-parsed form of all the installed .desktop files, in some sane format somewhere; I believe KDE do this in ~/ somewhere. # cold(ish) start: $ time (for a in `find /usr/share/applications -name '*.desktop'`; do cat $a > /dev/null; done;) real 0m4.392s user 0m0.356s sys 0m0.552s # warm: $ time (for a in `find /usr/share/applications -name '*.desktop'`; do cat $a > /dev/null; done;) real 0m0.706s user 0m0.280s sys 0m0.380s HTH, Michael. -- michael.meeks@novell.com <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org

Sankar P

16 Mar 16 Mar

07:57

On Fri, 2009-03-13 at 16:53 +0000, Michael Meeks wrote:

...

Sure - it's a pretty fundamental problem of the job it does - parsing a ton of (often) huge .desktop files - with lots of translations merged into them, which are carefully scattered all over the disk - and get more fragmented as you upgrade apps, and the seek latency that involves.

Of course, if you use an SSD system, one of the things that is most noticable is that Alt-F2 becomes almost instant, regardless of system age - due to the much reduced seek time.

The only real solution here is to cache some pre-parsed form of all the installed .desktop files, in some sane format somewhere; I believe KDE do this in ~/ somewhere.

Can we recommend a separate /usr partition as the default style, during installation ? A sqlite db of installed applications is a good idea to implement ? ( ~/.applications.sqlite ) If so, I can contribute for this. Or is there any other better methods, as sqlite itself could get scattered ? -- Sankar -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org

Sankar P

08:00

On Mon, 2009-03-16 at 13:27 +0530, Sankar P wrote:

...

A sqlite db of installed applications is a good idea to implement ? ( ~/.applications.sqlite ) If so, I can contribute for this.

It was me being a little dumb when I mentioned "~". Ignore the home directory part. -- Sankar -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org

Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy

13 Mar 13 Mar

16:12

Sent from Kevin Yeaux's mobile device. On Mar 13, 2009, at 6:02 AM, Atri wrote:

...

...
4. General look, appeal, etc. It might be useful to have a new icon theme, for example (I have nothing against the present icons, but it might do to add some freshness to the gnome desktop), and add some eye-candy to panel as well. -- Atri

I did some mockups of a possible new look for the panel on the Ideas page, perhaps those should be revisited? I have some ideas on this, but I'm on my phone so I'll send them later. Kevin "Yeaux" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org

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Atri
Bryen
Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy
Magnus Boman
Michael Meeks
Nagappan A
Sankar P
Wolfgang Rosenauer