Gnome rant

[linuxisevolution]

You boot into Ubuntu to see your beloved Gnome. Everything is running fine until you try to play a flash video and close a firefox window. The Evil blocky lines fill the screen and the purple dots invade. Your cpu usage sky rockets and the gconf editor doesn't give a clue. The Applications menu is gone - ahh - that's okay! What's this? No more nautilus?


I am packing up my apps and moving to something more reliable.

The whole first paragraph is what I went through with today, not including the screen resolution being larger than physically possible. I am not a noob and I know when the software is to blame -which is rare. I tried to log back into my Gnome and kept getting "assisted technology" errors.


First up was icewm. It was nice but after a while I got tired of it's windows-like appearance.

Second was dwm. Maybe if I had the time to configure it it would've been nice, but I decided no on this one.

Third was KDE 4.X ( whichever version was in the repos ). Worse than Gnome is all I have to say.

Fourth was fvwm-crystal. I found the one. Fvwm-crystal is fast, reliable, and not simple. Fvwm's menus are well organize and very classic Mac OS-ish. I liked that:D. The menu bars are in the right space and are able to be smaller than Gnome's 31 pixels.

Perhaps some people don't have any problems with Gnome , but if Gnome wasn't so great than why don't you see anyone using Arch Linux using Gnome? I see them using Openbox, dwm, fvwm, KDE (3.5.X was nice), fluxbox, etc. I don't want to move to Arch because I like the Ubuntu community and I like Debian's apt-get. That's all I have to say for now.





Sorry little Gnome. I'm moving on. :p

[dragos240]

You boot into Ubuntu to see your beloved Gnome. Everything is running fine until you try to play a flash video and close a firefox window. The Evil blocky lines fill the screen and the purple dots invade. Your cpu usage sky rockets and the gconf editor doesn't give a clue. The Applications menu is gone - ahh - that's okay! What's this? No more nautilus?


I am packing up my apps and moving to something more reliable.

The whole first paragraph is what I went through with today, not including the screen resolution being larger than physically possible. I am not a noob and I know when the software is to blame -which is rare. I tried to log back into my Gnome and kept getting "assisted technology" errors.


First up was icewm. It was nice but after a while I got tired of it's windows-like appearance.

Second was dwm. Maybe if I had the time to configure it it would've been nice, but I decided no on this one.

Third was KDE 4.X ( whichever version was in the repos ). Worse than Gnome is all I have to say.

Fourth was fvwm-crystal. I found the one. Fvwm-crystal is fast, reliable, and not simple. Fvwm's menus are well organize and very classic Mac OS-ish. I liked that:D. The menu bars are in the right space and are able to be smaller than Gnome's 31 pixels.

Perhaps some people don't have any problems with Gnome , but if Gnome wasn't so great than why don't you see anyone using Arch Linux using Gnome? I see them using Openbox, dwm, fvwm, KDE (3.5.X was nice), fluxbox, etc. I don't want to move to Arch because I like the Ubuntu community and I like Debian's apt-get. That's all I have to say for now.





Sorry little Gnome. I'm moving on. :p

Wierd, gnome has always worked for me, well, except for when i had a full hard drive, then things went kookoo! Check how much space you have left on it.

[linuxisevolution]

Wierd, gnome has always worked for me, well, except for when i had a full hard drive, then things went kookoo! Check how much space you have left on it.

I have 2.3gb left AFTER deleting files. I had 15gb before deleting files and I could not empty the trash bin in gnome :( . Any ideas on getting my space back? Although this shouldn't effect Gnome.

[Keyper7]

I am not a noob and I know when the software is to blame

But what strong evidence do you have to know which software is to blame? For starters, your description started with Flash, the living symbol of proprietary instability.


but if Gnome wasn't so great than why don't you see anyone using Arch Linux using Gnome?

Arch is great and all, but since when the usage by its community became the ultimate reference on what's good and what's not?

[swoll1980]

Arch is great and all, but since when its community became the ultimate reference on what's good and what's not?

You beat me to it. I wasn't aware that arch users had that much machismo.

[linuxisevolution]

But what strong evidence do you have to know which software is to blame? For starters, your description started with Flash, the living symbol of instability on Linux.

This is my opinion. Your seriously not going to fight me on this, are you? Flash should not cause a whole DE to crash. If it does, I'll either move DE or the OS. Flash does not crash any other DE or WM that I've used.



Arch is great and all, but since when its community became the ultimate reference on what's good and what's not?

What I meant is that Arch is known to be stable and(most) of it's users are smart. Gnome just isn't stable on this system.

[swoll1980]

What I meant is that Arch is known to be stable and(most) of it's users are smart. Gnome just isn't stable on this system.

I always thought arch was bleeding edge for some reason. Debian is known to be rock solid, and they choose gnome, go figure. What, are Debian/Ubuntu users not smart?

[linuxisevolution]

I always thought arch was bleeding edge for some reason. Debian is known to be rock solid, and they choose gnome, go figure

They use an older version of Gnome than Ubuntu -which seems a bit more stable than Ubuntu's. I must admit that Debian is very stable. :D

[swoll1980]

I don't know. I have never once had gnome crash in 2 years, so I would be hesitant to believe that it caused this problem. Adobe Flash use to crash all the time for me, not recently though. Video driver maybe?

[linuxisevolution]

I don't know. I have never once had gnome crash in 2 years, so I would be hesitant to believe that it caused this problem. Adobe Flash use to crash all the time for me, not recently though. Video driver maybe?

Video driver has no problems on other DE like KDE.

[swoll1980]

Video driver has no problems on other DE like KDE.

I don't think the video driver cares what DE you use. Are you running Compiz?

[linuxisevolution]

I don't think the video driver cares what DE you use. Are you running Compiz?

Nope. I said I was using fvwm. Pay attention during class :D

[swoll1980]

Maybe fvwm caused this. As an experiment run
metacity -replace, and see if you can reproduce this

[Keyper7]

This is my opinion.

Yes, that's precisely my point. You have no evidence to support what you're saying, sou can't flat out say "Gnome is unstable" without even being sure it was the cause of your problems.


Your seriously not going to fight me on this, are you?

Err... did I sound aggressive or insult you? I have absolutely no idea od where you took the idea of "fighting" from. If you want to fight, then let me know so I can proceed to ignore you.


Flash should not cause a whole DE to crash. If it does, I'll either move DE or the OS.

Flash is a small piece of software, but its usage involves a lot of other things such as video and audio. You might have a faulty video driver. A bug in Compiz might have been triggered. Either way, my mention of Flash was just an example to say that the problem might not be on Gnome.


Flash does not crash any other DE or WM that I've used.

The plural of anedocte is not data. You might be facing faulty packaging, faulty libraries and a lot of other possibilities.


What I meant is that Arch is known to be stable and(most) of it's users are smart.

Oh, I see. So that must obviously mean Gnome is inferior.

Or maybe... just maybe... the personal taste of Arch users happens to be more inclined torwards other environments? Have you ever even considered this possibility?


Gnome just isn't stable on this system.

Stop turning your experiences into general statements.

[linuxisevolution]

Yes, that's precisely my point. You have no evidence to support what you're saying, sou can't flat out say "Gnome is unstable" without even being sure it was the cause of your problems.



Err... did I sound aggressive or insult you? I have absolutely no idea od where you took the idea of "fighting" from. If you want to fight, then let me know so I can proceed to ignore you.



Flash is a small piece of software, but its usage involves a lot of other things such as video and audio. You might have a faulty video driver. A bug in Compiz might have been triggered. Either way, my mention of Flash was just an example to say that the problem might not be on Gnome.



The plural of anedocte is not data. You might be facing faulty packaging, faulty libraries and a lot of other possibilities.



Oh, I see. So that must obviously mean Gnome is inferior.

Or maybe... just maybe... the personal taste of Arch users happens to be more inclined torwards other environments? Have you ever even considered this possibility?



Stop turning your experiences into general statements.


Ok, so this was a rant. Big deal. This was an experience don't forget, and the version that comes with Ubuntu in fact seems unstable to me. Do you have a problem with that? I would like to know what my problem was with Gnome, but I just want to get my work done, so I'm not going to bother. I wrote the whole first paragraph to this rant to be funny and to get some stress off. Why are YOU being so defensive? It's just a desktop environment for god sakes. So I compared to Arch users because I think they have good taste and I think the os is good, mainly because that what came off the top of my head. I wrote this on the fly. I tried looking for faulty packaging, and I found one, called GDM :lolflag:. Firefox also crashes in Gnome. Gnome is a big DE that I don't need, do I need data to back that up?

[Keyper7]

Ok, so this was a rant. Big deal. This was an experience don't forget, and the version that comes with Ubuntu in fact seems unstable to me. Do you have a problem with that? I would like to know what my problem was with Gnome, but I just want to get my work done, so I'm not going to bother. I wrote the whole first paragraph to this rant to be funny and to get some stress off. Why are YOU being so defensive? It's just a desktop environment for god sakes. So I compared to Arch users because I think they have good taste and I think the os is good, mainly because that what came off the top of my head. I wrote this on the fly. I tried looking for faulty packaging, and I found one, called GDM :lolflag:. Firefox also crashes in Gnome. Gnome is a big DE that I don't need, do I need data to back that up?

Cool off, man. Breathe. No need to get excited over this. I'm just asking you to learn the difference between "I had a instability problem with XYZ" and "XYZ is unstable".

Do you need data to back up "Gnome is a big DE that I don't need"? No. But you do need data to back up "Gnome is unstable" other than personal anedoctes.

Learn the difference, that's all.

Otherwise you're being no better than the average "I had a problem once with Linux, therefore it's a fact that Windows is superior" guy.

[linuxisevolution]

Yeah, yeah, I'm being so defensive. I must have evil, obscure reasons to do that. Whatever...

Cool off, man. Breathe. No need to get excited over this. I'm just asking you to learn the difference between "I had a instability problem with XYZ" and "XYZ is unstable".

Do you need data to back up "Gnome is a big DE that I don't need"? No. But you do need data to back up "Gnome is unstable" other than personal anedoctes.

That's all.

Well how exactly do I provide proof that Gnome is unstable? I can't have the whole community stare at my 17" screen when it happens :)

[Keyper7]

Well how exactly do I provide proof that Gnome is unstable? I can't have the whole community stare at my 17" screen when it happens :)

You don't have to prove anything, you just have to avoid over-generalizations.

Anyway, let's stop answering to each other after a few seconds. People will think we don't have a life.

I propose a beer. You pay.

[linuxisevolution]

You don't have to prove anything, you just have to avoid over-generalizations.

Anyway, let's stop answering to each other after a few seconds. People will think we don't have a life.

I propose a beer. You pay.

Agreed.

[chucky chuckaluck]

but if Gnome wasn't so great than why don't you see anyone using Arch Linux using Gnome?

arch is a great distro for people who want minimal setups. gnome, quite clearly, is not a minimal setup (were it not for kdemod, i don't think there would be as many arch users using kde as there seems to be). arch users use openbox and dwm (among other things) because they fit well into the minimalist approach to using a computer. that said, gnome works very well in arch. so does xfce4. i can't really comment on kde4.2 because i think it's horribly wrong, but that's just my own prejudice. i don't think flash will work any better for you using firefox in another wm and distro.

[mriedel]

This is my opinion. Your seriously not going to fight me on this, are you? Flash should not cause a whole DE to crash. If it does, I'll either move DE or the OS. Flash does not crash any other DE or WM that I've used.

He (linuxisevolution) does have a point here. In fact, no individual piece of software should ever be able to crash gnome / the whole wm. All that should crash is the software itself. It the de/wm crashes, it's a design flaw in just that.



I always thought arch was bleeding edge for some reason. Debian is known to be rock solid, and they choose gnome, go figure. What, are Debian/Ubuntu users not smart?

I think (hope) his point was that Arch doesn't come with one (or one out of two) DEs like ubuntu does and that when the choice is left up to the user, not so many pick gnome.

That said, gnome is one of the few pieces of software I haven't been ranting about. Haven't had much problems with it myself.

[linuxisevolution]

arch is a great distro for people who want minimal setups. gnome, quite clearly, is not a minimal setup (were it not for kdemod, i don't think there would be as many arch users using kde as there seems to be). arch users use openbox and dwm (among other things) because they fit well into the minimalist approach to using a computer. that said, gnome works very well in arch. so does xfce4. i can't really comment on kde4.2 because i think it's horribly wrong, but that's just my own prejudice. i don't think flash will work any better for you using firefox in another wm and distro.

Actually if you have limited VRAM flash does work better in a lighter WM, an that's a proven fact. I'm not trying to start another argument ;) . My sisters computer has 8mb video memory and Gnome with flash games was slow. I installed Fluxbox with Fbpanel and she is able to play her games much faster now. But since I upgraded her to a Nvidia Geforce MX400 128mb. Did you ever see those "I'm a pc and I'm 7 years old" Commercials? Well my sister is 8 years old and she's an Ubuntu with Fluxbox ;)

[Skripka]

Agreed.

FYI-Arch is much more leading edge. That being a good thing as there are eons old bugs still unfixed on *buntu, there are also lots of known problems with packages that *buntu repos keep as they are old enough to be called "stable". Sometimes things come out in the Arch repos and cause breakage-but those seem rare, and when things break they get fixed FAST.

From what I gather many many former Ubuntu users have moved on to Arch and other things...as Ubuntu tries to move into what they call more "mainstream" and be a distro everyone and their dog can get work, it leaves experienced users wanting far lighter and faster and causes them to seek greener pastures...as Ubuntu becomes more "mainstream" it gets heavier and heavier.

Do you know the problem is Gnome? Not a bloated Ubuntu?

Also-know that KDE on Ubuntu is known as probably the worst ways of KDE out there. KDEmod on Arch is far superior, in every metric-plasma is even useable, as there are actual useful plasmoids available via AUR.

Happy distro hopping. I just jumped from Kubuntu to Arch64 Kdemod, and don't regret it at all. If you can follow a cookbook recipe successfully, you can build Arch.

[linuxisevolution]

Happy distro hopping. I just jumped from Kubuntu to Arch64 Kdemod, and don't regret it at all. If you can follow a cookbook recipe successfully, you can build Arch.

My father just burnt the mac-in-cheese so I guess I can't install arch on the Family pc :lolflag:

[Skripka]

My father just burnt the mac-in-cheese so I guess I can't install arch on the Family pc :lolflag:


Well...some things are best left to the 800-level graduate coursework ;)

Fear not about community if you want to Arch. There are lots of us Arch folk still here despite OOST closing down here-you'll find the Arch forums and/or Chakra forums (for KDEmod) quite useful in UFs stead.

[linuxisevolution]

Well...some things are best left to the 800-level graduate coursework ;)

Fear not about community if you want to Arch. There are lots of us Arch folk still here despite OOST closing down here-you'll find the Arch forums and/or Chakra forums (for KDEmod) quite useful in UFs stead.

There is also my forums at www.linuxforums.tk . Although no one will register to it, no matter how much work I put into it :( . It's even running on my own server :). I might try arch in a virtual machine. Would Arch install on a 1gb partition with enough space for a WM and Firefox? I would like it on my laptop if I do install it :)


EDIT: There are directions for the IBM Thinkpad X40 (my laptop) on Arch Wiki, but the wireless setup looks complicated. I might try arch on one of my soon to be servers. I have a 450mhz 128mb ram 2gb HDD machine what I would like to be a load balancer, and a 1ghz 256mb machine that I would like to be a server, but I must find a hard drive for the second machine :(.

[Skripka]

There is also my forums at www.linuxforums.tk . Although no one will register to it, no matter how much work I put into it :( . It's even running on my own server :). I might try arch in a virtual machine. Would Arch install on a 1gb partition with enough space for a WM and Firefox? I would like it on my laptop if I do install it :)


EDIT: There are directions for the IBM Thinkpad X40 (my laptop) on Arch Wiki, but the wireless setup looks complicated. I might try arch on one of my soon to be servers. I have a 450mhz 128mb ram 2gb HDD machine what I would like to be a load balancer, and a 1ghz 256mb machine that I would like to be a server, but I must find a hard drive for the second machine :(.

I'm honestly not certain about disk requirements. A vanilla Arch ISO install CD takes up only 150MB...but a basic KDEmod takes about 380MB worth of actual space when installed. Gnome etc-I don't know, as I never played with those on Arch-just my KDE. You might be able to on a mere 1GB--but I cannot say for certain.

[linuxisevolution]

I'm honestly not certain about disk requirements. A vanilla Arch ISO install CD takes up only 150MB...but a basic KDEmod takes about 380MB worth of actual space when installed. Gnome etc-I don't know, as I never played with those on Arch-just my KDE. You might be able to on a mere 1GB--but I cannot say for certain.

Really? 150mb? How hard would it be to install X and, say, dwm on that?

[phrostbyte]

Can you submit a bug report on this issue or know if one already exists? Because TBH I never had this issue. Maybe we can isolate it and get it fixed.

[linuxisevolution]

Can you submit a bug report on this issue or know if one already exists? Because TBH I never had this issue. Maybe we can isolate it and get it fixed.

The issue is many issues that I don't even know what is wrong. I know flash causes Gnome and Firefox to crash simultaneously, and sometimes nautilus will crash. Sometimes after logging in I either get no desktop or not panels. I just have bad luck with Gnome.

[Rokurosv]

I hated the lack of options on some Gnome apps, so I ditched it. Right now I'm using KDEmod4 and KDEmod3, the first beign for testing. I didn't like KDE that much but after trying 4 I'm now liking 3 a lot more.

[linuxisevolution]

I hated the lack of options on some Gnome apps, so I ditched it. Right now I'm using KDEmod4 and KDEmod3, the first beign for testing. I didn't like KDE that much but after trying 4 I'm now liking 3 a lot more.

I like 3 more too.

[Skripka]

Really? 150mb? How hard would it be to install X and, say, dwm on that?

Recalling OTTOMH...Xorg and some depends and a video driver are another 100MB or so of packages to download...and expand a good bit when installed.

Installing Xorg...after installing Arch is as easy as;



pacman -S xorg mesa xf86-input-evdev


This Wiki, is The Good Book of Arch:

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide

It tells you most everything you need to know to install and configure Arch to a useable DE. I DO MEAN everything.

[Polygon]

the screen resolution part is not gnome's fault, that is X's.

and also, you should of just deleted your gnome configuration and gotten everything to default. that would of fixed most of your problems

and im sure you submitted the proper bug reports to the gnome bug tracker, right?

[linuxisevolution]

the screen resolution part is not gnome's fault, that is X's.

and also, you should of just deleted your gnome configuration and gotten everything to default. that would of fixed most of your problems

and im sure you submitted the proper bug reports to the gnome bug tracker, right?

I don't know how to submit bugs to gnome bug tracker.

[Polygon]

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/

go there, register an account real quick, and just click the button that says submit bug report.

[Nepherte]

I'm an Arch user and tried several window managers and desktop environments: openbox, kde, dwm, awesome. I always find myself going back to gnome in less than a week. So, do you see Arch users with gnome? Yes, lots of them actually. Does gnome give me problems? Nope, not a single one. Does it mean nobody has problems with gnome? No.

The stability issue with flash is always the same story. It's the sole problem of Adobe. That you find it run better on desktop environment x than on desktop environment y is just circumstantial.

I don't mind you talking about your experiences. I simply urge you not to translate or generalize your problems to other users.

[billgoldberg]

You boot into Ubuntu to see your beloved Gnome. Everything is running fine until you try to play a flash video and close a firefox window. The Evil blocky lines fill the screen and the purple dots invade. Your cpu usage sky rockets and the gconf editor doesn't give a clue. The Applications menu is gone - ahh - that's okay! What's this? No more nautilus?


I am packing up my apps and moving to something more reliable.

The whole first paragraph is what I went through with today, not including the screen resolution being larger than physically possible. I am not a noob and I know when the software is to blame -which is rare. I tried to log back into my Gnome and kept getting "assisted technology" errors.


First up was icewm. It was nice but after a while I got tired of it's windows-like appearance.

Second was dwm. Maybe if I had the time to configure it it would've been nice, but I decided no on this one.

Third was KDE 4.X ( whichever version was in the repos ). Worse than Gnome is all I have to say.

Fourth was fvwm-crystal. I found the one. Fvwm-crystal is fast, reliable, and not simple. Fvwm's menus are well organize and very classic Mac OS-ish. I liked that:D. The menu bars are in the right space and are able to be smaller than Gnome's 31 pixels.

Perhaps some people don't have any problems with Gnome , but if Gnome wasn't so great than why don't you see anyone using Arch Linux using Gnome? I see them using Openbox, dwm, fvwm, KDE (3.5.X was nice), fluxbox, etc. I don't want to move to Arch because I like the Ubuntu community and I like Debian's apt-get. That's all I have to say for now.





Sorry little Gnome. I'm moving on. :p

I use Arch and Gnome.

But then I also use Arch and KDE and Ubuntu with fluxbox.

[maybeway36]

I like GNOME, but I prefer KDE 3.5 for the panel customizability and Konqueror being easier to use for FTP than most GTK file managers.