Making a Change

It took working with 11.04 to finally make me jump off the Ubuntu bandwagon and onto Fedora.

I don't have much bad to say about Ubuntu, don't get me wrong. They are innovative in all of the right ways: personal cloud storage that's accessible through Windows; pushing the limits of UI design; keeping timely software updates coming.

There were, however, two hurdles for me. The first I can't complain too vigorously about: WiFi. Due to differences in the wireless chipsets, 802.11 has always been a bit of a boogeyman for Linux. In my case, it was a regression with the Atheros 5000-series kernel driver... my wireless stopped working outside of 15 feet from the router, sometimes less.

The other, and quite frankly the dealbreaker for me, was a performance hit. I have an older laptop, a TravelMate 2420 that I've maxed the memory on. I don't know if it was the Unity desktop or the CouchDB backend they used for their UbuntuOne cloud service, but as soon as I installed 11.04, I began experiencing periodic stalling, CPU spikes and network traffic (which is why I point to the UbuntuOne).

As for the much debated Unity desktop; I was pretty indifferent to it. For the most part, it did its job. My biggest problem with it is probably its biggest feature. I'm not the biggest fan of "quick-launch bars" in general, and by default Unity puts a great big one down the side of the screen unless you have a window maximized. I've said before, this is a great idea for touchscreen interfaces where menu navigation could be a little tricky, but for my preferred method of keyboard and mouse, it feels redundant. It works, but I wasn't a fan.

I chose Fedora because of Gnome 3. The Gnome 3 desktop is similar to Unity in quite a few ways; not surprising, since Unity is built on many of the same libraries. I chose Fedora over OpenSUSE (the other major distro offering the Gnome 3 as a default) because of familiarity: one of my first Intro to Linux books dealt with Red Hat Linux; so I at was a little familiar with the RPM system. When you boil it down, the difference between the majority of Linux distributions is how software is delivered, and what software is easily available. Most up-to-date Linux distros share the same kernel.

Wait, you say. Hold up. Didn't you say that a kernel bug was screwing with your WiFi? If everybody is using the same kernel, wouldn't the bug be present on all of them?

Yes, I did. And yes, it was; which was why I said I couldn't complain about it too much. The biggest difference was where I was trying to install it. When I tried to install Ubuntu, I was at home; where I had wireless access and -- because the Debian/Ubuntu installer has wireless support built-in -- I was going to use it during setup. Except 11.04 shipped with a kernel version that had the bug. Which meant the install failed where I was until I fished out an ethernet cable. When I installed Fedora, I didn't have access to a wireless network, so I didn't notice it right off. And I was able to update to a kernel release that worked with my wireless -- before I got home and back to my network. Serendipitous, yes; but it is one of those things that is offputting.

And when I say that they share the same kernel, I'm generalizing a bit. Not every distro is going to release every point release (i.e. one distro might not release 2.8.24.36, choosing to wait and test 2.8.24.37 instead, or simply patching and releasing a custom 2.8.24.36_custom): it's the end of July and there have been nearly a dozen since April: they will be doing some testing before releasing it into the wild.

But, I've made my choice, at least until... October. Both Fedora and Ubuntu are on a 6-month (April/October) release schedule. And really, outside of disk space, there's nothing stopping me from installing both (after a thorough backup, of course). This laptop is a testing rig, for all intents and purposes. Besides, this is Linux. It's not about brand loyalty, it's not about being afraid to change. It's about figuring out what works best for you and improving the experience for everybody.

Now, since I've grabbed a copy of NetBeans; I think I'll try and teach myself some JAVA.

Gnome 3 Wallpaper Switcher

Every once in a while, I don't feel like looking at the same thing over and over again. Call it a geek version of wanderlust; but I like to have my desktop wallpaper change frequently. And I like it better when I don't have to choose, but a new background pops at random.

And with Gnome 2, the default window manager for a good number of Linux distributions, that wasn't hard to do. There were daemons (small background programs) that you could install, or you could create XML files that told GNOME's settings manage exactly which background you wanted for exactly how long.

Gnome 3 featured a major rewrite of the underlying controls. And while this created a great number of improvements -- visibly and performance-wise -- a few features were removed. As of 3.0.2, one of those was the ability to set those wallpaper slideshows as a background.

My google-fu is strong, though; and I soon found that it wasn't the ability to use the slideshow files that had been removed, it was the ability to select the file. The underlying mechanics were the same, as was the syntax of the XML file. It was simply a matter of "You can't get there from here." You could, however, get there from the command line; and that's where my python-fu came into play. Hopefully, Google Docs doesn't mess with my code too much here....

Gnome 3 Thoughts

After about 2 weeks of testing it out; I've come to some conclusions about GNOME3 on Debian.

1) The Installation is a Pain. Actually, this is probably the least of my complaints, but it comes first because it was encountered first. Debian prides itself on being stable, almost to a fault. In fact, the default "stable" installation (6.0.2 Squeeze at this writing) gets security updates and that's about it. It's designed to just work. Not surprisingly, GNOME3 isn't available on Squeeze (not enough time to test it before the last release). It's not in the "testing" (Wheezy) set, either. It's in "experimental"; along with all the other stuff that Debian maintainers don't figure is stable enough for Testing. That said, it is in experimental, and you can get it if you are careful and know what you're doing.

2) Things are Locked Down. Again, I can see the upsides and the downsides to this. On the upside, locking down things like title bars and panel guarantees a consistent experience. On the other hand, if the user doesn't like the design -- and is used to being able to change it -- it can lead to frustration. That said, there was a semi-official UI/system tweaking tool available, but as it isn't built-in to the command center where you'd expect it to be, it doesn't get full marks.

3) The "Desktop" is more like a work area. This is where we run into one of those "paradigm shifts", I think. Since Windows XP (likely since Windows NT, but since it didn't have as wide a release as the 98/XP line, we'll say XP), users have come to use the desktop as part storage space, part launcher. Not in GNOME 3, though. Unless you use the tweak tool to "allow [Nautilus] to manage Desktop", the only thing you can do with the desktop is look at it. There's no left-click, no middle-click, no context menu on the right click that lets you set the desktop background. If you click on the desktop, you've exercised your clicking finger, but that's about it. Again, it's not a bad thing or a good thing; it's just different than what you're probably used to.

So, what do I think about it?

1) I'm not blind, guys I don't need the huge title bars and menu icons that come with the default (and unchangeable via GUI) interface. I can see where they might be useful for touchscreen interfaces, giving users a bit more leeway on where they tap, but on a laptop, it seems like wasted space.

2) What will it take to convince people hot corners are a bad idea? If your mouse wanders into the top left of the screen, the activities pane takes over. While that sounds like a good idea, it's also a bit distracting if you accidentally bump your mouse, or if you like to shuffle your pointer into a corner out of the way.

3) The Activity Pane is a good idea. Two things about how they implemented the Activity Pane/Menu. First, dynamically spawning work areas are a great idea. If you want a clean "surface" to work on, you open the activity pane and either click on a blank work space or drag an open window to a new surface. Once you clean up the surface, it disappears until you need a new one. Second, the search as you type function. If you pop the activity pane and start typing, you'll get a shrinking list of programs and recent documents that match your search. And though I haven't double-checked, it appeared to be pulling additional info about the programs from somewhere (probably .desktop files) so you didn't have to search by name alone.

4) Network Manager didn't like me. I don't know if it was something I did while setting it up; but network-manager-gnome did not like my wifi setup, rejecting saved passphrases, and not even displaying the BSSID for my home network until I was right on top of the router. Which was odd, because after reinstalling GNOME2, I automatically connected (after entering the passphrases) from halfway across the house (around 45-50 feet).

I've switched back to GNOME2 for now; at least until 3 drops into testing instead of experimental. It shows a lot of promise, and feels like something I'm willing to use; but I'd rather have the guys more experienced than me go over it a little longer before I jump in head first.

Links

The GNOME Project Desktop Environment

Debian GNU/Linux

Update:

The Network Manager deal isn't a Gnome3 thing. From everything I've read, it appears to be a kernel issue -- which makes sense: when I upgraded to Gnome3, the new kernel came along with it. However, the same change in frequency/connection ability happened with Ubuntu 10.10 vs 11.04 as well. Smarter people than I seem to have narrowed it down to a kernel patch for Acer hardware. I didn't go diving that directly.