RHEL 7 to default to GNOME "Classic"

http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20130617#news

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Red-Hat-confirms-GNOME-Classic-Mode-for-RHEL-7-1887469.html

 

That would be Gnome 3's "classic mode," which behaves more sanely but is still completely reliant on good 3D support (which doesn't exist on Linux). Count me out.

 

3D support (in context of desktops) does exist.

Even the reverse engineered nouveau drivers on my aged 6200 is fast enough for a smooth desktop experience . Intel gfx chips on my aged T61 to my newish T420 (Sandybridge) all brilliant for desktop usage.
Even my media machine with an onboard ATi R300 chip, running open source drivers is fine at running Unity at 720p.

I did try LLVMpipe and was horribly slow btw on my media machine (dual core Athlon64).

Cheers, Nick

 

Thus why I specified "good 3D support" there, not just "3D support." On most video cards I've used, things have been slow (radeon), unstable (nVidia), or slow and unstable (nouveau). Intel drivers are okay now, but Intel cards usually lack the hardware power to make a 3D desktop usable.

On top of which, I must ask why 3D effects are so necessary for desktops. Especially when they come at the expense of performance and legacy hardware support.

 

I don't have any problem with Gnome 3 here in Debian 7, on Intel graphics, but then again, I'm not doing anything fancy... the normal desktop experience seems nice and smooth though...

 

They make the desktop look cool - that said, with llvmpipe rastering, even legacy hardware can now run Unity, GNOME Shell and Cinnamon without any issues.

 

Which counts as progress how? Especially seeing as it's institutions, not end users, that will be using RHEL. I'm sure universities will be delighted to rupture their budgets on new workstations so they can have spinning 3D desktops... Not.

No it can't. llvmpipe requires a very powerful CPU.

And IMO the 3D desktop trend is a solution desperately in search of a problem. Even the "coolness" part is absurd; people were prettifying their Gnome 2 desktops long before Compiz came in vogue.

 

You've obviously had a different experience to me, even my aged T61 intel gfx chip is fast enough for dual monitor usage without any performance issues in Ubuntu for example.

Cheers, Nick

 

I can confirm that T61 with Intel gfx works fine with said env.
However, for servers with VESA cards, and VNC and such, this is crazy.
Mrk

 

Perhaps gamers want more, but I think that 60 fps is enough to support 3D effects, no?

This is on a cheap Intel G2020 cpu with graphics built-in (Muck NVidia!):

 

Huh? I'm running Cinnamon 2D on an Atom chip netbook!

 

i got nouveau drivers running on linux mint 32 bit

 

Now THAT is ' just "3D support."'

 

a) glxgears is not a benchmark

b) glxgears should give 60 FPS - KMS drivers synchronize to the screen's refresh rate (unless they're buggy and can't manage it, like nouveau on my desktops card).

c) I encourage you guys to try resizing a translucent window in KWin, without resize effects. Then do the same in Windows 7 on a machine with similar specs, again with translucency enabled. Tell me which is faster.

d) "Works for me" is sadly inadequate. Lots of people have poorly supported or legacy machines.

e) As Mrkvonic pointed out, 3D desktops are incompatible with VNC, never mind low-spec GPUs like VIA Unichrome.

f)

Check your CPU load. You may be in for a surprise next time you're stuck on battery power.

 

Cinnamon 2D won't be using llmvpipe and should be slick on an atom as its 2D (if its anything like unity 2d was on our old netbook), not 3D on the CPU.

Cheers, Nick

 

very good info thanks Gullible Jones

http://frames-per-second.appspot.com/

interesting thing

 

Linux Servers don't need desktop environments (terminal mode), and they're free to install lighter ones like LXDE. It would be inconvenient for some though.

Clients are a different story though (most need GUI), but so is their hardware.

 

Any desktop, 3d/2d is compatible with VNC, may not be optimal though.

 

The mantra of "hardware solves everything," alas, won't avail those for whom the drivers are of poor quality. Or those who can't afford recent hardware because other stuff is higher priority (like food and rent).

Edit: basically I think (desktop) Linux should try to be a common person's OS, and therefore work on a common person's hardware. "Making the desktop look cool" is a nonstarter if it reduces the user base.

 

That's a common misconception. Most admins do not need GUI, true.
Most users do, and they usually get these through VNC sessions.
And then, if you only have VESA, things can get tricky.

In business environment, you won't be installing anything other than fully supported vendor options. So free to install XYZ is not an option, I'm afraid.

Mrk

 

GNOME Classic doesn't look cool, and shouldn't be too demanding on relatively modern budget hardware. The age of the old hardware and driver support are important variables, but how else is RedHat going to move on if they keep catering to them on major new versions?

Pardon my lack of business experience, but why do users need VNC sessions to the server machine? Isn't FTP, Web Interface, etc. enough?

Guess that's the norm I forgot.

 

Because lots of users have their development framework sessions running on these servers. Sometimes, it's also the matter of consolidation and hardware cost. Instead of having 1 machine per user, you have one dedicated server per 10-20 users or so.
Mrk

 

Window manipulation might be an interesting experiment to rate video acceleration.
Interestingly, I observe that Debian 7 (Wheezy) is much smoother than for example Fedora 19 or Arch Linux.

 

I just installed CentOS 6.4. Is there any particular reason why it uses a version of GNOME that is four years old? It is version 2.28.2.

 

Because CentOS 6 was launched end of 2010 and the way Redhat/Centos update software.
Any updates that are included must be backward compatible (as per Redhat's update policy), which is why you find old packages with lots of backported features rather than newer versions.
In the case of Gnome, as development moved onto Gnome 3, there are not many features that can be backported to Gnome2 as development stopped a year after 2.28 (with 2.32) was released.

Cheers, Nick