From Richard Hughes’ blog on February 2, 2011,
In GNOME 3.0, we’re defaulting to suspending the computer when the user shuts the lid, and not providing any preferences combobox to change this. This is what the UI designers for GNOME 3.0 want, and is probably a step in the right direction. We really can’t keep working around bugs in the kernel with extra UI controls.
This is going too far. I’ve never liked the suspend-on-close behavior, but I tolerate it on the MacBook because suspend always resumes. Apple is in the unique position of fully controlling the software and a finite amount of hardware. GNOME and the Linux kernel are not.
How about the Dell XPS M1330 notebook I depend on heavily that does not reliably resume from suspend? This new feature does not improve my user experience. It makes it worse. I suspect it will be the same for others.
In a follow-up post by Alan Day,
The vast majority of people do not like lots of settings: they find them difficult to use, and it makes them think that GNOME isn’t intended for them. (We do want GNOME to have mass appeal, don’t we?!) ‘It’s just one setting!’, you might say, and that is a fair comment. The question is: when is one more setting a setting too far? Where do we draw the line?
I can see the complexities of doing design and variety of directions things can go. And yet, sometimes, isn’t the beauty of really good design, the ability to provide options and complexity in a simple way without removing functionality?
I’m not sure how GNOME gets mass appeal if, as in my situation, closing the laptop lid has the same result as pushing the power-off button without saving any work. The mass-appeal crowd is not going to say “Oh look, I found a bug in the kernel,” and be fine with the results.
Image by marshponds via flickr used under a Creative Commons license.
February 23, 2012 at 12:31 am
coz hit the nail on the head! I would love to know where the Gnome team is getting this “users don’t want options” crap from. I for one loathe being railroaded into a single option when others are available. I hate having settings hidden away when they could be easily manipulated in the GUI. One of the things that made Linux in general attractive to me in the first place was the CUSTOMIZABILITY. It had such granular control over everything from window style and colors to everything. If you are afraid of people being confused by options in the GUI, then wait until you start making my mother try to edit a CSS just to change the icon size in the shell! What kind of logic is that? I kind of like the Gnome Shell, as much as I was ready to resist it, BUT, the fact that about 2/3 of the “Control Panel” is gone and replaced with a bunch of non-options that barely give you any control over anything is going to send me right back to KDE. At least THEY don’t make me jump through hoops to change the bloody desktop theme or use a SCREENSAVER. Hey, what if I want suspend after TWO hours, not just one. Go and manually change the config file?! Really?! Why bother with a GUI control panel at all then? Just lock it all up, and only those with the know-how and patience will customize their desktop at all, but most users will just turn away to another option. Aw screw it, I’m going back to KDE + Compiz.
June 25, 2011 at 6:31 pm
hey guys,
it has long been a known issue with gnome developers and their insistence that “users don’t want too many options” translated to ” users are idiots”
“The vast majority of people do not like lots of settings: they find them difficult to use, and it makes them think that GNOME isn’t intended for them. (We do want GNOME to have mass appeal, don’t we?!) ‘It’s just one setting!’, you might say, and that is a fair comment. The question is: when is one more setting a setting too far? Where do we draw the line?”
Just which hat did you pull that out of ^^^^?
In my 8 years of doing support,, I have NEVER heard anyone say there were too many settings,, not a single user. I have NEVER heard anyone say, “I don’t like lots of settings because they are difficult to use” NOT ONCE!
I also hate anyone criticizing any project inappropriately, but this is not new for gnome! To have the nerve to say that about users makes it clear that they have done NO research on this whatsoever.
You cannot have mass appeal if there is no “control” over the system
May 30, 2011 at 4:10 am
I asked about this in #fedora, and you can change the setting in gnome-tweak-tool. You’ll probably need to install that, and once you do, the setting is under “Shell”
February 24, 2011 at 5:20 am
Making ‘Suspend’ the default action is Ok, but don’t give the user a choice to change the default behavior to something else in the GUI is so WRONG.
Off cause it is not gnome’s fault that suspend don’t work an all laptops, but closing the eyes don’t make the problem go away.
Why is there an option to configure the power and sleep button action, but not the lid action, it don’t make sense.
Why have a Power settings dialog at all, When the designer now what is best for you 🙂
And yes, I’m ones of those users who have a laptop where suspend = fast way to reboot, without saving you data.
February 24, 2011 at 1:05 am
I like to close the lid of my laptop to switch off the LCD and preserve power while there’s a big download going on or I am waiting for a video to stream. Also, sometimes I leave my laptop in this state with my IM apps open, so that people can still ping me and I open up the lid when I hear the sound notification.
Putting the system on standby is should not be the default option when shutting the laptop lid. Not giving the users to change it from this behavior is just wrong.
February 26, 2011 at 12:06 pm
Added to the list of other “wrong” decisions I have to work around these days, this will cement my move away from Gnome until someone forks a more sane version. (I currently use Gnome with fvwm as a window manager, so dropping the last bits of Gnome is not a big stretch.)
February 23, 2011 at 7:04 pm
With respect to kernel and or video driver issue, It may not be your fault, but is a large sense it is your problem. The suspend/resume code is known to be a weak point in the foundation of the Linux software building. In the past the rest of the building was braced so that weak point was not load bearing. That was called exposing a way for the user to control under what circumstances the system would suspend or hibernate. Now you put a load on that weak point by making the default close lid action suspend, and remove the visible attachment points for allowing the user to brace the fragile thing known as linux on a laptop.
At least we have a tag line for Gnome 3.0 “It’s not our fault…”
Maybe if it didn’t take 15 months to produce the one line fix the i915 KMS wake from hibernate (where in userspace would segfault on resume) you might get more bug reports. It takes a lot of hubris to demand that your users enjoy your contempt and disdain.
We know, we know, it’s not your fault.
February 23, 2011 at 11:08 am
You must be equally excited by this change:
* Change the options for stopping the system; Suspend is now in the menu,
while Power Off… is hidden, but can be accessed by holding down Alt
when browsing the user status menu [Ray]
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-announce-list/2011-February/msg00061.html
February 23, 2011 at 11:01 am
And you think this is too far? I thought so too but apparently the Power Off option will ALSO be hidden by default in the menus and the minimize and maximize buttons are apparently going the way of the dodo… Gnome: we want to be like Apple even if our users don’t 😀
February 23, 2011 at 9:31 am
Not our fault your kernel and/or drivers are broken.
Your heading says “Making sense of things and making them better”. I fail to see how working around broken kernel behaviour will make things better.
Just like we’re not designing GNOME-Shell for people without working 3D drivers. It’s not our fault your 3D drivers are broken either…
February 23, 2011 at 10:59 am
I think that complexity in settings can be managed – but at a cost of development time. That time is may not be available now.
On the other hand, is it feasible at all for kernel developers to keep track of every hardware variation ever produced?
February 24, 2011 at 12:47 am
I hope you do realise that the end user does not give a rats a** whose fault it is? They just won’t use GNOME 3
February 23, 2011 at 8:23 am
So you’re saying that Gnome should base design decisions on bugs in other pieces of software, even when those bugs don’t appear to have been reported? I can’t find anything in Bugzilla regarding resume failing on the 1330s.
February 23, 2011 at 10:03 pm
Remember that if-there-is-an-SD-card-in-the-slot-in-my-laptop-suspend-breaks-horribly-and-i-lose-my-work bug that you’d figured out miraculously? That was Fedora 13. I’m worried for users on hardware newer than mine (mine is now 3 years old) having similar odd issues. I mean, I know, the system should work and the desktop should not have to be compromised for things that aren’t its fault. Yet, if I lose my work I go crazy. 🙁
Some things that would reassure me to know at least, for whatever small worth that is:
– Is the overall track record of suspend experience improving over time? Number of bugs with suspend on the downward, etc.?
– Are hardware vendors better about not producing laptops that are difficult to support?
– Is there any config file on the file system that could be tweaked to turn off laptop-lid-suspends computer – not a desktop preference, just a setting in a conf file somewhere – so for folks with odd cases (like a broken laptop screen they can’t bear to look at or I think some fellow on Alan’s blog said his speakers don’t work if the lid is open) can turn off the auto-suspend?
To be frank I really don’t know why suspend has a bad reputation for reliability in Linux but I’ve been victim to it as I’m sure many of the folks upset about this decision are. But wow, it would be nice if my laptop would behave just like my PSP, when I hit power off it suspends, when I hit power on it comes back up quickly. I hardly ever have to reboot it completely. But is this more than just a dream, really? Are we there?
Also, just a general comment, the GNOME team puts up with a lot of attacks. I don’t know how you do it – I can’t stomach that sort of thing – but keep doing what you do.
February 24, 2011 at 10:25 am
Please re-read my post. I haven’t said anything about how GNOME should make design decisions. They can make them however they wish. I’m simply reflecting on what the end user experience will be for me and others–people that won’t know its an underlying kernel issue or how to troubleshoot it.
You are correct. I have not reported a bug for this issue. My experience and return-on-investment for filing bugs in Fedora has been mixed-bag. It definitely hasn’t motivated me to file bugs for every problem I encounter, particularly bugs in the kernel.
I haven’t reported a bug on this issue because:
Can you suggest some links to instructions on how to report suspend/resume bugs in Fedora that a non-developer, like myself, could follow?