Off the Beat: Bruce Byfield's Blog

Okay, that was unexpected.

I like the GNOME 3 fallback desktop better than GNOME 3 itself.

Amid all the attention given to the new GNOME 3 with its overview page, you don't hear much about the fallback. Nor are you likely to stumble across it on your own, since it's buried in Applications -> System Settings -> System Info -> Graphics -> Forced Fallback -> On, a location that's both obscure and deep.

However, you might want to search out the setting if your computer lacks the hardware acceleration needed to run GNOME 3. Set it to On, and the next time you log in, you'll be using the fallback.

Midway between GNOME 2 and 3

The fallback could be described as a compromise between the GNOME 2 release series and GNOME 3. On the one hand, like GNOME 2, the fallback includes the familiar Applications / Places / System menus and workspace switchers, and title bar buttons for minimizing and maximizing windows, instead of GNOME 3's hot spots on the edges of the desktop. In fact, if you are used to opening applications from the menu, then the fallback will be instantly familiar (and you can stop searching for an alternative to GNOME 3 if you are wishing for one it).

On the other hand, the fallback has most of the pros and cons of GNOME 3. Not only that, but the fallback is a good place to study just what GNOME 3 is about, free from the most obvious feature of the overview screen, which is such a large change from earlier releases that it might overshadow smaller changes.

On the debit side of the ledger, the fallback is only marginally less memory intensive than the main GNOME 3 desktop, immediately consuming 853 megabytes on a one megabyte netbook, compared to 883 for GNOME 3 -- both of which are substantially higher than the 410 megabytes claimed by GNOME 2.32 on the same machine.

In addition, by default, the fallback includes no panel applets, no context menus, and no icons on the desktop. These lacks, which the main GNOME 3 desktop shares, are by design -- part of the intent to provide "distraction-free computing," as the GNOME marketing material explains the situation. But to users who prefer such things and want them, both the fallback and main GNOME 3 desktops are probably going to feel much like KDE 4.0, in that both are lacking customary features.

However, on the credit side, using the fallback highlights some of GNOME 3's improvements. For instance, if you regularly use chat, you should appreciate that you can switch to your chat application without losing the focus of the current window. Considering how often most users are apt to switch to chat for a brief read or reply, this is a sensible feature that I hope KDE and other desktops will soon borrow.

Another welcome feature are notifications that display extremely briefly in relatively small bubbles, and then are collected for you to read at your leisure. With notifications becoming increasingly obtrusive on both proprietary and free desktops in the last couple of years, these behaviors feel like a welcome return to sanity -- and, again, should be default behavior on other desktops as well.

Still another improved feature is the System Settings window, which organizes settings into manageable categories, with no more than six or seven settings in each one. Decentralized system settings has long been the norm in the GNOME 2 series, but, although decentralization might have been a desirable philosophy at one time, for several years, it has meant scanning through increasingly long lists of menu items to find the one you want -- as well as deciding whether the item you want is in the Personal or Administration menus. By contrast, System Settings reduces the time to find items by half or more.

The missed default

The main advantage of the fallback desktop is that it is less of a change from the GNOME 2 series than the main GNOME 3 desktop. In fact, considering that it does not require hardware acceleration to work, I have to wonder why it isn't the default desktop.

A basic principle of usability has always been to design for the lowest common denominator. While this principle has limits (no one, for example, could reasonably expect a desktop released in 2011 to run on an AT 286 computer), the design of the main GNOME 3 desktop, with its need for hardware acceleration, has likely over-estimated the current capacities of free video drivers. Probably, hardware acceleration will not be universal on the free desktop for at least another year, if not two or three.

Under these circumstances, why wasn't the fallback the desktop on which all the time was lavished, and the one used by default? The main desktop should probably have been labeled an optional experimental feature. Or did the GNOME team assume that everyone used proprietary drivers, or would be willing to switch to them?

Yet even with the emphasis on the main desktop, more could be done to encourage use of the fallback desktop. In particular, an auto-detection wizard at first bootup should be run at first log in, ready to start the fallback if the main desktop can't be run.

Twice in my testing of GNOME 3 over the past couple of weeks, I have encountered computers that could not run the main desktop, and showed only scattered pieces of desktops. With these results, the control for switching to the fallback is unavailable because you can't see any menu to click. At the very least, a keyboard shortcut to the control would help on similar computers.

In some ways, I can't blame the GNOME team for focusing on the main desktop. As a new concept in computing, doubtlessly it is far more interesting to code for than the fallback, which is essentially a stripped-down version of the desktop for the GNOME 2 series (certainly, it is far more interesting to review, even though I have reservations about it).

But I suspect that the fallback was closer to what most people were expecting. Based on my experience, it's also what more people could use.

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