Why I'm going to be skipping Fedora 15

July 12, 2011

I've pretty much decided that I will not be upgrading my machines to Fedora 15 or installing it on new machines; they will stay at Fedora 14. The short answer to why is 'Gnome 3', but not quite for the reason that you might think.

I wrote earlier about how Fedora 15 has a package dependency failure in the sshmenu applet that's an important part of my nice ssh environment for Gnome, ultimately due to the API changes from Gnome 2 to Gnome 3. At the time I casually said that it shouldn't be too much work to write a Python version of the sshmenu applet, since Python was still supported in Gnome 3.

(Given how much of Fedora's various GUI tools are written in Python, I'm pretty sure that Fedora 15 would not have Gnome 3 unless the Python bindings were in good shape.)

As it turns out, I'm both right and wrong. I'm right in that it's not too much work to write a Python equivalent of the Ruby sshmenu applet (although it was kind of annoying, much like all GUI programming seems to be). I'm wrong in that Gnome 3 doesn't support Gnome 2 style 'applets' at all. I didn't notice this because of course I developed my applet on my regular desktop, which is still running Fedora 14; I only discovered this when I got my applet into a decent enough shape that it was worth trying it on a Fedora 15 virtual machine, at which point I discovered that the system was completely ignoring its service definition file.

The Gnome 3 shell environment doesn't support applets because it has a completely different approach to applet-style panel additions. All of the old bonobo-based applet APIs are completely gone, as is support for writing applets in the language of your choice (assuming it has panel API bindings). In Gnome 3, the equivalent is 'shell extensions', which are written in Javascript (with some degree of CSS for UI chrome). Old applets have to be completely rewritten (and as usual the Gnome 3 developers seem rather dismissive of the more interesting ones, which may have implications for what the shell extension API lets you do).

(This means that it was a red herring that the Ruby bindings haven't been ported to Gnome 3; even if they had been, the applet itself wouldn't work any more.)

This has a number of implications. Obviously, developing a version of the sshmenu applet for Fedora 15 is now a lot more work than I was expecting. Also, I need to be working in a Fedora 15 Gnome environment to develop it, which has certain bootstrapping problems. Finally, this change has removed a lot more than the sshmenu applet; as a start, Fedora 15 also lacks the 'Command Line' applet that I rely on for the other part of my nice ssh environment for Gnome. Getting my usual customized Gnome environment back in Gnome 3 is clearly going to take a bunch of time, if it's even possible.

In theory this only affects my work laptop (the only second sort of machine that I have); my home and work workstations use a completely customized non-Gnome environment (and my home is already far out of date and the hardware needs to be replaced anyways). In practice, I've traditionally used my laptop as the pilot for Fedora upgrades and I'm not happy with any of my options here; I get to choose either a blind Fedora upgrade on my primary machine at work and my laptop being stuck behind my workstation, or losing a significant amount of what makes my laptop convenient.

More generally it just seems that right now is too early for Gnome 3; people just haven't figured out how to duplicate lost functionality, updated language bindings, ported programs to the new APIs, written good documentation and howtos, and so on. Coming back in six months seems much more likely to get me a well developed Gnome 3 ecosystem than trying to use Fedora 15 today.

(Of course it's not clear that the laptop even has enough graphics power to run Gnome 3 in the first place, since Gnome 3 demands good 3D acceleration. And I don't know how well Gnome 3 supports such a 'lacking' environment.)

PS: the Gnome 3 fallback environment for machines without good 3D graphics (such as virtual machines) does not run Gnome 2 panel applets, although the look is still relatively classic Gnome.

Sidebar: links and references

(for my own future use if nothing else)


Comments on this page:

From 138.246.23.247 at 2011-07-12 17:31:55:

You inspired me to write http://chneukirchen.org/dotfiles/bin/tkssh (even though my cwm window manager already has a ssh menu functionality, which I always forget about), let's see how it works out.

From 142.161.22.49 at 2012-02-10 16:10:34:

I reads that you decided to stick with Fedora-14 when F-15 was offered.. Me too.. I'm suck to F-14 because the F-14 desktop can be made totally blank and totally personally customized, which makes a very good desktop screen for pioneering scientists, artists, and creative writers.. I finds that the gaudy active screens (15 & 16) stifle one's creative art and creative writing flows and rolls, like "the irritation of a hundred hungry pesky bloodthirsty mosquitoes buzzing around ones head in the forest".. But all support for Fedora-14 has stopped, and there are still a few tiny issues that need be solved and repaired to maintain F-14 a good running OS...

Is there a way to maintain and update bits of Fedora-14, even when RedHat's support has ended on it..? Or is there a new Fedora spin that sports a blank screen..? I tried F-16, but I just couldn't eliminate some of the irritating desktop stuff that kills creative rolls...

Plus.. I noticed, in universities and in medical clinics, that many offices are still running Fedora-14 in their business computers.. They tell me it's because the desktop is clean and simple...

DonaldJ dragonspirit@fastmail.fm

By cks at 2012-02-10 20:38:58:

It's certainly possible to build a completely custom X environment for any Fedora version (my desktop is an example). It's probably possible to strip down an XFCE based environment to something simple, although I haven't tried. For that matter, XFCE comes with a relatively simple initial setup.

(The problem with XFCE is that it's not as pretty as Gnome 2 and it probably doesn't have as many applets and stuff. Someday I will have to upgrade my laptop and will probably find out all about it.)

Written on 12 July 2011.
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