[clug] Gnome - Why? just Why?

[George at Clug]

Hi, and once again, I want to say thanks to everyone for their
comments. I want to make comment to various points people have made.


Question: How is the Gnome way to find programs of a certain type,
like games, or photo editing programs, when you have do idea which
program but want to look though a list ?



And for those with enough free time to read...



"Might be a good CLUG demo sometime." - Some time ago I wanted to
understand gnome but as I did not have as much time on my hands as I
do now, I never succeeded, however at that time some, I think Chris,
did a short demo of Gnome at CLUG. Why this did not help me back then
was two fold, 1) I could not see his hands, and they were so efficient
I could not notice the slight movements, 2) with one overhead
projector at a presentation, it is difficult to set up and show a real
world, in depth working environment. As I am into servers, web
browsers, email servers, samba servers I would be using test
environments with virtual machines as both test workstations and test
servers, (would like to be) programming scripts or programs, as a
result I often have many, many windows open e.g. terminals to the
servers, virtual machine desktop windows, and many web browser
instances where I am researching "er, how do I do this?".  Maybe as
part of the demo, I could provide a quick [fake] demo on how I use a
Desktop/Laptop to do my work, but it would take me some preparation.
Worth doing though, as if other people see this they may be able to
explain how Gnome could better help me, and suggest that I really
should focus on one task at at time (as per Bryan's previous email,
and while I might not always be able to do that, it is a reasonable
goal).



A forward step: It was suggested that I should work with Gnome for a
while, give it a try, and that learning and getting to use a different
style of doing things does not happen overnight. I am continuing to
use Gnome. This morning I wanted to open a Text editor (gedit), which
I know well a like a lot. Earlier this morning, being frustrated with
not having a full menu, I went into the Tweek tool and turned on
"Applications Menu", and so I went to the menu, because the menu item
for Gedit was not immediately visible and I am feeling halve asleep,
it seems too difficult to go hunt though the menu for the application,
so I just hit "Super" and typed "ge", when Gedit showed, I then
pressed enter. I was amazed just how quick and simple this was, since
I was the one a few days ago, complaining I hate finding an
application by typing its name.


A backward step: I used the above instance of Gedit to store comments
people made in their emails so I can respond to them in this email. To
find that instance which was on my second monitor and by now had
become covered by other programs, I used the Tweeks "Window list" to
quickly bring it to the foreground using my mouse. I guess over time I
will learn to press Alt-Tab as I just did then to cement the concept
into my mind. As Chris has said, if I used the keyboard, I would not
have had to lift my hands of the keyboard as I was typing this email,
when I wanted to being Gedit to the foreground.  I think this will
actually be quicker and easier once I get into the habit.  I have
some person habits to retrain.


"There are about 100 extensions available in Fedora", very true, and I
could make Gnome work more like Xfce (which I have to some extent),
but my mission is to use Gnome as the Gnome developers intended. If
they meant for the functionality of these extensions to be available
in Gnome, they would have coded them directly in. Otherwise I will
never experience Gnome as the developers really intended. At some
point I will have to remove "Applications Menu", and the "Window
List", to ensure I am not "cheating" in my test.


"I've explained a bit already, like using the keyboard to open apps,
moving them around on desktops, switching apps, sliding desktops,
moving them to left and right, etc," thanks for that, and yes, I want
to turn up for a full demo, even if I pointed out a demo of keyboard
usage is not easy.


I was loosing concentration while writing this email, so I just wanted
to find what games I could play. I pressed "Super" and typed games,
but only one game came up?  Having installed the "Applications Menu"
extension, I opened the games menu and there were plenty to choose
from. How do you find programs of a certain type, like games, or photo
editing programs, when you have do idea what program but want to look
though a list, in standard Gnome? 



Somehow the above caused me to go into "Super", type "so", press enter
on "Software" and then there is a message "Let's Go Shopping". What is
that about? I this is Linux the home of FOSS, I am not going
"Shopping" anything. I just wanted to check on installed programs and
any various updates that might be pending. And wow, there much have
been updates during the night. I think a kernel update too, as I
previously applied them this morning to some of my other computers,
let me quickly check ... yes, there are, so "server updating time once
again". 



https://www.debian.org/News/2019/20190427
As a special case for this point release, those using the apt-get tool
to perform the upgrade will need to ensure that the dist-upgrade
command is used, in order to update to the latest kernel packages. 

To fully resolve these vulnerabilities it is also necessary to install
updated CPU microcode. An updated intel-microcode package (only
available in Debian non-free) will be provided via a separate DSA. The
updated CPU microcode may also be available as part of a system
firmware ("BIOS") update.


George.