Tag: Linux

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Packaging for Systems

Over at Standalone Sysadmin we have an article titled Just what we need…another package manager. The article was inspired by the news that Rust is going to be receiving a package manager of its own called Cargo, and then goes off on how many different package mangers there are out there for a single system to use.

By single system, I’m talking about Linux.

I don’t have answers, but it does seem like there is a new package manager attached to each and every operating system, programming language, and even individual systems themselves (like Chef and Puppet). It is all terribly dizzying if you want to try to get anything done.

Like I said, no answers on my end.

Of course anyone can work out an ideal in their head that focuses around a single, system-wide package manager which any programming language or disparate system could hook into (like a super-charged apt or zypper), but I’m not even sure we would want that.

The hard part is that we have bought into the idea that choice is always good, and that more of something good is obviously better. This post asks whether that can always be true.

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openSUSE 13.1 Available Now!

The latest release of openSUSE is now available.

Go forth and download!

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Technology

A Month With Linux: Don’t Hold Your Breath

I have some friends who are going to roll their eyes at this post and then have a hearty laugh at my expense.

They probably have already laughed because they can quote this post verbatim. It is not outside of my normal behavior.

Basically, don’t hold your breath on me ever completing the “One Month With Linux” thing. If it ever happens, it is not going to be for a long while.

This does not mean, however, that I’ve settled on a single computing platform. Oh no, we could never have Bob finally settle on something and free that part of his consciousness for more important things! That would be too nice!

That’s for a different post.

So, I’m going to continue to count down the release of openSUSE 13.1 because this release is a test bed for what SUSE is going to do with SUSE Enterprise Linux 12 and I think it looks like an excellent release. I’m going to continue to use OS X, Linux and (gasp) sometimes even Windows because at least the first two have their strengths and weaknesses.

I won’t really talk much about Windows.

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Technology

My Problem with GNOME 3: Follow Up

Here is a follow-up to my earlier post. Thanks goes out to Phil Wels for getting me the needed screenshots so that I can finish the comparison.

These screenshots were gathered from an 11″ MacBook Air with OS X Mavericks and the latest Firefox. Since Apple added an explicit full-screen mode since OS X 10.7, I have two images for comparison (and you can find the GNOME 3 and GNOME 2 screenshots in the old post).

MavericksWindowMarked

MavericksFullMarked

I can definitely understand why Apple added the full-screen mode. When you split things up you get the following numbers:

  • Windowed content height: 660 pixels
  • Full-screen content height: 704 pixels

That’s a big difference.

Even more significant (in my eyes) is that it validates my gut feeling from earlier. OS X, even when using a regular Firefox window, shows more content than GNOME 3 (and even a few pixels more than GNOME 2). When you take into consideration the full-screen Firefox, then it gets to be ridiculous.

If I did my math correctly, you get the following:

  • openSUSE 13.1 GNOME 3: 634 pixels or baseline
  • SLED 11 GNOME 2: 23 pixels or 3.63% more
  • OS X 10.9 (windowed): 26 pixels or 4.10% more
  • OS X 10.9 (full-screen): 70 pixels or 11.04% more

You can see the advantage full-screen has on OS X 10.9. Of course, this matters the most on the smallest of screens (in height), and 768 pixels is about as small as they come … but it does show much GNOME 3 does crowd out content more than GNOME 2 and OS X.

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Technology

My Problem with GNOME 3

I’ve had openSUSE 13.1 installed on a Lenovo ThinkPad X220 for the past weeks and it has worked pretty well. I’ve used the GNOME desktop mainly because it has the ability to call up a search box with a single button (the Windows key on this laptop). That allows me really easy access to most functions I need to accomplish.

However, GNOME 3 has bugged me more than a little bit for one major reason and I’ll use some pictures to illustrate it.

openSUSE

SLED

Notice the subtle difference? Here are two more pictures to illustrate a little bit better.

openSUSEMarked

SLEDMarked

It is really subtle and only noticeable on a small screen (like the X220’s 1366×768).

The usable area for a Firefox window in openSUSE 13.1 GNOME is 634 pixels high. On SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) it is 657 pixels high. While that difference of 23 pixels (give or take a few, I was just cropping the images in Acorn) might not seem like a lot, on a screen where pixels are at a premium it can make a sizable difference in just how it feels. The SLED desktop, at least in this instance, just feels a little less cramped.

Now, this is an extreme case, obviously, but it makes a difference. Smash such large toolbars on the top of the screen feels oppressive in a way that the SLED one does not. GNOME 3 overall just feels a little bit heavier than GNOME 2 at the moment on these screen sizes. On larger screens, obviously, the differences are not as drastic.

At this point I should state that GNOME has taken a decidedly Apple-ish approach here with Apple’s persistent toolbar along the top of the screens. I don’t have an exact analog with which to test it with to see how Firefox fares on, say, an 11″ MacBook Air which has the identical screen resolution. I’ll try to have a friend screenshot that soon so I can pull it apart.

The point of this was not to bag on GNOME 3, but to point out one difference I have noted so far between the openSUSE GNOME 3 and SLED GNOME 2 design directions and the feeling I have when using them. It is interesting, at least.