Observations on Gnome-2.14

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Mon, 01 May 2006 11:39:42 -0500
> From: "Jeremy Messenger" <mezz7 at cox.net>
> 
> On Mon, 01 May 2006 11:24:34 -0500, Kevin Oberman <oberman at es.net> wrote:
> 
> > I have one system running V6-stable that is now running Gnome-2.14. Some
> > things are really nice about it, but there are some oddities and some
> > things that need touching.
> >
> > First, an easy one...netspeed_applet needs to be rebuilt. I think a bump
> > of PORTREVISION is in order.
> >
> > When I first started 2.14, I got messages that several icons
> > (gnome-calculator, logout, screen-lock) could not be found and were
> > displayed as white icons with a red 'X'. But after acknowledging the
> > message, all of the icons appeared and work fine.
> >
> > This might be a race as I am running i386 on an AMD dual-core 4400+
> > Athlon-64 processor and it may be getting something done before things
> > are ready. This is also intermittent. It happens about half the time
> > when I start Gnome. (I use startx, not gdm.)
> >
> > On several start operations the icons in the weather applet are
> > missing. Other times they appear. Probably the same "can't find icon"
> > issue.
> >
> > gnome-terminal has sometimes crashed on logout from Gnome. I have not
> > tried to debug this at all. I do see that the contents of
> > .gnome2/session no longer have information on all of the gnome-terminal
> > windows. Just a simple command, so I guess gnome-terminal is storing
> > this somewhere else. (I need to find out where to debug why at least one
> > window never restarts.)
> >
> > Sessions are a bit messed up. As already reported, all manually
> > startup-sessions are gone after the upgrade and must be re-entered. No
> > longer is there an ordering option, but this might be settable via the
> > "Current Session" tab. I'll paly around with it if I get a little time.
> >
> > The logout tool no longer has a check-box to save the session. I THINK I
> > saved it by going into the "Sessions" prefs and selecting to
> > automatically save the session on logout and logging out. I then logged
> > back in and de-selected that option. There is still an option (which is
> > selected) to "Ask on logout". It appears to be a no-op in 2.14, though.
> >
> > On several start operations the icons in the weather applet are
> > missing. Other times they appear. Probably the same "can't find icon"
> > issue.
> >
> > Noise level issue: we really need a FreeBSD splash. The default Gnome
> > splash is just too boring looking.
> >
> > Problems I was having with calling ssh-add at session start are gone. I
> > never reported this, but if I included ssh-add (with gnome-ssh-askpass)
> > in the "Startup Programs" the startup would have for between 1 and 3
> > minutes and sometimes the wnck-applet would go into a loop and eat one
> > CPU. Killing wnck-applet would fix the problem as it automatically
> > restarts. In any case, this issue looks like it is gone!
> >
> > Big win in performance. Not everything is faster, but many things are
> > very noticeably faster. I'll have a better idea about this tomorrow when
> > I have a slower system upgraded. My dual-core is new and things always
> > seem to be fast, but I think I really like it.
> >
> > Thanks to the entire Gnome team for the work on this. It has thus far,
> > been the least painful Gnome version upgrade I have ever had.
> 
> Try to login in a dummy user and see if you still have the same problems.  
> My experience of upgrade, I had to clear a several of ~/.* to get GNOME  
> 2.14 and other apps stable. Mostly are from .gconf* stuff.

No joy. I created the dummy user and had pretty much the same
issues. Still no obvious wat to save a session other then setting
auto-save and then clearing it on the next login. All of the "can't find
icon" errors were there, too.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634