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jhon987
Apprentice
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Joined: 18 Nov 2013
Posts: 297

PostPosted: Sun Mar 16, 2014 1:34 am    Post subject: Gnome, Systemd, Linux Reply with quote

To all who reads this - hello, and a nice day to you. (my apology for the length)
So, initially I wanted to post this as a support question but when I started thinking on how am I going to phrase this, I realized it is more of a rant than a request for assistance... [also, there's too many bugs]
I know most of you Gentoo users are using KDE rather than Gnome, and I believe I'm beginning to understand why. (hence another reason not to post this as a question)

Here's the deal - So I've upgraded to gnome 3.10 a few days ago (when it finally hit stable) and I noticed the boot process became a lot slower, which is surprising because everyone is saying that systemd should be quite speedy.
anyways, I decided to ignore that for a while hoping some update might resolve this later. but today it finally got back at me (you can't run forever), apparently GNOME has an issue with flash player full screen, and while I could go quite easily around it on gnome 3.8, 3.10 requires me to install another package and write some config file (I know that thanks to Arch forums https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1305689).
So I discovered this is a mutter problem which gnome developers are aware of for a long time yet are reluctant to do anything about it (refuse to take patches they are offered). it seems that every new version of gnome which introduces a new feature always make sure, as if it was a law of nature, to also introduce a great deal of new bugs. and I would get more specific about the bugs issues but I'm afraid this will take too much time - so if you like me to specify, reply with a request.
Moving on, on my quest for solving the flash issue, which BTW I've currently abandoned (because I'm not a big fan of "unofficial scripting workarounds") I have discovered what causes my slow boot and a few other issues:

Code:
# systemctl --all | grep failed
plymouth-quit-wait.service                                                               loaded failed   failed    Wait for Plymouth Boot Screen to Quit
# systemctl --all | grep not-found
auditd.service                                                                           not-found inactive dead      auditd.service
rc-local.service                                                                         not-found inactive dead      rc-local.service
syslog.service                                                                           not-found inactive dead      syslog.service
syslog.target                                                                            not-found inactive dead      syslog.target


this is where systemd gets into the picture, but it doesn't ends there, because there's also another issue I'm having, it's some kind of weird lags or freezing or stuttering (I don't even know how to call this). what happens is for instance, when I'm renaming a file, I start typing but nothing is shown on the screen then, after a few seconds (up to a minute) it suddenly appears, or sometimes, when I press on one tab inside my browser, I see a flickering image of both the last and the current tab for a few moments. all of this is happening on Gentoo stable may I remind you. However, I don't blame Gentoo's developers nor gnome ones either, after hopping around so many distros in the past, I know this could have happened to me on any distro and with any D.E.

I sincerely hope that Linux developers community, whether they are coders or designers or whatever, would start paying more attention to the new bugs they're creating for the sake of a few minor UI/'under-the-hood' changes, and perhaps start focusing more on filling the holes they gape...
Thank U, and god bless U
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Sansavarous
n00b
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Joined: 15 Feb 2004
Posts: 22
Location: My computer.

PostPosted: Tue Mar 18, 2014 8:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm offended I don't use KDE or Gnome and flash plays great.

Now you have the opportunity to really use the power of the source and fix it!

Then you can go back to the busy developers and say, "Lookie what I did!"
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steveL
Watchman
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Joined: 13 Sep 2006
Posts: 5153
Location: The Peanut Gallery

PostPosted: Wed Mar 19, 2014 12:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Get your machine back then. You paid for it, throw the rubbish off it, and enjoy a better desktop :)

Note: I'm a KDE user; you're also welcome to join us on the darK siDE™.. ;-)
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ppurka
Advocate
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Joined: 26 Dec 2004
Posts: 3256

PostPosted: Sat Apr 19, 2014 6:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You can also try e17.

The latest release (0.17.6) has got only one showstopper bug that I am aware of: backlight settings are not restored in e17. That bug can be fixed by putting this file in /etc/portage/patches/x11-wm/enlightenment/ directory before you emerge e17.

My very stable configuration is e17 + comp-scale (for expose like effects) + engage (taskbar and launcher).
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emerge --quiet redefined | E17 vids: I, II | Now using kde5 | e is unstable :-/
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The Doctor
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Joined: 27 Jul 2010
Posts: 2678

PostPosted: Sat Apr 19, 2014 6:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

If I make make one observation, it would be appropriate to blame the Gnome devs for the problems in Gnome. No code is bug free, but it is their mess to clean up. If they won't even try to clean up their own mess then they are doing something wrong.

For a while I had about 5 or 6 wms including gnome and KDE running before I decided I really didn't like either one. In the end i3 won and I think I have been using i3 longer than any other window manager or DE. The nice thing about Gentoo is it won't break anything if you install 10+ wms and/or DEs to see which one you like best. Ultimately, the solution to this problem exists between the keyboard and the chair.

Quote:
... for the sake of a few minor UI/'under-the-hood' changes,


<rant> I don't care what side of the discussion anyone comes from. The changes being implemented in systemd and Gnome are not minor. They are radically changing the entire Linux structure from many components to a single monolithic system. Basically, they are rewriting most of the core system. </rant>
_________________
First things first, but not necessarily in that order.

Apologies if I take a while to respond. I'm currently working on the dematerialization circuit for my blue box.
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TomWij
Retired Dev
Retired Dev


Joined: 04 Jul 2012
Posts: 1553

PostPosted: Sat Apr 19, 2014 8:20 am    Post subject: Re: Gnome, Systemd, Linux Reply with quote

jhon987 wrote:
To all who reads this - hello, and a nice day to you. (my apology for the length)
So, initially I wanted to post this as a support question but when I started thinking on how am I going to phrase this, I realized it is more of a rant than a request for assistance... [also, there's too many bugs]


Yeah, no problem; big changes come with big regressions, we are for example also seeing a lot of users that get presented with a black screen instead of GDM or the GNOME shell.

jhon987 wrote:
I know most of you Gentoo users are using KDE rather than Gnome, and I believe I'm beginning to understand why. (hence another reason not to post this as a question)


Their usage is quite similar according to http://constantmayhem.com/ty-stuff/linuxsurvey/2013.html though we might want to await the 2014 version that is conducted these days to see how that has changed.

jhon987 wrote:
Here's the deal - So I've upgraded to gnome 3.10 a few days ago (when it finally hit stable)


Note that 3.12 is in the progress of being added; 3.10 has been out for a while, the lack of manpower in both the GNOME team and the stabilization arches causes some lag with introduction and stabilization.

jhon987 wrote:
and I noticed the boot process became a lot slower, which is surprising because everyone is saying that systemd should be quite speedy.
anyways, I decided to ignore that for a while hoping some update might resolve this later.


You can use `systemd-analyze critical-chain` to find the culprit and `systemd-analyze blame` to get an overview.

jhon987 wrote:
but today it finally got back at me (you can't run forever), apparently GNOME has an issue with flash player full screen, and while I could go quite easily around it on gnome 3.8, 3.10 requires me to install another package and write some config file (I know that thanks to Arch forums https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1305689).
So I discovered this is a mutter problem which gnome developers are aware of for a long time yet are reluctant to do anything about it (refuse to take patches they are offered).


You can find information about this on https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=722743 which contains temporary patches; the patches don't fix the issue itself, which lies elsewhere than the patches suggest.

jhon987 wrote:
it seems that every new version of gnome which introduces a new feature always make sure, as if it was a law of nature, to also introduce a great deal of new bugs.


Given you know the version a certain bug is introduced, a git bisect would quickly reveal the change that caused it; but yes, given GNOME is pushing forward to a quite different desktop experience, a lot of compatibility becomes broken on its path.

jhon987 wrote:
Code:
# systemctl --all | grep failed
plymouth-quit-wait.service                                                               loaded failed   failed    Wait for Plymouth Boot Screen to Quit
# systemctl --all | grep not-found
auditd.service                                                                           not-found inactive dead      auditd.service
rc-local.service                                                                         not-found inactive dead      rc-local.service
syslog.service                                                                           not-found inactive dead      syslog.service
syslog.target                                                                            not-found inactive dead      syslog.target


Ths output reveals nothing that would indicate a slow boot; the former fails immediately as the Plymouth Boot Screen isn't found, the latter are services you either don't need or already have running in another way, though you can opt to install them if you wish to use them instead.

jhon987 wrote:
this is where systemd gets into the picture, but it doesn't ends there, because there's also another issue I'm having, it's some kind of weird lags or freezing or stuttering (I don't even know how to call this). what happens is for instance, when I'm renaming a file, I start typing but nothing is shown on the screen then, after a few seconds (up to a minute) it suddenly appears, or sometimes, when I press on one tab inside my browser, I see a flickering image of both the last and the current tab for a few moments. all of this is happening on Gentoo stable may I remind you. However, I don't blame Gentoo's developers nor gnome ones either, after hopping around so many distros in the past, I know this could have happened to me on any distro and with any D.E.


If you continue to use GNOME or perceive this in another desktop environment; then check `dmesg`, Xorg.0.log, /var/log/messages and `journalctl -rb` (reversed) for any troubleshooting information, a step further could be to install dev-util/perf after which you as root can use `perf top` for instance to see whether you have high interrupt times or interrupt storms going on (more techniques on https://perf.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page which need you to enable debugging and the tracers in the kernel). Also worth checking out is `iotop` to see if a process is disk trashing, as well as the more common checks of the CPU and memory usage in a program like `htop`.

jhon987 wrote:
I sincerely hope that Linux developers community, whether they are coders or designers or whatever, would start paying more attention to the new bugs they're creating for the sake of a few minor UI/'under-the-hood' changes, and perhaps start focusing more on filling the holes they gape...
Thank U, and god bless U


Yes, they should take an example of the Linux kernel's releases; things like long term stable kernels are nice to have, you don't see this often with desktop environments.

Sansavarous wrote:
Now you have the opportunity to really use the power of the source and fix it! Then you can go back to the busy developers and say, "Lookie what I did!"


Indeed, learning about VCS features like bisecting and blaming can go a long way; regardless of what you run, you'll meet a bug sooner or later which you often then squash on the same day it was introduced.
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