Gnome 2.12.1 and terminal

[Rodd Clarkson]

On Sat, 2005-10-15 at 19:34 -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-10-15 at 19:16 -0700, Teak Billard wrote:
> > What was the purpose?  Is it that gnome would like
> > people to move away from using terminal commands and
> > stick with the GUI?  Having a powerful terminal so
> > easily accessible is what makes Linux attractive to
> > me.
> 
> I suspect it has more to do with consistent UI design.
> The terminal is an application, Applications are launched from the
> Application menu.
> 
> >From a strictly UI perspective, it's probably proper to do what they are
> doing. It's just legacy users who are already so use to it being
> available the old way, and installing that nautilus-openterminal package
> gives it back to us (though I have a surprising number of untitled
> folders on my desktop ... ;)
> 
> I don't know the real reason, but I suspect it was UI design reasons.

As someone involved in the initial Fedora discussion about this, I
recall that the rationale for removing it from the menu was as follows:

* The terminal is a power user tool (which is why people on this list
will miss it in the desktop menu) and as such wasn't part of the primary
goals of GNOME, to design a desktop for users.

* The current implementation was limited and by having it in a separate
package you could do it much better.  The nautilus-open-terminal package
(yum install it) not only offers a terminal from the desktop, but from
each nautilus window (and with the exception of the desktop, it defaults
to the location your in.  Much nicer.

* You can get to a terminal simply by setting up keystrokes using
Desktop > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts, which power users would find
easy to do and doesn't require you having access to either the desktop
or a nautilus window.

Yes, you'll need to relearn some knee jerk habits, but overall this is a
good decision (and I arked up about it when it first happened too).


Rodd
-- 
"It's a fine line between denial and faith.
 It's much better on my side"