Talking Points

WARNING: This page contains outdated info (we are working on updating it).

Here are our current Talking Points ¹ about GNOME 3 and the GNOME Desktop Environment in general. (Also see other resources.)

When communicating with the public, these talking points are here to guide you. These are the points we think are important to tell everyone about.

You can use these points if someone walks up and says "what's this?" You can also use points if asked a difficult question. Answer the question briefly and then bring the conversation back to these themes. Transition back to the themes.

GNOME 3 talking points

The three big things about GNOME 3 are user experience, the development foundation/framework, and apps.

User Experience

• Is grounded on substantial literature from Human/Computer Interaction research. FIXME: point to gnome-shell's bibliography?

• Makes you more effective.

  • Launch any application in seconds. FIXME: this is not really different from what we had before

  • Find your files easily with search. FIXME: ORLY? where?

• New user interface
• Cleaner look to icons and desktop.
• Cleaner preferences dialog.
• Notifications don't interrupt you.
• Revamped desktop management - multiple desktops are created when useful, and destroyed when no longer so. Your other desktops aren't hidden from you.

• You can use fallback mode for a GNOME 2 look and feel.

"The innovative GNOME 3 user experience allows you to focus on tasks when working on your computer, while minimizing distractions. We've replaced distracting popups with a notification that displays for a few seconds at the bottom of the screen and then gets out of the way. Users who want to focus can ignore these, and users that want to follow up can check the notification tray."

"While using GNOME 3, the environment does everything it can to speed up your productive work. For example, invoking new applications can happen with only a few short keystrokes. " FIXME: what are those mythical keystrokes? Where are those apps remembered in the interface?

"Another important User Experience innovation is the new approach to managing multiple desktops. desktops are now created as needed, and destroyed when no longer useful. This allows you to easily sort your windows by activity, instead of having all of your tasks mixed together."

Development

• Making GNOME application development easy and powerful. Much functionality has moved into Glib and the GTK+ stack, instead of having a bunch of separate libraries.
• Uses modern Cairo 2D graphics library; old X11 drawing is deprecated. The drawing model is simplified and at the same time more powerful than before.
• Handles device input better, more hot-swappable.

• Better theming system lets you use CSS syntax & more effects.

• First-class bindings: GObject Introspection. Bindings for high-level languages will be much easier to maintain than before, and they will be up-to-date sooner.

"The GNOME 3 development foundation includes improvements in the display backend, a new API, and improvements in search, user messaging, system settings, and streamlined libraries. GNOME 2 applications will continue to work in the GNOME 3 environment without modification, allowing developers to move to the GNOME 3 environment at their own pace. The GNOME release notes include further details." FIXME: this is very vague. New API for what? What improvements?

"GNOME's developer technologies have been vastly improved for GNOME 3. A huge amount of consolidation work has enabled a large number of modules to be deprecated."

Applications

• We have lots of great apps.
• Some cool new ones:

  • DejaDup (easy backups to cloud!) One click backup and restore to a local drive or Amazon S3.

  • Color Managment: reliable colors across printers/cameras/monitors, for artists and photographers, on apps that support it.
  • topic-based, faster help - The new help application is organized by topic instead of by application; which allows for much faster and easier navigation. There has also been a large amount of performance enhancement done, so using the application is now blazing fast.
• During GNOME 3, the desktop will become more integrated with social networking and geolocation.
  • Evolution autoconfig - one-click email setup so you don't have to configure email parameters by hand.

"GNOME Apps have added more social collaboration in GNOME 3. For example, users can now drag and drop Tomboy notes directly into Instant Messaging windows in Empathy. They can share their notes with anyone they are chatting with. Tomboy continues to combine simple note taking that its users love with an ability to easily share with friends."

"Social integration has been expanding in other applications as well. GEdit has exciting new features, allowing users to collaborate on text in real time. Unlike many online document collaboration tools, GEdit shows you every keystroke other users type, from directly within your desktop text editor. GNOME 3 is the best desktop environment for working in teams. Empathy allows for file transfer across a variety of IM networks. "

"To prevent data loss, many users have been moving data to the cloud. GNOME 3 is the only desktop environment on the market to include easy, 1-click cloud-based backup by default. The new release of DejaDup allows for one-click backup and restore to the popular Amazon S3 service. GNOME 3 leads the market in integrating desktop productivity with cloud resiliency."

Other aspects of GNOME 3

• GNOME Shell, your computer not getting in your way
• Topic-based help

• Performance improvements, like improving login time (maybe), GNOME shell is just as fast FIXME: proof?

• GNOME panel applets don't work - simplified gnome-panel for consistency with gnome-shell
• theming, art, icons are different, symbolic icons for the tray, new widget theme, symbols in the GNOME Shell panel, simpler, streamlined and easy on the eye for applications, strong design choices
• It's about user experience. (GNOME 1 = geeky, GNOME 2 = same look - tech is better, GNOME 3 is trying to go past the stagnant desktop metaphor)*
• Talk more about applications.

Approaches That Work

When you're talking with a skeptic, here are some approaches that are better than others.

• If the skeptic says, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Why discard a platform that was working fine?":
  • We were at a local maximum, and had to take some risks to work towards a user experience that will ultimately be even better.
  • Be specific about new functionality we can create with the new platform, and why developers will find it easier to develop on top of.
• What distributions are carrying it?
  • Fedora, openSUSE, and others are providing a vanilla GNOME; Ubuntu include most of GNOME 3, and users can choose to install the Shell.
• Skeptics or others who don't like the current GNOME 3 experience:
  • Figure out what they don't like about GNOME 3 and suggest that they stay with GNOME 2.32, or suggest adjustments they can make.
  • Don't suggest that the user switch to another desktop technology, such as XFCE, KDE, etc. Try to keep them in the GNOME community as much as possible.
• Many skeptics are just misinformed fans
  • Always try to find out the core of their critics or complains, be sure what it is so you can handle it
  • Propose, never rebuke. If the answer you are giving is "no", add a "nice factor" to it. For example: "yeah, the panel in the shell is fixed so the experience can be more consistent" (good) instead of "no, you can't customize it" (bad)
• What about touchscreen support?
  • The Shell is more suited to touch than GNOME 2 (with the panel) was, especially considering the bigger hit targets in the application browser and the ability to move between workspaces by grabbing the background and swipe it in any direction. Also, the ability to maximize by dragging the windows to the top of the screen, instead of hitting a small button, is something that also improves touchscreen-friendliness.
• What's really innovative in GNOME 3?

  • GNOME Shell is a fundamentally new experience for users accustomed to the GNOME 2.x desktop and other desktops of that paradigm (Windows, Macintosh, KDE, etc.). Users get to experience the immersive full-attention concentration one might expect with a tablet, but with all the functionality of a full desktop. Combining the benefits of multitasking with the benefits of single-minded focus on the current activity, GNOME Shell keeps the user in flow. You can see an example in this demo video that's under a minute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lepXx1kDelo

  • GNOME Shell was written in using a formal scene-graph technology (Clutter) and JavaScript to take advantage of the wide body of existing web developers as potential contributors.

• What's better here for system administrators?
  • Various distributions will package GNOME differently -- for example, sysadmins using openSUSE can access YaST while running GNOME. Overall, we are focusing on the experience of a desktop user, which does overlap with a system administrator's experience in some cases.

GNOME overall

• GNOME is cool!
  • GNOME is your best friend! It makes your life easy by including everything you need to use your computer, such as a web browser, instant messaging, office applications, and music and video playback. You get more stuff done.
  • In GNOME 3, you will find your applications and information instantly with search - never file again!
  • Main features: user experience, Shell, GNOME Activity Journal (Zeitgeist), Evolution autoconfig, Tomboy Online, all new user help, and notification system. New type of interface. Touch/drag/context/searching/...
• GNOME is one of the most successful free and open source software projects.

  • Huge user base - all the major linux distros and free desktops like OpenSolaris and Ubuntu ship with GNOME.

  • GNOME is humanitarian - translated into over a 100 languages and is accessible to people with disabilities. GNOME technologies are used in the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project, for example.
  • GNOME is free of cost.
  • Includes desktop and applications like photo editing (gimp is like Photoshop), games, financial managment (gnucash is like Quicken), ...
• Friends of GNOME
  • GNOME is a free and open source project
  • GNOME Foundation is a 501(3)(c) nonprofit organization
  • Supported by individuals and companies.
  • In 2008 we raised $6,000. In 2009, we raised, $30,000 ($29,578).

Practical benefits of Free Software

(see PracticalBenefitsOfFreeSoftware)

• No licensing cost for companies (LGPL). GPL/LGPL
• Cost savings (Compared to, for instance, MS licensing)
• Open Standards - no vendor lock-in.
• Local investment and training (Compared to, for instance, giving MS yet more money)

• Ease Of Use - We help users to achieve their goals.

  • Use of simple jargon-free language and explicit actions, such as [Save Document], instead of "Do agree that you do not want to discard these unsaved changes. Yes/No."
  • focus on availability of our style guides

• Reliable Release Schedule - we say what we'll do and when, and then we do it.

• Localization - We "really" support more languages, and we allow them to support themselves.

• Backwards Compatibility between releases - a stable foundation on which to develop applications.

• Momentum - Major corporate support. (Red Hat, Canonical, Novell and many more)

• CategoryMarketing