[Tails-testers] Some criticism about the 2.0 beta

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Author: Yui Hirasawa
Date:  
To: tails-testers
Subject: [Tails-testers] Some criticism about the 2.0 beta
# Compiz

This is just horrible. Why would you have it on by default?
It will make Tails perform very badly on older computers and
even on newer ones it will cause some lag. It also makes me
and very likely other users dizzy.

# GNOME shell

Again, very bad choice. The usabilitiy on this new GNOME is
horrible for those of us who don't know the keybinds that
GNOME shell uses. Workspaces and wifi and possibly some other
stuffs are hidden behind menus. Also having an option for more
keyboard driven DE/WM would be nice for powerusers and
especially those of us who only have the thinkpad nipple as
our mouse.

# i2p

Still no boot option to boot with i2p on in the grub menu? Why
hide this very nice feature from the users? Are you hiding
other features as well? Imo the grub menu could just have
another page for advanced features with choices for better
desktop environments and i2p and possibly some other usefull
stuff in the future


Here is a log of our chats on #tails.

<sprick> I doubt anybody will be listening but can I just say that Tails 2.0 runs like garbage? Way to completely throw anybody on a not-newer computer under the bus
<Tsutsukakushi> sprick: but muh compiz
<sprick> muh window animations
<sprick> muh making everything look like apple
<Tsutsukakushi> compiz is what does the animations
<sprick> Then it should be disabled
<Tsutsukakushi> also everything being hidden behind a menu is horrible for usability
<Tsutsukakushi> like the wifi
<Tsutsukakushi> and workspaces
<sprick> And the icons
<sprick> Just getting a new identity from Vidalia now means having to make 5 clicks, which made connecting to this very server a pain due to its blocking of exit nodes
<Tsutsukakushi> i'm pretty disappointed by the changes in 2.0 beta
<sprick> I'm more than disappointed
<sprick> I'm probably done with Tails
<Tsutsukakushi> should probably send the feedback to the devs
<sprick> That's why I'm here but they're rarely on...
<sprick> Unless there's a better method
<Tsutsukakushi> you can probably send them email
<sprick> I feel like there's even less of a chance that'd be read.
<Tsutsukakushi> tails-testers@???
<Tsutsukakushi> worth a shot
<Tsutsukakushi> i'll send some feedback too
<Tsutsukakushi> what DE was in the older tails versions?
<sprick> Gnome 2 I think
<sprick> Gnome Flashback actually
<sprick> A lot of live CDs at least give the choice of DE if they're that committed to keeping Gnome 3
<sprick> Tsutsukakushi: Are there any other problems with Tails 2 I should know about?
<sprick> I just booted it up so I haven't used it much
<Tsutsukakushi> hmm
<Tsutsukakushi> at least the DE is horrible and compiz sucks
<Tsutsukakushi> i dunno about any others
<Tsutsukakushi> haven't used too much yet
<SweTai> (14:17:14)<sprick>Just getting a new identity from Vidalia now means having to make 5 clicks, <-- that's plain BS! It's 2 clicks, as before
<sprick> I had plenty of stability problems with Wheezy and I can just tell this is going to be worse
<sprick> SweTai: You have to the click the icon on the bottom to bring up the little menu, right click the Vidalia icon (after move you mouse on to it), and then click new identity
<sprick> 3 clicks
<SweTai> Tsutsukakushi there's not much use to do so. They're prod of it :(
<sprick> Whereas before it was two, without having to move your mouse twice either
<sprick> SweTai: They're really committed to Gnome 3? What makes you say that?
<Tsutsukakushi> sorry to hear that
<Tsutsukakushi> GNOME 3 sucks ass
<SweTai> (10:02:10)<SweTai>Hello, is there any use to discuss/document the disadvantages (in matters of usability) of 2.0 vs. 1.8.x or is 2.0s UI Hobson's choice?
<SweTai> (10:40:49)<jvoisin>It's just a move to Jessie
<SweTai> (10:41:07)<jvoisin>Feel free to check GNOME's design documents
<sprick> I guess they want to stick as close to upstream as possible, even though that makes no sense because it's supposed to be a live privacy OS
<SweTai> sprick I right-click the icon next to the clock and chose 'New identity'
<sprick> SweTai: I had to change a setting in gnome-tweak-tool to get the icons back there. That's weird.
<sprick> Maybe just a bug
<SweTai> I had them since the beginning. was updating from 1.7 though
<sprick> Debian is designed to look good in a screenshot. You'd think Tails would be designed for a guy in China to run on a crappy computer in a net cafe, or somebody from South America on an aging computer, etc.
<sprick> This DE doesn't seem to fit that idea at all.
<SweTai> BTW: Do you know how to get quick launch bar back?
<SweTai> I'm totally with you, sprick!
<sprick> I mean it uses Firefox so it will never be too lightweight, but this DE doesn't help at all.
<SweTai> Tails 2.0 takes >5 min to finally be ready for work on my 8yr old computer
<sprick> Yeah, similar for me
<sprick> And an 8 year old western computer is far above the lowest of the low in developing countries
<SweTai> it's way faster than the atoms fo instance
<sprick> Not to mention the newer the computer, the more hardware backdoors it has, so they shouldn't be encouraging their use
<SweTai> you name it! But one cannot argue about that with the dev's, their narrow-minded in that matter
<sprick> Tsutsukakushi: What DE do you think Tails should use?
<Tsutsukakushi> i think it should give you a few options
<sprick> Surely there must be one that looks alright but doesn't have all sorts of sluggish animations and is lightweight
<Tsutsukakushi> options should be KDE 5, GNOME 3 and some tiling wm, i3 would be pretty good choice imo.
<SweTai> what's the use of "beauty" for a security tool at all?!?
<Tsutsukakushi> the animations aren't because of the DE
<Tsutsukakushi> they are done by compiz
<SweTai> this is no iTails but Tails
<sprick> Oh, well then they should just get rid of that to start
<sprick> It's one thing to look sleek and modern. You want your "average user" to not be turned away. But animations aren't needed in the slightest.
<sprick> Anyway I'm sending an e-mail to the account Tsutsukakushi suggested and SweTai you should too.
<sprick> Also somebody should include the content of this chat.
<Tsutsukakushi> i will also
<SweTai> Who uses Tails does that for reasons. None of them is beauty.
<Tsutsukakushi> sprick: i can do that
<sprick> Good
<sprick> Is anybody else having Florence cut the spacebar off?
<SweTai> Florence?
<sprick> The on-screen keyboard
<sprick> It refuses to even display a fraction of the bottom key row unless it's resized to like 50% of the screen. I really thought they had cut the space bar out for some reason.
<SweTai> nope, may be a screen size/resolution issue? Mine is fine
<SweTai> have HDTV resolution
<sprick> Well I'm just using the default settings. The old version worked fine...
<sprick> This i3 looks nice. I know they'd never make it the default, but it could be a good option.
<sprick> MATE would be a better option too
<Tsutsukakushi> MATE would be a great default
<sprick> Xfce looks nice too
<SweTai> can you too open the Tails persistent volume config wizard? I get told my volume was r/o (though I can write to it)
<SweTai> *two
<Tsutsukakushi> i got told it's read-only too, i don't think i mounted it as such
<sprick> I don't have a PV configured but the prompt to configure one showed up.
<SweTai> so we found a bug
<sprick> After about 30 seconds
<Tsutsukakushi> i even tried to do mount -o remount,rw /dev/mapper/whatever and it didn't help
<sprick> Are you guys creating a PV or mounting an existing one?
<SweTai> mount an existing
<Tsutsukakushi> with existing one mounted
<sprick> Ah, I can't test then
<SweTai> I'll file a report then
<sprick> I like how Gedit's default open dialogue is just a search prompt, instead of a file listing.
<sprick> Just what I want to do, search my entire hard drive every time I want to open something even though I know exactly where it is. I'll just put a bullet through it while I'm at it too.
<SweTai> sprick no, that's just an empty unsaved doc, just like any editor shows
<sprick> I've clicked on about 50 icons where I had no idea what it would do and there was no mouseover text either.
<Tsutsukakushi> ^ yeah that's annoying
<SweTai> and CTRL-O works too
<sprick> SweTai: No, click the "open" button. Older versions would bring up directories. This one is just a search prompt, and you have to click "other documents" to get the directories.
<sprick> Ctrl+o does work though.
<SweTai> That's how bloody mouse pushers do it ;)press CTRL-O and it works as expected.
<sprick> But sometimes I want to be lazy and just use the mouse, and not lean forward to use my keyboard.
<Tsutsukakushi> SweTai: but to do that you need to know GNOME 3 keybindings...
<sprick> Maybe they did this to improve my posture.
<Tsutsukakushi> SweTai: and there is no help menu when you boot that teaches them to you
<SweTai> actually that's stolen from M$-Designguides
<Tsutsukakushi> SweTai: so it's not very good for non-GNOME users
»» Blueraven has joined #tails
<sprick> With how long it takes to boot I was expecting an in-flight movie
<Tsutsukakushi> i'm not too concerned about the boot time
<SweTai> if you double-click on a *.txt file: Does it open in gedit or traverso on your system?
<sprick> For a live OS it should boot quickly though
<sprick> It opens in gedit. Are you in a root nautilus?
»» pepzi has joined #tails
<sprick> That causes them to open in traverso.
<SweTai> nautilus as amnesia
<sprick> Well that's definitely a bug then.