unity-design team mailing list archive

[Gregory Merchan <gregory.merchan@xxxxxxxxx>]

I ran across this bug report a little while ago:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/quantal/+source/gnome-session/+bug/882296

I proceeded to this page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SessionHandling

I was horrified.

I'm quite sure that I _never_ want to close all programs.

For one thing, I don't want to think about programs unless I'm writing
them. It doesn't matter if you call them "applications" or something
else. But let's ignore that for now.

I want as little difference between the lock screen coming on and any
of logging off, shutting down, restarting, etc. as possible. Of
course, I don't mean I want the lock screen to suck too.

When I shutdown the computer because the power has gone out, the
battery is dying, I've completed upgrades, whatever, I expect that
when I log back in I will right back where I left off. I don't want
the degenerate case that we have now, I want the state before I
selected "Shut Down..." from the menu.

Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I seem to recall that I could pick up
where I left off during the mid-1990's when I used OS/2. Even if that
wasn't so, the idea was certainly around then. I am certain that OS/2
had a feature, work area folders, which made some resumption of work
possible. I don't remember if I could make the desktop a work area
folder; it may have been that by default.

Mac OS X finally picked up something like this a release or two ago. I
hear it doesn't work very well. I don't think I've heard of Microsoft
making any progress in not wasting my time.

Once session handling doesn't suck, all those alerts can be a little
simpler. They can't go away yet, since restarting still takes a good
bit longer than unlocking the screen, but perhaps they can go back to
the version that gives you so many seconds to cancel in case you
mistakenly triggered the action.

So, how about it? Or are will still in the place where people think
wasting time restarting programs is a good thing?

If nobody's interested, that's OK. Writing a desktop environment is a
cheap hobby that will last a long time.