GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 318623
Add "run applications" back to main menu
Last modified: 2005-10-12 07:32:14 UTC
Please describe the problem: A Few Missing "Run Command" MenuItem Scenerios: 1. Attempt to run application that is not present in the menu: a) Search for terminal app (No longer in the handy desktop menu! Now you need to dig through the menu structure to find it tucked way at the bottom on "System Tools") a) Open terminal b) Type command c) Close window, program exits. For us, it is obvious why this happens, however it certainly not obvious to new users. The retort that new users would "never, ever, want or need to run an application not in the menu" is straw man; so lets head that common argument off now. ;) 2. Try to start a program not present in the menu and get it to save across sessions. a) Find terminal app again b) Type command c) Remebering to keep the application AND terminal open, exit and save session d) Log in again, now you have a terminal starting up from gnome-session along with your app. ;) e) Close terminal d) Log out again and check save session e) Log back in. (Now we have what we were aiming for in the first place!) This is a whole mess more convoluted and intimidating than clicking "run command", lookahead typing your command, and simply exiting w/ save session. Even the terminal itself is more intmidating than the run command dialog. No idea why this was removed. You need to be more careful on this path of minimilization. As an analogy, I'm fairly certain I could extract all the "most necessary" pages of Plato's Republic for you to read, but that doesn't mean it will be any easier to understand. ;) Steps to reproduce: see above Actual results: see above Expected results: see above Does this happen every time? yes Other information:
See bug 167090. All your arguments can be summarized with: Dialog is still available under ALT-F2. Yes, some programs are not in the menu. The bug is that the program is not in the menu. The fix would be to have the developers of that app ensure that it appears in the menu. Run Applications is just an ugly workaround for starting such apps. How would a user know the command to start the application with? Having completion isn't good enough if you just don't know the name. Even if the user would know the name of the application (say someone mentioned it), why wouldn't the user know about ALT-F2? #1: Why use a terminal? With nautilus you wouldn't have this problem. #2: Starting gnome-terminal, then starting the app with run application would still leave the gnome-terminal in the session. I understand you are trying to create a problem, but really, I don't see it. btw.. I use Run Applications pretty often (I like to start some apps just using the keyboard). I configured it to start with WINKEY-R, which is fine to start the app I need to use the keyboard anyway. Next GNOME hopefully allows both ALT-F2 and WINKEY-R.
I'm not trying to "create a problem", you have done that part for me ;) I have used Linux since 1995 and I have developed several GTK+ and Gnome applications (heck, even check the Nautilus cvs for the change to switch text colors on background drops) -- I don't know about ALT-F2. If that is the case, why would it seem intuitively obvious that a user who knows the name of a program would somehow know that ALT-F2 is a shortcut to the menu item you removed? This is by far the most common method I use of starting applications (as they are not tied to some terminal instance I have open.) Also, I personally don't follow the argument in the bug you reference. Why would x should not be in y menu translate to x should not be in any menu anywhere?!
Also, to address your two points: 1) Navigating to the application in nautilus would mean searching at least /bin, /bin/, /usr/local/bin, (and for me /opt/gnome/bin, /opt/kde/bin, /opt/* etc.) How is this easier than lookahead typing to search for an executable? 2) You mistook my point. I was refering to the fact that when you start a program from an xterm the application is a child process of that terminal and not init. Therefore, when you close the terminal you lose the app (unless you daemonize, nohup, etc.) The run application dialog is a much easier method of starting an app not "owned" by an xterm on your desktop.
Marking as duplicate of #315122 which has some proposal instead of a rant on current changes *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 315122 ***