[edgy] Number of workspaces / desktops reduced to 2

Thanks for your bug. As you can read from the package changelog the change is intentional. It has been requested by Mark, I'm subscribing him to the bug. Also marking the bug as rejected since that has been made on purpose and is not a bug

This may be fine for a new install, but my laptop had four workspaces which were named, after upgrading this has been reduced to two and the names have changed from "workspace" to "desk".

Surely during an upgrade it should respect my settings?

Scratch that, ignore me, my bad.

What did you do? Might be useful for some other users if they do the same mistake

Ok. When I posted my first comment https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/metacity/+bug/60022/comments/2 I was mistaken because I have two edgy machines. One *has* four desktops I named myself as "Dev | Web | Mail | IRC". I upgraded a *different* machine however. That one now only has two workspaces and they are named "Desk 1" and "Desk 2".

I realised my mistake and posted https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/metacity/+bug/60022/comments/3 .

However I have now upgraded the first machine that had four desktops and it has indeed dropped to two. So I have lost the two workspaces and their repective labels. If I choose 'preferences' from the context menu for the workspace switcher I can of course increase the number - but they get the names "workspace 3" "workspace 4".

So my point kinda still stands. The number of workspaces I had was set at four and they had names, now there's two and the names of my others have been lost.

My current production laptop which is still running dapper has 8 desktops in use all day. So when I upgrade to edgy (in the current state) I will lose 6 of them and the names will be gone. Yeah, minor thing of course, I can add them back in. But I don't think I should have to. Just because the developer thinks 2 workspaces is enough shouldn't force me to use 2 after an upgrade when I had a different number before hand?

There is also the inconsistency that on one machine the workspaces are called "Desk 1" and "Desk 2" yet on my other machine when I increase the number of workspaces they're called "Workspace 3" and "Workspace 4".

Hope that all makes some kind of sense.

"Interestingly" if I boot to an older kernel - 2.6.15-25-386 (which I have to because of bug 58469 not letting me get on the network I find the workspaces revert to how they were - 4 of them named correctly.

Hmm. It appears that it's not just if I boot to an older kernel. The desktops have returned (with the right names) in any kernel (unsurprising really).

Looks like if you upgrade to edgy you drop to two desktops, if you then increase the number up again, then restart x it gives your desktops the old names they had. Less of an issue, but still an issue IMO.

Your comments are confusing. First the way gconf works, the schemas apply if you have no user setting, it only sets a default value to use if there is no custom value yet. On your box with 8 desktops their is no reason the number of workspaces should change, the user settings are respected. The only upgrade case issue is if you never played with the number of workspaces and then don't have an user key for it.

About the naming, those are to gconf key too so your custom names should not be dropped and you should get your custom names again if you set the number of workspaces to 4 by example

The linux version has nothing to do with the desktop and gconf, the comments about using an older version are not revelant to that bug