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  • #11
    Originally posted by dekomote View Post
    KDE is not trying to be "netbook UI".
    No, KDE is the name of a community that – among other workspaces – develops a Netbook one.

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    • #12
      Since I don't have a wordpress account, I'll leave a response here

      As per title. I know that Alex reads these forums, so hopefully he'll find this. I'll respond to the points one by one.
      1. You can have multiple instances of applications. Try right-clicking on a running application's icon in the dock, you should get a "New Window" entry. I don't know a way of doing this without the mouse, though - the dock doesn't seem to be keyboard-accessible, nor can I bring up that menu with the keyboard having selected a running application from the application list. FWIW, the specific example you give with gnome-terminal closing all child terminals sounds like a bug in that application, but I can't reproduce it here.
      2. You have to hold down the "alt" key with the session menu open. This changes the "Suspend" item to "Power Off..." which brings up a dialogue when opened. I don't like it either, and it's not discoverable at all, but that's how it is at the moment.
      3. Not much to say on this once, since I use desktops almost exclusively. However this serves only to make the previous point the more annoying for me. I don't even build suspend support into my kernels, so all that menu item does unless I hold down alt is lock the screen.
      4. Minimise controls still exist, they just aren't shown by default. Either right-click on the title bar and choose minimise, or open up gconf-editor and customise /desktop/gnome/shell/windows/button_layout if you want the minimise button back. I think the designers' intention is that people will learn to use workspaces and the overview instead (which are now discoverable in the right-hand side of the activities view, and interact very well with drag & drop), but IMHO it very much remains to be seen how successful this will be. Personally I re-added the maximise button, since I don't like how the drag-to-top gesture conflates maximising a window with changing its position when restored.
      5. You can open the activities menu with the logo (Windows) key, and just start typing the application's name. This will filter the displayed icons, up & down will then scroll through them (which I didn't find very discoverable; my first instinct was to try pressing tab). I have to agree though that for a mouse user, or someone who doesn't know the name of what they're looking for, the big list of icons is not user-friendly.
      6. Not at the bar in the top, but any application which is running can have its launcher pinned to the dock on the left of the activities overview. When it's running, open the overview, right-click on its dock icon, and choose add to favourites. I don't know how well this handles more than one screen height's worth of icons, since I've never got it that high. It would also be much more useful if the dock itself was keyboard accessible - since I tend to open the overview with the keyboard shortcut more often than with the mouse, having to then use the mouse to access what are ostensibly "application shortcuts" is quite irritating.
      7. I think the official stance on this is that it's fairly useless now, but will become useful as applications add support for it. Personally I'm not sure what an application could put there that would be obviously better than putting it in the normal application menu, and would rather use the space for applets instead of a what is currently a pointless reminder of which app has focus.
      8. Good point. I can't find a way to set it either, although personally I don't use it.
      9. Strangely, if you open the activities view and start typing one of the settings applet names (e.g. "power"), they *do* show up individually, under the heading "settings". But there doesn't seem to be a way to get a similar listing using just the mouse. I have to agree that things aren't quite right with the behaviour here.
      10. I don't know how to hide it either, but if you find out, please let me know.
      11. Similar to the above, I don't know where they've gone, but if you find out, please let me know. I think panel applets as we know them are dead, and keep hearing about this gnome-shell extension mechanism, but I think for the time being the replacements just don't exist yet. I won't be switching to gnome-shell at work until there's a migration path for the hamster applet (time tracker), since I use that extensively to help fill in my timesheet each week.


      Disclaimer: I'm not a GNOME developer, just an interested user who's trying to help.

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      • #13
        Count me among the users who have completely moved to KDE and/or xfce. The lack of settings in G-S and Unity is annoying (at best).

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        • #14
          Still safe until LTE runs out

          I'm very happy to be safe with am 10.04 LTE for now. At the moment I fear I'll have to switch to KDE after this as it looks like both Unity and the new Gnome Shell are seriously broken and their respective developers don't give a shit about the existing users. There may be many good concepts, but basic stuff does not longer work.

          I still do not understand how Shuttleworth can dream about 200M users when he serves them something that broken.

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          • #15
            I'm using Unity but I have similar problems, please see below.

            5. Starting applications is a nightmare nowadays. It was so quick and easy in gnome2 but now you just can't do it without typing. I find this ridiculous and probably the most serious regression.
            The same applies for switching workspaces, at least in Unity. Earlier, it was just a single position and click, now it's position->position+click->position and double click.
            I love using several workspaces but now they are _very_ difficult to use without the keyboard. Also note that you need to press 3 buttons far from each other so you need to put your hand from the mouse to the keyboard then back. It just pisses me off every time.

            11. I very much need the cpufreq and sensors because my laptop overheats all the time. For now I've found something which works but e.g. I can only change the frequency of 1 core.

            Note that I don't consider myself to be one of those who wish these new UIs would be just like gnome2. I don't mind change but I do need the UI at least not to slow down my workflow.

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            • #16
              Originally posted by mangobrain View Post
              [*]You have to hold down the "alt" key with the session menu open. This changes the "Suspend" item to "Power Off..." which brings up a dialogue when opened. I don't like it either, and it's not discoverable at all, but that's how it is at the moment.
              This is one of my top annoyances with Gnome Shell - why the designers thought that hiding commonly used action behind a non-discoverable keyboard shortcut was good design is beyond me.

              I've raised it on a related issue in Bugzilla and intend to keep pressing... Might post about it in the newsgroup too.

              Not having a minimise button messes with me too. Restoring the three button layout was one of the first things I did (annoyingly you have to edit a gconf key)...

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              • #17
                Originally posted by mirv View Post
                Not sure I'd agree with desktop users being a dying breed. I think it's more that people are using multiple devices now, and they're trying to make a "one size fits all" interface, which often will fall down in a heap.
                Indeed. Five years ago I had one desktop PC. Today I have the same desktop PC and another desktop PC and a laptop and a netbook and a home server and an HTPC and another laptop and another laptop though the two old laptops don't get used much anymore.

                Those require at least five different user interface classes: desktop large screen, laptop small screen, headless server, netbook tiny screen and GUI-less HTPC. Attempting to make 'one size fit all' merely cripples the more powerful machines because you have to design it for the lowest common denominator... a good phone UI makes a really shitty desktop UI just as a good desktop UI makes a really shitty phone UI.

                There is absolutely nothing wrong with Linux having different UIs for desktop users, tablets/netbooks and phones so long as they're built on the same underlying technologies.

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                • #18
                  Just a few points to supplement mangobrain's excellent post...

                  2) there's also a Shell extension to add shut down / restart option permanently: gnome-shell-extensions-alternative-status-menu .

                  3) as well as gconf/dconf, you can tweak this with the useful gnome-tweak-tool utility - in Fedora it's packages as gnome-tweak-tool .

                  4) again this can be customised with gnome-tweak-tool, and also remember you can access the overview with the Start key, you don't have to click anything.

                  5) indeed the keyboard interface is much more efficient; you can also drag commonly-used launcher to the Dash (dock) so they're quickly available. I tend to just configure my system to auto-launch all the apps I use all the time anyway. (For the record, the idea behind the giant icon grid layout is that it makes it easier to identify icons and to click on the correct one; they did some testing and found people had substantial problems navigating nested menus and identifying items on them.)

                  6) actually, there is: the non-packaged (on Fedora, anyway) extension at http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/extensions/index.html adds some GNOME 2-like behaviour to the top panel, including quick launchers. There's also an extension which makes the Dash exist permanently on the desktop and not just in the overview - so it's more like the OS X Dock. That's gnome-shell-extensions-dock .

                  8) gconftool-2 --set --type string /apps/metacity/general/focus_mode
                  sloppy , I am reliably informed by the Fedora list (thanks, Josep Puigdemont and Bryn Reeves).

                  9) well, they're not applications, properly speaking, but parts of the Control Center / System Settings.

                  10) Arch wiki has a scary-looking hack for this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php..._icon_in_panel . I prefer to just ignore it.

                  11) there's an extension: https://github.com/simon04/gnome-she...ension-weather . Weather will be built into the Shell in 3.2, this is currently being worked on.

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                  • #19
                    Originally posted by DanL View Post
                    Count me among the users who have completely moved to KDE and/or xfce. The lack of settings in G-S and Unity is annoying (at best).
                    Me too. I switched straight from GNOME 2.32 to KDE 4.6.3 because GNOME 3.0 although advertised as cool and better than 2.32 isn't as good as half of KDE 4.6.3 or GNOME 2.32.

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                    • #20
                      Every time I try KDE I keep going back to Gnome, but if Gnome 3 is the future I may have to give in and stick with it.

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