Direction Of GNOME To Be Discussed Next Month

[Awesomeness]

Duh. Obviously the GNOME community turned totally crazy.
If one does not like the default usability of GNOME Shell, the sane solution would be to develop GS extensions to tweak it. Instead the Gnomes’ default reaction is a fork – totally crazy, as I wrote.

[bwat47]

I think Unity rips off Mac more than GNOME. I haven't used GNOME 3 yet but from what I've seen the menus and the window decorations are the only things that seem very Mac-like.


What I find interesting about this article is Vincent didn't explain the direction of GNOME, he just simply stated it was misunderstood. Anyways, to me, GNOME is trying to be tablet focused. That being said, if you use it for desktop PC purposes, you're likely to get a significantly worse experience. It reminds me a lot of Windows 8, where some decisions seem asinine and are unproductive but they don't really matter on a small resolution touchscreen.

To me, GNOME 3 would receieve a lot less hate, if any, if they didn't call it GNOME. This is because it doesn't resemble GNOME 2 in any way, and it is NOT suitable as the default linux DE. Today, I'd say XFCE should get the crown of default DE. It isn't my favorite but it's the most balanced. XFCE isn't basic but it isn't full of useless features either. It isn't ugly but it's not too flashy. It doesn't have too many dependencies. It runs fine on most systems. The programs associated with it aren't all that amazing but they're stable. I see KDE being the DE of choice when you want a fancy setup that you can customize to any little way you want. Unity is good as a flashy introductory UI, but I personally find it very user unfriendly for productivity. Then there's LXDE for barebone systems. Put a PURPOSE to a DE and everyone wins in their own way.

gnome 3 does have issues with dual screens and such, but I wouldn't make the blanket statement that using it for PC purposes will give you a bad experience... I use gnome 3 on my laptop and think its pretty good.

[Bucic]

If you consider Gnome Shell a bad shell, try Unity first. I did. When I tried Gnome Shell... let me just put it this way - What a #%^#$ relieffff! The thing works, well, differently, but performance is way better. Also keep in mind that Canonical does pet-bugging with the Unity. The same bugs persist since the very first version of Unity with no perspective of them being resolved! All you silly optimists out there - this is a shell for you. The bugs will SURELY be resolved

[finalzone]

Gnome have no vision now. They should have kept the old 2 panel layout and just improve under the hood aka gtk3 clutter what ever.

The problem with 2 panels layers is the clutter they both bring. In this case, clearly a nostalgic value. Gnome Legacy is on the way FYI.

In my opinion people should try Cinnamon and all non paid developers from Gnome go and join Cinnamon project, u`ll much more love from users there than in gnome camp. And as for people liking gnome 3 ofc u`ll see a few every camp has his fanboy user database.

Cinnamon is nothing more than a polished extended Gnome Shell rather than a true fork. It heavily depends on the core of Gnome 3 to be fully functional. The existence of extensions render the argument that Gnome does not care moot. The real issues are those whiners making a lot of noise without trying a desktop environment like Gnome Shell while aware of the open development but chose not to participate.

I my opinion gnome 3 will never give in their goal to become a touch orientated desktop the won`t admit they were or are wrong, never. If i weren`t for redhat backing them up they would have been lost into oblivion along time ago. I still cant image next redhat 7 release with default DE gnome 3.x that won`t work in enterprise , business environment.

[/quote]
Touch oriented desktop is inevitable, it needs maturity. Be glad Gnome 3 allows the use of both keyboard and mouse while trying to bridge the gap between touchscreen and keyboard. Change is a natural process, new generation of developers and users emerge everyday.
Redhat has a habit to backport new features including GPU drivers for enterprise environment. The key issue is obviously communication which is the kryptonite.

[Rigaldo]

If you consider Gnome Shell a bad shell, try Unity first. I did. When I tried Gnome Shell... let me just put it this way - What a #%^#$ relieffff! The thing works, well, differently, but performance is way better. Also keep in mind that Canonical does pet-bugging with the Unity. The same bugs persist since the very first version of Unity with no perspective of them being resolved! All you silly optimists out there - this is a shell for you. The bugs will SURELY be resolved

Agreed, with GNOME you know you want see the bug again. If something is buggy .. They will remove it altogether.

[bwat47]

If you consider Gnome Shell a bad shell, try Unity first. I did. When I tried Gnome Shell... let me just put it this way - What a #%^#$ relieffff! The thing works, well, differently, but performance is way better. Also keep in mind that Canonical does pet-bugging with the Unity. The same bugs persist since the very first version of Unity with no perspective of them being resolved! All you silly optimists out there - this is a shell for you. The bugs will SURELY be resolved

Upstream gnome isn't much better in that respect. It seems each gnome release is coming with more and more very obvious bugs that should have been caught and fixed before final release.

Totem's fullscreen controls don't work with many touchpads, this bug has been around since totem 3.0. I've seen this happen on 3 separate laptops from 3 different manufacturers. You'd think a basic feature on the *default* video player wouldn't be broken for so long.
Since gnome 3.6 brasero is completely unable to add mp3's to an audio cd. Bug reported ages ago but no activity on the bug report (and is generally a buggy mess anyway)
GDM 3.6 is just super buggy in general. it loves to often hang on logout for example
The new lock screen is ridiculously buggy, it will randomly start acting very "slow" (you hit "lock screen" and then it locks like a full minute later. Sometimes it also takes forever to unlock too.
They break/change screensaver inhibiting with almost every fucking release, so media player's have to play catch-up
the "lock screen after" option appears to be completely broken in gnome 3.6
gnome-shell still tends to randomly hang on login sometimes, I've seen this on a variety of hardware. doesn't happen often, but real annoying when it does
Gnome-shell 3.6 has a massive memory leak, everytime you click an item on the top panel memory usage rises and never gets released
tracker crashes *all *the*time.
Empathy/telepathy is just a horrific, buggy mess. still is and always has been. First thing I have to do on any install is install pidgin

/rant

I like both gnome-shell and unity as interfaces, but they are both way too buggy and need to step up QA.

[Hamish Wilson]

The problem with 2 panels layers is the clutter they both bring. In this case, clearly a nostalgic value. Gnome Legacy is on the way FYI.

Cinnamon is nothing more than a polished extended Gnome Shell rather than a true fork. It heavily depends on the core of Gnome 3 to be fully functional. The existence of extensions render the argument that Gnome does not care moot. The real issues are those whiners making a lot of noise without trying a desktop environment like Gnome Shell while aware of the open development but chose not to participate.

Touch oriented desktop is inevitable, it needs maturity. Be glad Gnome 3 allows the use of both keyboard and mouse while trying to bridge the gap between touchscreen and keyboard. Change is a natural process, new generation of developers and users emerge everyday.
Redhat has a habit to backport new features including GPU drivers for enterprise environment. The key issue is obviously communication which is the kryptonite.

In a word: yes. Although I disagree on the screen clutter argument.

Anyway, you would think with Gnome Legacy on the way a lot of the winging would have died down...

[Hamish Wilson]

A also install KDE (Chakra to be more specific) from time to time so I could rest from Ubuntu and see what's new, I like it. BUT, digiKam is useless when it comes to RAW editing (and since I'm a photographer I can't bear it). I know that I could use GTK+ apps under KDE (Darktable FTW!), but that makes the system looks absolutely inconsistent......

I have not had that much trouble with QT applications on Xfce (GTK+). Just needed to force the themes:
http://www.webupd8.org/2012/01/get-b...ations-in.html

So I imagine there is something similar that can be done in reverse.

[gururise]

Gnome 3.4 was just about perfect for me, but Gnome 3.6 feels like a step backwards.

Some of the new "features" that Gnome 3.6 introduced that I do not like are:

1. You must now slide the lock screen upwards with the mouse to unlock
2. There is now a huge notification bar at the bottom, with icon's being 3x larger than in previous versions
3. Nautilus was dumbed down significantly. It also runs full-screen by default, and there is no intuitive way to unmaximize it.

I can understand the above if Gnome 3 were running on a Tablet. In fact, the above changes would make lots of sense on a Tablet; however, on a desktop PC, its kind of ridiculous for me to swipe up with my mouse to unlock the screen. (yes I know you can hit ESC, but why must I now take an additional step that seems to be designed for a tablet?)

Furthermore, the huge notification bar at the bottom is now 3x the size, and the icons look terribly ugly and blurry on a desktop PC. It's a shame that my favorite extension from 3.4 no longer works in 3.6, as I used to have an extension that would move those notification icons to the top activity bar... so now I am forced to see a huge dropbox icon whenever I bring up the notification bar... might be great on a tablet, but terrible on my PC.

Finally, what were the dev's thinking when they removed the capability to unmaximize Nautilus? For weeks, I was forced to use nautilus full screen, until I finally got so frustrated I googled how to unmaximize it, and found that you must click-drag the window to do so. Why??? Every other single window in Gnome has a standard way of resizing it except for Nautilus. Again, might be great for tablets where you use one app at a time, but on my PC, I'm often using file operations in combination with some other application.

I feel Gnome 3.6 was a step back from Gnome 3.4. Lets hope 3.8 addresses the above issues.

[pingufunkybeat]

Be glad Gnome 3 allows the use of both keyboard and mouse

OMG, this is the best, most concise, and most accurate description of the GNOME project's vision.

I, for one, thank them for allowing me to use a mouse AND a keyboard (both!)