GNOME 3.8 Release Candidate Now Available

[Luke_Wolf]

I hate uninformed opinion stated as fact. GNOME SHELL IS TERRIBLE IN TABLET USAGE. My gf has an X230T, runs GS, and using it with only the touchscreen is a HORRIBLE experience. For one thing, there is massive input lag (part of the problem seems to be X itself with how it understands edges of the screen, but I think the driver also simply uses low sampling rates). For another, the keyboard is terrible (certainly not helped by the input lag, but there are other problems). The hot corner doesn't work at all with touch. So, you have to careful press the activities button. W8 really got this right with their edge gestures, IMHO. Then again, Windows has actual, trained UX people (sorry, but I really get annoyed by the Gnome team's unwilingness to accept input from people who have expertise in that area, but that's all I'm going to say about this). Likewise, since so much shell functionality exists on the edges of the screen you have similar problems with the rest. Oh, and the messaging tray is pretty much completely inaccessible unless you either: 1. go to the overview first, or, 2. use a keyboard.
Much of the problems lie with the lack of gesture support. That was something that should've been CLEARLY mapped out years ago (not coded, mind you, but the UX should've been clearly framed, whiteboarded, and workflowed).
So, please, no more of this GS is for tablets.

Windows 8 is actually crappy for tablet usage (for the record I don't like iOS or Android's tablet experience either) the gestures are confusing and unreliable (For instance swiping out and back in to get access to the application switcher is both not something you'd think of usually and doesn't always work, for instance in their game hub thing) and the interface just feels poorly designed for the purpose from my testing in electronics stores, but microsoft tablets have pretty much always been a joke even though they pretty much deserve the credit with Palm for having really developed the tablet. If you want to point to a design that was done right for tablets that you can actually buy from a store, you need to look to the blackberry playbook, because unlike everybody else they made a tablet that works the way you'd think it should work when you pick it up without knowing how it works (Which includes proper multitasking).

[Bucic]

No problems. It's just that I haven't found a set of installation instructions that would seem easy to grasp to me. In Ubuntu it was as simple as installing it from a PPA. Could you please share the instructions you see "graspable" for noobs, please? Compilation from source is fine with me as long as automatic dependency resolution can be used.

[uid313]

I think it really sucks that they drop GNOME Fallback Session because it is very simple and useable.
GNOME Shell is just confusing, and my experience is that it fights me more than works with me.

Also in their effort to simplify GNOME they are making it retarded.
You can change background color, but only to a few predefined colors, you can't pick your own colors.
You can change background wallpaper, but only pick from /usr/share/wallpaper/ and ~/Pictures/ (not even in subdirectories).
You can't browse the file system for wallpapers.

[cygn]

So the new classic mode would defeat the purpose of cinnamon, right ?

[kaprikawn]

I find it surprising that people are so vitriolic about DEs. Surely people are entitled to their opinions, and this is a fairly reasonable place to voice them, and maybe generate some debate. But where DEs are concerned, the quality of 'debate' seems to descend rather quickly.

Personally, I'm happy for the people who like Gnome. But, personally, I find their design philosophy seems to be too prescriptive, like they're telling me how I should work, very developer driven. Whereas I think desktop design should be about how the user wants to work.

[finalzone]

I think it really sucks that they drop GNOME Fallback Session because it is very simple and useable.
GNOME Shell is just confusing, and my experience is that it fights me more than works with me.

I think it is your own view due to your familiarity with previous GNOME 2, I find Gnome Shell simple and uncluttered.

You can change background color, but only to a few predefined colors, you can't pick your own colors.

The rationale for several designers are some colours like bright red can hurt eyes with longer exposure. Workaround is to create you own plain wallpaper will your favourite colour.

You can change background wallpaper, but only pick from /usr/share/wallpaper/ and ~/Pictures/ (not even in subdirectories).

I don't see selecting background from wallpaper and Pictures as a problem because images are logically located on those folders. Sub-directories issue on Pictures could be a bug that needs to be addressed.

You can't browse the file system for wallpapers.

However, you can browser through file manager or browser to set a wallpaper.

[lakerssuperman]

I think it really sucks that they drop GNOME Fallback Session because it is very simple and useable.
GNOME Shell is just confusing, and my experience is that it fights me more than works with me.

Also in their effort to simplify GNOME they are making it retarded.
You can change background color, but only to a few predefined colors, you can't pick your own colors.
You can change background wallpaper, but only pick from /usr/share/wallpaper/ and ~/Pictures/ (not even in subdirectories).
You can't browse the file system for wallpapers.

In Gnome 3.6 if you open the pictures with Image Viewer right from Nautilus, you can right click on the any picture and set it as background. Not even close to as elegant as it could be, but it still works. In Gnome 3.8 the Tweak Tool will have the ability to set background from any path, as well as resize the desktop. Again, not elegant, but not awful.

I think a lot of us would like to see the advanced functions found in the Tweak Tool integrated back into the normal programs and have it tucked behind an Advanced Settings tab. This would keep the interface simple, but still provide the ability to alter these settings without having to open a separate program. OR many people have also suggested that they simply integrate the Tweak Tool into the Control Center so that it easily accessible and discoverable for new users. Make it an official and default part of Gnome Shell so the official line when someone complains that an option is missing is not, "don't have that, don't need that" to "it's in the Tweak Tool".

[schmidtbag]

I hate uninformed opinion stated as fact. GNOME SHELL IS TERRIBLE IN TABLET USAGE. My gf has an X230T, runs GS, and using it with only the touchscreen is a HORRIBLE experience. For one thing, there is massive input lag (part of the problem seems to be X itself with how it understands edges of the screen, but I think the driver also simply uses low sampling rates). For another, the keyboard is terrible (certainly not helped by the input lag, but there are other problems). The hot corner doesn't work at all with touch. So, you have to careful press the activities button. W8 really got this right with their edge gestures, IMHO. Then again, Windows has actual, trained UX people (sorry, but I really get annoyed by the Gnome team's unwilingness to accept input from people who have expertise in that area, but that's all I'm going to say about this). Likewise, since so much shell functionality exists on the edges of the screen you have similar problems with the rest. Oh, and the messaging tray is pretty much completely inaccessible unless you either: 1. go to the overview first, or, 2. use a keyboard.
Much of the problems lie with the lack of gesture support. That was something that should've been CLEARLY mapped out years ago (not coded, mind you, but the UX should've been clearly framed, whiteboarded, and workflowed).
So, please, no more of this GS is for tablets. Casual usage I grant, though that doesn't mean you can't get real work done, simply that it doesn't help you with said work except in relatively special cases (where only a few apps are needed, and concurrent research isn't necessary).
GS is very much Gnome, IMHO. It is Gnome to the Nth, in CONCEPT, but it is fairly poorly managed and executed (oh, don't get me started on their inability to sketch out extension points...Drupal has done this for years, and that is why it has been so successful, IMHO).
However, I very much like the original design doc for G3, and JS/CSS as the primary development targets (at a high level), with the strong C underpinnings (I also like glib). So, I think there is a really nice base there, but the shell needs nearly a complete redesign and rewrite (I'd also start targeting asm.js with emscripten, but you'd need a JS frontend for LLVM).
Mutter itself, BTW, I think is quite good. Owen Taylor has written a surprisingly performant WM that is also pretty lightweight (seriously, try it without running GS).

A bit of an over-reaction I'd say. I guess what I should have said was gnome 3 has the POTENTIAL to be a great touchscreen DE. It clearly seems to have touchscreens in mind, even if it doesn't do a good job at using one. Based on what you were saying, the greatest issues with G3 on a touchscreen arelaggy input (which could be a driver problem, not gnome's fault), the keyboard (which there are replacements for), gestures (where I'm SURE you can find a program for this), and struggling to click on things, which IMO is something any touchscreen device has, particularly anything with a screen smaller than 10".

[j2723]

It depends. Mutter tries to do fancy shit with VSync, and fails at it with some proprietary drivers. Mostly on AMD hardware, but I've seen it happen on Nvidia as well. When things aren't working right, everything feels all "floaty" like your iterations are a few frames behind your actual inputs. It's pretty easy to fix though.

That aside, the one thing that can be said for the Gnome team (and their cousins working on Cinnamon and Pantheon) is that they know how to design a good looking system. I use and love Dynamic Activities, which is one of the main reasons I don't really like KDE, Unity, or Xfce. Unity isn't an option for me (I use Arch) and Xfce doesn't have the nice features of Gnome, at least not with Gnome's elegance (system settings, applications search, overview, etc). KDE (like Enlightenment) is very ugly IMO. Way too many slow and "shiny" effects everywhere, tons of inconsistent multi-colored icons all over, etc. I don't like everything about Gnome's design, but they at least understand how to use Minimalisn, Whitespace, and Consistency.

Most peoples complaints about Gnome are due to missing features (like no "taskbar"), but most, if not all, of those are fixable with Extensions (like "Dash to Dock"). Granted I do agree they sometimes go a bit overboard, and I do think they should build in some more advanced default settings to enable the most commonly requested features (again, like the missing taskbar, and natulius features). That said, I've installed stock Gnome Shell on both my Mother and Grandmother's machines, and both of them didn't have any problems understanding how to use the system. Indeed, gnome's design kept there computers much cleaner (no desktop icons everywhere confusing them, no way to fudge up system settings, etc). They understood how to change basic settings cause Gnome's settings area is so basic, and they instantly understood how to access apps and switch windows. They even really liked the overview area as a way to get to their "background" windows (over the "listed on taskbar" concept Windows 7 uses) cause it makes visual sense when you see all the windows zoom out.

Thanks for your post! Yes, it feels kind of "floaty". I am using the FLOSS radeon driver on a ATI Mobility Radeon 5470, not the proprietary FGLRX driver. I normally set my Radeon powersetting to low, otherwise my fans are constantly on, so setting it to mid or high powersetting just to run the DE smoothly is not an option for me.

Here are my current thoughts on the current DEs:

GNOME 3 - looks good, has some flaws though, should be easily fixable. Seems pretty usable, weren't it for the annoying "lags".
Cinnamon - looks good, haven't tried it long enough...
Pantheon - never heard or tried, images of it on the web look good.
Xfce - ugly, far from GNOME 2's usability or looks, used it for a while.
Unity - pretty decent but at the same time awkward to use, used it for a while until they removed the 2d mode. Haven't tried it since.
KDE - ugly, excellent usability and configurability, using it for a good while now.
E17 - looks like it still needs a lot of work, haven't tried it very long.
LXDE - tried it a long long time ago, was very usable but had some annoyances.

I keep trying DEs every now and then, but currently KDE seems the most usable for me, even though I prefer lightweight DEs. I have tried many times to make my KDE desktop look "good", but most themes/icon sets seemed very incomplete to me. GNOME 3 on the other hand looks great out of the box... I must add that I never use KDE with those effects on, as they are quite irritating, and it makes the DE laggy like with GNOME 3. Only thing that ever lags with KDE is the "manual resize", like when you drag the corners of the windows to resize them, but I rarely ever do that. Most of the time I drag the window titlebar and drop it onto the sides of the screen (or corners), and it resizes them.

I actually like desktop icons, and generally having files on my desktop, mainly because of quick access. If I don't know where to store a file, I just drop it on the desktop and when I got time I sort them all into my Documents folder where everything resides.

KDE is far from perfect, but currently is the most usable for me, but I gladly try other DEs every now and then to see their progress . I actually tried GNOME 3 yesterday before this article, just out of curiosity.

I must admit, when GNOME 3 was first released, I thought it was an abomination. It has become pretty usable from my recent short experience with it. As of yet, it still isn't my cup of tea, but I haven't tried it long enough.

What kind of hardware are you running? I use Shell (via current Fedora) on my crappy five-year-old netbook, and it's responsive enough. I mean it's not exactly snappy - nothing is on that hardware - but it's certainly usable enough...

(Edit: the netbook runs some crappy-but-open intel graphics chip... not the binary-only Paulsbo)

Intel i7 Q720 + ATI Mobility Radeon 5470 with FLOSS Radeon drivers + 4GB of memory.
I haven't tried the FGLRX driver with GNOME 3 yet, but I'm not willing to install it as it causes problems with games using Wine (terrible performance compared to FLOSS Radeon driver).

It looks like all 20 KDE fans are posting in succession about software they can't stomach. Grow up folks.

I wont feed you . Starve to death, troll!

[ninez]

A bit of an over-reaction I'd say. I guess what I should have said was gnome 3 has the POTENTIAL to be a great touchscreen DE. It clearly seems to have touchscreens in mind, even if it doesn't do a good job at using one. Based on what you were saying, the greatest issues with G3 on a touchscreen arelaggy input (which could be a driver problem, not gnome's fault), the keyboard (which there are replacements for), gestures (where I'm SURE you can find a program for this), and struggling to click on things, which IMO is something any touchscreen device has, particularly anything with a screen smaller than 10".

Yeah, that seem like an over-reaction - but at the same time, almost anyone whom has used GS on a touch-interface will tell you something similar, myself included. ~ you say that GS was 'clearly seems to have touch screens in mind' only to then say even if it doesn't do a good job at using one.... that really makes no sense, dude. You can't even 'flick to scroll' in the GTK+ toolkit (very basic touch feature), but instead only get that in 'activities', wow pretty much useless :\ The lack of having hot-edges/corners (aside from activities) also severely blows. ie: Compiz being years older tech, actually handles touch much better than GS. assignable hot-edges/corners is one fine example. I can setup things to be touch friendly - at least from a WM perspective, in a much more intuitive way than GS offers.

GS very well might have 'potential' on touch ~ but it really doesn't seem to be designed for it, without even mentioning 'input lag' at all. Toolkit support is very poor for multi-touch, and GS/mutter isn't optimized for multi-touch in any noticeable/usable way...I can only assume that you have never actually used GS with any touch devices.

as far as gesture software, the best option for linux, imho - is 'Easystroke' ~ and there even exists a multi-touch fork ~ however, it is less than ideal for a tablet style interface and is a bit kludgy. I rely on it when using my Wacom tablet/stylus - where it works wonderfully, and is very powerful due to it's gesture recognition code, but I think for GS to be really good on touch - they really need to look at integrating some gesture recognition natively in GS.