What Linux Users Are Saying About GNOME In 2012
1101: Keep It Simple and Stupid thanks
1102: Currently fallback mode is the only sane option for remote/cloud (NX/VNC) desktop users.
Without this option gnome will be practically lost for majority of corporate and "classic" users.
1103: I don't have much hope they will listen to anybody in this world. But, I'll repeat here what many say day after day after the GNOME debacle began: It's still not too late to revert the damage, as big as it is and as bigger as it gets each day. Please don't kill the gnome desktop, please turn back and embrace your community of fellow users and developers, please don't try to dominate other people. Please remember your first days, and recall the original spirit of our movement, which was what actually gave you success. You have forgot many things, but you *CAN* turn back on all this and make a good product out of this bad product, a healty community out of this ill community, and a meaningful life out of your meaningless lives.
1104: I think Gnome 3 is a vast improvement over Gnome 2. I could never use Gnome 2 for more than a few days before I would become frustrated and switch to a different desktop environment. However, I have used Gnome 3 ever since it became the default in Debian Wheezy.
1105: just listen to users in the community and work better with conical, fedora etc you guys really should start to listen to everyone or they will just hate you more and more and fork everything
1106: Well, as far as I can see they seem pretty set in their ways. If they're right or not is not for me to say, but seeing that a lot of people depend on their work, they should try to be more flexible and fit it more styles of working.
1107: I have the option to use Linux at work and I have always preferred GNOME over KDE and all the others. With the new major version of GNOME my productivity has decreased to the point I have had to stop using it. Every point release I try it again, but it seems to be getting worse, not better. I have switched to XFCE for my main desktop, but I don't really like it; what I really want is GNOME 2-new. From reading many blogs and Linux news sites and aggregators it seems that GNOME won't be getting better any time soon, and that's really too bad since it was the best Linux desktop for at least a decade. I fear that GNOME soon will be just another example of developer hubris destroying a great open source project.
1108: address book synchronization between devices and programs. Export and import of contacts in "ldif" format too.
1109: Do not get rid of fallback mode - it is the only thing that keeps gnome 3 relevant...
1110: Make it easier to customise themes without things breaking all over the place. Listen a little more to your users also - things are definitely improving, but it should be easier to configure some of the options that have been hidden away or removed. Granted you want to create something nice and simple, but let all of your power users have easy access to configuration options!
1111: Please listen to users, improved reliability/stability, add support for tiled window management, render KDE apps seamlessly and reduce dead space in the theme.
When opening Activities, please don't load all the applications together, this makes the system very slow and eat all the resources. Please fix this!
1112: The GNOME team seem to be so caught up in their desire for a "brand" or "vision" that they appear to have completely forgotten several critical factors which led to their original success.
- their primary userbase has been systematically ignored and marginalised
- most GNOME users are technical people, or relatives of technical people; in dumbing down GNOME to cater for an audience of "new" users, they have made it unsuitable for their existing userbase; and they have also failed to realise that these "new" users aren't going to want to use GNOME (there are far better options for them), so we have a broken desktop that serves no one's needs well
- GNOME needs technical users to recruit and retain developers
- GNOME2 had detailed and respected usability work done which greatly improved it over GNOME1; this appears to have been thrown out of the window for GNOME3, and the result is an unusable, inefficient, undiscoverable mess; but I'm sure the "designers" are happy with the "vision", since they don't appear to care what users who used GNOME for actual work think about this disgrace of a "desktop environment" (I use the term in quotes since treating this travesty on equal terms with real desktop environments would be unfair to them)
- I used to use GNOME2 for participating in (and later, teaching) entire classes at University using several classrooms of dedicated machines all of which ran a GNOME desktop by default, and most researchers were using Linux, with a GNOME desktop. GNOME3 is wholly unsuitable for these purposes
- Can you imagine trying to teach a class full of students using GNOME3? It would be a disaster. It would take most of the allotted time just to get the students up and running, since it's undiscoverable, unintuitive and completely alien. They would end up wasting time battling GNOME3 rather than learning.
- GNOME was the default desktop on most distributions for a long while, initially this was because of licensing, later historical inertia and other factors. GNOME has always been technically inferior to Qt/KDE, but now we have a host of other quality desktop environments which can replace it. There's a reason there was a mass exodus of GNOME users to XFCE and KDE--we aren't tied at the hip to GNOME, and we'll use what's the best option; GNOME is no longer that option, and is unlikely to be ever again
I'm very sorry that what was a vibrant project got taken over and destroyed by the "designers" who pushed their "vision" above all else, and resulted in what we have today. A sterile, minimalist, unusable "desktop" with barely little more below the shallow veneer of eye candy. The loss of developers in response to this results in the barely maintained state we have today. I was once a contributor of several patches to GNOME2; it's almost certain I won't be providing any more. Let's hope it's recoverable, even if it is highly unlikely.
1113: 09. If you could change three things in GNOME, what would they be?
[...]
The options given in 09 are very skewed towards a
particular vocal minority of the Linux community. This is what i would
like to change:
1) more content apps (they're apparently in the making)
2) application sandboxing
3) better handling of system resources (think moving from gnome-session to a systemd powered session that starts apps in cgroups, that you do some resource management magic on. This to make it possible to do heavy duty work in the background while still watching a movie for example)
1114: GNOME 3.0 was way more usable than KDE 4.0. I think they're on the right track, and it's okay by me if they avoid scope-creep by reducing their targeted systems (e.g. only those with 3D acceleration). I do wish they'd pay more attention to functionality (e.g. long applications names are truncated and hard to read).
1115: Don’t try to change the users. Give the users more possibilities to change GNOME if they don’t agree with your own preferences and decisions. (The trend to castrate the user was already starting with GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 made that worse IMHO.)
If you really think that you need less configurability because some non-power-users are confused or challenged by too many choices, then please give the other users at least the chance to enable more configuration options. A very good example in that hindsight was Kazehakase (RIP) who offered several user interfaces (novice, intermediate and power user or such). The popular text-mode web browser Lynx does the same, too, btw.
GNOME lost me mostly with the change to GNOME 2. The switch from Galeon 1.2 to 1.3/2.0 was horrible and the later switch to Epiphany made things even worse on the browser side. My short trip to GNOME as desktop environment ended with moving back to FVWM (configurable without tons of clicking, especially after moving to some other computer) and for the browser I moved on to Kazehakase back then. Nowadays I’m living very well with Awesome and Ratpoison as window managers, Conkeror as web browser (which are all very configurable) and a few selected GNOME applications like Liferea (luckily still quite configurable despite I miss Gecko’s about:config since the switch to WebKit), GUCharmap and Gnumeric.
For people switching from Windows I nowadays recommend XFCE or maybe LXDE on low-end computers. I likely would recommend GNOME 2, too, if it still would exist. With regards to MATE I’m skeptical about its persistance and future, but I’m glad it exists as it solves a lot of problems and brings in just a few new ones. Cinnamon as well as SolusOS are based on the current GNOME libraries and are very likely the more persistent projects, but also very likely have the very same multi-head issues we’re all barfing about at work with Ubuntu Precise. (Heck, am I glad that I use Awesome at work, too, and all four screens work perfectly as they did with FVWM before.)
1116: Get your game together and start with losing the attitude of corporate design and go back to listen to you users.
1117: Pay attention to the users' needs and their workflow habits. Don't try to stuff changes down their throats just for the sake of change, or because these things look good on a touchscreen/cellphone.
1118: I use a desktop environment as a desktop environment, not as a hybrid tablet or smartphone environment. Gnome should add support for touch, but does not need to reduce its feature set or configuration ability.
Gnome 3 adds extra steps to almost everything I do and seems to be increasing the inefficiecy of the UI. I use multiple 27 inch monitors and run multiple workspaces on each. I keep multiple apps open on each of those. I do not like the huge reduction in efficiency gnome 3 causes me.
workspace 1: CODING: 1 code editor, 2 or 3 browsers to manually check work, 5 terminals(1 for database messages, 1 for web server messages, 1 for environment messages, 1 for automated test and build results, 1 for git). I want to see all of these at once, not swap between them.
workspace 2: COMMUNICATION: im client and email client, sometimes a browser for communicating with team members. I want to see all of these at once, not swap between them.
workspace 3: DOCUMENTATION: word processor or html editor for updating project docs. Sometimes a browser for wiki instead. I want to see all of these at once, not swap between them.
workspace 4: PERSONAL: personal email client, personal im, browser with a few tabs to keep up with the latest and greatest sites like phoronix. I want to see all of these at once, not swap between them.
1119: it's a powerful sh*t you're on. care to tell the name of the dealer?
Seriously though, my ultimate dream would be a move to some shared platform/elements between all desktop environments - like mounters, indexing tools, VFS handlers, various interop protocols and so on, that could really work even without any GUI, with a console client for example, the GUI would be really just one of the implementations. There probably must be some sort of a community+enterprise governed standardization body (fdo?) that would work on a sort of a POSIX-like standard but this time for the components expected to be a part of a desktop system. Because until now it's been (and sadly will be so for the foreseeable future) a crazy mixture of overlapping and conflicting initiatives replacing one another, becoming obsolete, not really contributing to the credibility of the whole Linux desktop idea.
1120: Some random wishes and remarks :
- Listen to your desktop/laptop users, most people aren't using Gnome on a tablet
- Please bring back a taskbar or permanent dock and make it configurable!
- Hot corners are nice though, and very mouse friendly
- Make app integration and social integration optional
1121: I'm no more using GNOME because I had to switch to another DE: the fallback mode wasn't complete and GNOME shell was too heavy for my old pc.
1122: Gnome becomes less transparent to the user, because advanced configuration more and more becomes complicated due to recend changes, e.g.:
* desktop background configuration:
* move $insertCrypticNameHere.JPG to /usr/share/backgrounds/
** before: right click on desktop, select image.
** now: search image w/ nautilus, wait an hour, search image from search screen, right click on image.
hmmm. sick of that wallpaper. select the other cool image from /usr/share/backgrounds… meh. the other one was better. no problem. now it's in the backgrounds-database. OH NOES…
It's a good thing to have a structured file system. It's crap let nautilus search recursively, it's crap to vanish file path dialogues (c.f. "move to" dialog)… ugh.
1123: Listen to your users. You need them more than we need GNOME.
1124: I wish they had kept improving GNOME 2.3x instead of going the GNOME 3 route.
1125: I think it's ludicrous that GNOME has abandoned sensible and simple traditional desktop models for a tablet-oriented userspace which is almost completely useless to a laptop or desktop user.
1126: First of all I want to thank the GNOME team for doing all this stuff for me.
My suggestion: The icons have room for improvement.
1127: As a GUI programmer, I know what how it feels when people get mad because something has changed. That being said, tablet interfaces should be left on touch screen devices. GNOME is used mainly on desktops and laptops. Most people interact with GNOME using a mouse and keyboard. With that in mind, more of your design decisions should be based upon that single fact. Thank you for your time in hosting this survey.
1128: Too many to note here.
1129: They know what users want. Do that instead of what they are doing.
1130: I run xfce and I run gnome3 on a virtual machine (Vbox) and periodically update it and see if it has improved somewhat. I still find it too frustrating (window dodging around) when doing anything serious - like modifying and image with gimp.
1131: Work on the resource utilization. I love lightweight software.
I am not saying that GNOME is presently a memory hog. I am just saying that I think it could be better.
1132: Be more like KDE community, so much more friendly, listen to users, are much more innovative and at the same time support traditional usage patterns
1133: I use unity a top gnome stack
1134: I would like to see the OS version, sooner than 2014
1135: Make gnome-shell more configurable. Would like to see less dependency on extensions or fix extensions so the extensions I am using can be used with newer versions of gnome-shell without having to wait for the extension developer to update the extension.
1136: I'm a KDE user but have tried gnome several times out of curiousity. But I have three monitors running on two X screens, and until gnome supports this configuration properly, I can't use it for any serious work.
1137: Listen to your community more and share potential ideas about future revisions. And do a damned survey. Forks like Cinnamon are going to take the lead if you don't.
1138: I use gnome with the awesome window manager.
Gnome 3 is so full of regressions from 2 I don't even know where to start. Menus don't even display correctly, so many settings have disappeared (most annoyingly appearance settings), all kinds of things are broken in any environment but Gnome Shell, etc. etc. etc. etc.
Gnome used to be a very important part of the GNU/Linux desktop experience, now because of this childish need to be experimental, the community is fragmented and shrinking fast. For such an important project doing a release this badly is completely unacceptable. Experiments belong in experimental projects.
Gnome seems to be running off the rails, and that is a shame.
1139: We need multi-touch support!!!
Maybe the wayland support!
1140: There needs to be optimization to the way GNOME 3 handles its Activities panel. Taking up the whole screen is STILL very much an intensive operation, even with a high-end computer.
Not to mention that I shouldn't have to open that damn panel up for switching between applications. (Which is the reason I would like extensions to stay, and stay COMPATIBLE)
1141: Stop fucking things up. Pull your heads out of your arses, and listen to the community. Stop removing configuration options. Stop forcing your touchscreen bollocks onto end users. Stop breaking 3rd party themes.
1142: I believe you misread your users. You thought that you held all the cards by controlling the Gnome project and users were therefore going to have to accept your choices. Proof of this is the initial dismissive and arrogant reaction to users concerns. Unfortunately for Gnome, Linux users are not Windows users who indeed must accept what UI they're given. Linux users are, almost by definition, affirmative in using their computers on their own terms. If they are unhappy with something, they are not the type to just accept it, and unlike Windows users, they have the power to change it.
You treated us like Microsoft treats its serfs (users) We left. Keep telling yourselves that we just don't know what we're doing.
1143: Please visit a psychiatrist, before you change anymore design!
1144: I actually really like GNOME 3, and use it for my work as a web developer when I work from home. I use Macs at work (I'm a web developer), grew up on windows, and have used KDE4, xfce, GNOME2 and enlightenment and I'm completely sold on GNOME3 as the best of all worlds.
Given that, I think there needs to be an option for secondary monitors to also have multiple workspaces, tied to the main monitor, as well as leave it as a separate entity altogether. I can live with the second monitor not changing with the primary, but I feel I could utilize the space a little better the other way.
The majority of the minor concerns I had (suspend instead of power, shitty gdm, annoying task bar activations) have been completely removed with the latest 3.6 that I'm running on my ArchLinux box. Good work!
1145: Listen to the people.
1146: Many thanks for the good work.
1147: no extensions please. but do make taskbar an integral part of gnome 3.
1148: GNOME 3 is pretty good, but please bring back GNOME 2. It was something else.
Also, HUMAN CLEARLOOKS FOR LIFE!!
1149: GNOME 3 performance is still lacking and still not comparable to unity/compiz and KDE. GNOME 3 uses lot of CPU (high cpu usage) for the same desktop effects that other DEs do pretty fast and with lesser CPU usage.
1150: GNOME 2.x to me was the most functional and useful desktop environment ever created - if I were to design a desktop environment for myself, that would have been it. It combined the best features of many other desktops in a unique and far more usable way than anything else, before or since.
GNOME shell is a HUGE disappointment. Bring back the original.
1151: Listen to what other people say and don't be so arrogant.
In 3.6 keyboard layout still falls back to en, it is super annoying.
Another annoyance is that telepathy doesn't handle well many irc channels simultaneously and browsing history is cumbersome.
And the third annoyance is that tracker trashes disk on every login. I don't know if that happens only if there are many files to track or something, but it doesn't look nice and even more so because evolution doesn't start before tracker is finished with its trashing or I'm running on battery and it burns it away pointlessly.
Also networkmanager could be improved to reset existing connections immediately when joining/leaving VPN instead of some random future time.
There are still some tweaks I'm doing every time before gnome3 is usable:
- install system monitor applet
- install weather applet
- set to show shutdown button
- for laptop edit the theme to remove extra vertical space in windows bar
1152: Stop taking things out of nautilus.
1153: I need keyboard support for everything. Gnome does ok on this, but could do better, for example, I believe half window tiling can't be controlled from the keyboard.
More configuration options would also be good.
1154: 3D exellerated desktops just don't work due to X11 and the Linux drivers being generally crap.
Even if I did want to try and use gnome-shell the added latency and performance degradation is unbearable.
1155: Make GNOME 3 more solid, fix the bugs, fix evolution, fix gnome-online accounts, (seriously why add a layer and then have the user dig in text config files to fix things).
1156: Keep up the good work and try and increase the rate of improvements incorporated into each release...
1157: There are many small bugs, not a big deal but annoying, and most of them have been fixed in next immediate version. (I mean, like 3.6 to 3.6.1). I think GNOME should do more tests before releasing a new stable version. I guess Gnome guys haven't tested the release version enough, in order to keep the schedule and release on time.
1158: I am literally just using XFCE in the traditional gnome 2 setup now and I love it. However if you just add a native dock gnome 3 would be infinitely more usable, even more usable than the traditional OSX setup.
1159: Make desktop usable again.
1160: Stop embarrassing the Unix, and Linux community with your unholy mess of a desktop environment. Normal desktop environments have shutdown, restart, and options. Only idiots would use a desktop environment and graphical user interface lacking minimize and maximize buttons.
1161: bring back screensaver please :)
1162: Keep up the good work
1163: The virtual keyboard looks tiny on a 1024x600 display. Can't be used when having to enter root password and I can't hold down backspace to repeat delete action. This needs to be fixed in order to be the perfect tablet interface!
1164: Look for ways to break your components up in ways that drive code reuse/design evolution across the world. Success in the Open Source world often comes down to getting as many eyeballs/contributors working in the same direction.
1165: Take user criticism more seriously. Stop pretending every user is a grandma. Stop removing features (nautilus split screen removal was a really bad idea). If I were already running 3.8 I would probably have said that it is worse than one year ago.
1166: I want fast alt+tab
I want non-intrusive notifications
I want to see open applications, and open new one with _one_ left click
I want a _fast_ "windows" key search activation
I want a system monitor applet with a lot of metrics and sane colors
In short, I'm satisfied with Cinnamon now. I miss multi workspace multi monitor handling of gnome-shell though, which was nice.
1167: I want fast alt+tab
I want non-intrusive notifications
I want to see open applications, and open new one with _one_ left click
I want a _fast_ "windows" key search activation
I want a system monitor applet with a lot of metrics and sane colors
In short, I'm satisfied with Cinnamon now. I miss multi workspace multi monitor handling of gnome-shell though, which was nice.
1168: I really need drag-n-drop in Nautilus back.
1169: Thank you for GNOME 3 and keep up the good work!!!
1170: I am currently using Trisquel, a free GNU/Linux distro. Trisquel uses Fallback mode by default because it works without 3D acceleration. (A lot of Trisquel users don't have 3D acceleration).
I have heard that GNOME 3 Shell works without 3D acceleration using LLVMpipe (in 3.8?), which is good. However, I have not tested it, and I am not sure how well it performs. If GNOME Shell performed well without 3D acceleration I might consider using it in the future.
I found extensions confusing to install in GNOME 3.2 because I was using a different browser. Having a separate application that's not dependant on the web browser would seem easier to discover and easier to use.
I do not like using ALT+right-click for editing the panel in GNOME fallback mode. But the solution presented by GNOME 3 Shell is fine for me. There also seems to be a few bugs in GNOME fallback mode (3.2), such as text each window of the window list sometimes covering the icon. But I am mostly happy with fallback mode in 3.2.
1171: Keep up the good work, negative voices are always louder. I'm quietly happy.
1172: proper gnome3 style fallback for unaccelerated graphics drivers should be available
1173: Lots of people still use 13" or 10" (even less) display, and the onglet or 2 nautilus window side by side is ineffective. Please bring back extra panel in nautilus (F3 shortcut). Emblems were also very usefull to tag files, bring it back too. And we need an easy way to install themes, and themes should use all the possibility of gnome 3.
1174: First of all, improve Music (Rythembox), Web (flash support and HTML5 support), Evolution (mail), Photos (face detect/tag).
Better Configuration of themes (the best way is like KDE 4 do, download and autoinstall).
Minimize and Maximize is a good idea to re-introduce.
And faster and faster GNOME Shell (search application, dash application and so on).
You follow the right way guys, go on!
1175: gl&hf. Fought my battles with gnome3 since it was available on gentoo, but i'm using XFCE now.
1176: Figure out what audience you want and write a brief strategy document which explains your position. The nebulous "aunt tilly" that you are targetting is amorphous and every person imagines a different person. Be open about your goal.
1177: Please listen to users...
1178: Stop being arrogant fools.
GNOME needs to have way more configuration options.
1179: Lifting the gnome-fallback to a proper supported gnome-classic will bring a lot of users back that have switched to xfce, Lxde, Mate or Cinnamon back to the "gnome-experience". For me, this experience means "it simply works without too much fiddling".
1180: The design change from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 was a good thing, but sonmetimes design rules over function, and that's too bad. Usability should go first.
I would love integration of a decent desktop search that includes at least mail, Libreoffice and PDF (ditch tracker, maybe look at recoll for a working tool). And please fix the shell extensions situation (e.g. a working weather indicator should be available by default).
1181: Free software, such as Gnome is, have a big advantage on development due to a community that can contribute with code and bugfixes. However, the only elements of the community that can help with that are power users who need a lot of configuration.
Yes, many of the configurations are still there but are hidden again. That makes sense when it is something that no one made it easy to change before, but that's not the case. They were there in Gnome 2 and were removed.
Power users do not like that. Lose them and Gnome loses the advantage.
I do think the GNOME plugins is a good move forward.
1182: Improve extension handling, so it will be more easy for the user to manage extensions...something like Firefox Addons...
1183: When I'll upgrade my Ubuntu 10.04 installation, I'll most likely drop pure GNOME and use Unity or Cinnamon.
1184: i dont think we should be forcing people in a particular direction.
for example, I dont need to have online presence integration forced upon me. in the most cases, i dont want that at all.
it might be nice to allow for it, but we should have that choice.
having a basic desktop with nothing extra suits me just fine.
maybe keeping the desktop lean and simple, but extensible and configurable is the way to go.
I loved the old gnome 2 way. menus, icons, applets etc.
Why do we have to choose between menus v a full screen of apps where you need to know the name.
Menus can have value. They can provide context, hints and guides towards what app to use. For example, who would know that brasero is something to do with a CD thing.
having secret hot corners and key combinations (press alt for shutdown for eg) is never going to be called 'intuitive'. stop designing for fricken tablets with only touch input!!
1185: Bring back traditional interface (GNOME 2)
Improve Nautilus
Improve Evolution
1186: more focus on traditional desktops and laptops and don't forget, that user with PC/laptop needs use multiple windows
1187: Admit it! If you're not listening to your user, you'll fail! Just bring our sane Gnome back! not-being-able-to-configure-anything is SUCKS!!
1188: Systemd is akward and bloated, it is *not* an improvement over regular init scripts.
Also, GNOME devs should ditch everything and focus on vala, and port everything to vala.
1189: I want my Gnome 2 back !
1190: I have used Gnome on Ubuntu for the last 5 years. The current direction of the user interface seems to be not at all suitable for power users. I am a software developer and use 2 and 3 monitor setups with multiple virtual desktops. My work flow involves having several applications open simultaneously not full screen. I use "focus follows mouse" so that I can type in windows without having to bring them to the front. Having just one full screen app is ridiculous with large hi-res monitors. And the idiocy of Unity forcing a single menu bar at the top of the screen is unbelievable. It might work well on small tablet screens but on my setup it just makes for a lot more mouse movement.
I tried Unity first when it was forced on me by Ubuntu. Didn't like it. Next I tried Gnome 3 without Unity - a bit better but still not acceptable. I have now switched to KDE and so far that seems to be providing an environment that best fits with my work flow.
1191: Want a desktop interface for a desktop computer, not a kiddie touch screen.
1192: GNOME is a complete and utter failure!
If you want a modern Desktop: Use KDE!
If you love beautiful fast simplicity: use windowmaker!
If you are not afraid of configurability: use E17!
MS Windows 8 is the scum of the earth
and GNOME 3 is the fungus underneath.
1193: Apple seems to get that the desktop is not the same as a mobile device why can't Gnome. Please keep the Gnome Fall Back or at least allow for a Gnome2 style interface... Which after using both interfaces in Gnome 3, I find fall back mode provides a much more intuitive and efficient work flow.
1194: Listen to user feedback. If you design a desktop no one want's to use, was the point.
1195: Gnome 3 is brave product. It is surely the most modern desktop out there. But it must please and attract the users without which it will be a failure. So my request and suggestion would be, please think and design from users perspective, especially the power users.
1. Ease of customization. We should learn from KDE for this. Every damn thing is customizable, which is anyway over kill for the bloated DE.
2. Please control the bloatness.
3. Better font rendering. Yeah, seriously. The fonts look really bad in gnome-terminal when compared to my 2009 Gnome 2.9 desktop.
4. Please change the default theme from Advaitha to something else.
5. Older laptops shall still love to embrace Gnome 3 - at least the one with 1 physical core and 2 GB of RAM. I am forced to run Openbox to keep the RAM usage to the minimum.
1196: I guess I am using Gnome in Fallback mode on an older computer. I don't seem to have available abilities that used to be there (like finding out the Gnome version).
I am glad to read that something like the old UI will be available. I hope it won't be too much of a pain to get it operational. I appreciate this survey and that the Gnome team seems to be listening to users.
1197: GNOME 3.4 was pretty good in my opinion. The Shell looked fantastic and worked very good after some extensions. I liked the hot corner features and dynamic workspaces. GNOME 3 is the only DE I found workspaces useful. I've always had them in GNOME 2 but never used them. GNOME Classic was also very nice to use and I'm surprised no one really paid much attention to it. 3.6 and 3.8 are steps backwards, IMO, removing tons of features in Nautilus and removing Classic. If I were GNOME team and GNOME 3 had to stay with the Shell, I'd make it like 3.4 or even GNOME Classic.
1198: REmoving features is not improvement. Constantly breaking extensions sucks. IGnoring user feedback is a bad idea.. Gnome classic is not what users want, they want the major features that made working easy back.
1199: Most of the criticism floating around is bullshit.
Please start considering remote desktop users and people who use high resolution screens. Full screen apps are useless and inefficient on giant monitors and most of the new GNOME apps seem designed for use on small displays. The overview is cool but it forces a lot of mouse movement and that feels slow to a power user.
Also, small devices like netbooks really don't work well with GNOME. Many apps including System Settings are too tall to fit the short screens on these machines. Modal sheets appear, fill the screen and all you can do is hit escape.
1200: Try to listen to constructive criticism from your users, rather than dismissing it out of hand.