What Linux Users Are Saying About GNOME In 2012

1701:

1702: We appreciate your hard work. I know it's difficult. The answer to almost everything ends up being- give the user a choice. For Gnome >3, if you had just let people keep the look of 2 as an option, there wouldn't have been such an uproar. There are tablets / phones, and there are PC's you use to create things. Viewing and creating are two different ideas. To create- a GUI like a phone just doesn't cut it, and that's why Linus made a stink. For viewing, that's fine, though.

I wish you all the best and I hope you are able to innovate in both directions. For Gnome, I care about the PC side of things- and I don't want you try and make my PC into a phone or tablet.

1703: Nautilus is a great example of how Gnome was great. It was a very nice, simple file manager that really gets the job done. And the simplicity did not limit the power it had: One could easily connect to servers and bookmark them.

But then there's the slew of bugs that remain unfixed for ten years. One still cannot move a file properly when in list mode. There's an insistence on simplifying everything for an audience that Gnome does not have. I believe in the power of simplicity but Gnome has been so aggressive with it that it alienates it's users, very few of which are actually the kind of demographic that Gnome is reaching out towards.

And yet at the same time there are massively confusing interfaces and badly-designed components. In gnome 3 there are two status bars. There are confusing interactions with windows. It's an incoherent mess.

I deeply appreciate all the wonderful work that Gnome has produced and the world is a much better place because of Gnome. I've used Gnome exclusively for many years now. But I cannot help but feel that there's bad management and bad direction for the project.

1704: Two things: 1) Please don't implement global menus. 2) Please don't assume that the user's workflow consists of having only one app open at a time. We need the ability to have multiple windows visible at the same time.

1705: don't simplify stuff, it's simple enough. Add more config options. Document API.

1706: Integrate Cinnamon and Caja

1707: The window management is sometimes less efficient than GNOME 2's.

1708: Think Multi-Monitor. And, think Tablet as a different UX enviroment altogether. There is no way that both form factors can be serviced with the same UI.

Integrate Tablets: I see my tablets and smartphone as an extension of my servers and desktop: I want ONE enviroment across them all, the tablets working as well as a stand alone tool as in combination with my desktop as yet another monitor/input node.

1709: Please, add a "Restore" option to undo file movements! If i could do this on my own, i would! It's frustrating to start searching lost files if my finger falls out of the mouse while drag'n'dropping some file...

1710: Good luck!

1711: We urgently need a stable (non-experimental) environment with BETTER BUILT-IN DOCUMENTATION on how to use it + easy-to-find, real-time activity indicators for things such as networks, plugged in devices etc. Intuitiveness is the key !

1712: Could you merge Cinnamon back in with configuration options to reduce duplication of effort?

1713: Yes we can.

1714: I use multiple gnome taskbars or gnome sessions on a 'mini-supercomputing' cluster. The ability to have multiple gnome sessions from various machines open at the same time is important to me and the people I work with.

1715: The dead space occupied by the rather large window decoration plus bar at the top takes up too much space on my laptop's 1366x768 monitor. I now use Cinnamon with auto-hide, but I do try GNOME whenever an update rolls around.

I find that the application launcher, with it's large icons, makes launching applications manually a pixel hunting exercise. I would like some attention to organizing that better. I realize there are categories, but that isn't enough.

1716: It can run as fast as lightening on slow onboard Intel card and have a revolution in interface like Windows 8, which works well under touch or PC. I hate some laggy default apps like web browser or email, they should be insteaded of thunderbird, viber and firefox.

1717: Return the integrated chat to how it was in Gnome 3.6. Make the Activities menu open up to Applications by default (maybe include an option in the tweak tool to switch back if people prefer how it is now)

1718: Kindly get off the crack pipe.

1719: Stop lying to users, give us back a Gnome 2 experience, stop adding useless intermediate layer 'file manager extensions' like videos or music, stop removing functionality for the sake of design, or condensed in one sentece: Drop that "your workflow must follow our design, we know it better anyway" attitude and get rid of Jon McCann immediately

1720: Quit trying to force GNOME into a single unconfigurable user experience. Let me choose for myself.

Start writing shell utilities with at least the same functionality as the user interface.

Quit arbitrarily breaking APIs.
Improve focus on the documentation on new features and libraries.

1721: Please improve better privacy/history management.

1722: Right now my gnome 3 desktop looks like I should using a stylus or my fingers to navigate. Personally I prefer the gnome 2 interface much better. Besides why should I come out of my comfort zone for a silly piece of software and learn to use it again? (I know you guys think I am too dumb to even use gnome like most other users)

1723: For some reason I can seem to hide a user from appearing on the GDM login screen using Exclude=<username> in /etc/gdm/custom.conf.

Compared to KDE Dolphin, Nautilus is lacking in features for organizing files/folders.

1724: GNOME can't be an island by itself. The ecosystem needs to be around the "*nix platform", not the "GNOME platform". Changes that break Nautilus on Unity or require apps to integrate three notification frameworks just further isolate GNOME from the rest of the free UNIX desktop community.

Gnome 3 should have been a new thing that didn't break the old thing, like Perl 6 and Perl 5. New and innovative stuff is great, but there is *no excuse* to take something as mature and stable as GNOME 2 was and destroy it to move people to your shiny new experiment.

1725: Stop dumbing it down. It's supposed to be PC, goddamnit!

1726: Please bring back a true taskbar at the bootom of the screen as well as an application menu. Theming with GTK3 engines looks poor and complex compared to GTK2. I don't want my desktop environment to look like a tablet or smartphone (the hot corner sucks). Please don't follow Unity's way.

Thanks for your consideration.
Romain from France

1727: Make the damn text in the app menu meaningfull, "LibreOffice Dr..." is ridiculous, "AMD catalyst..." and "AMD catalyst..." is the same. Now please tell me which one is for super user without launching it ¬_¬;;;

Make it work without compositing if needed or desired, I really-really don't see a reason why it's required and I don't see any reason for mandatory time consuming animations. It's fun to have them but now I'm tired I want to work fast with my machine please let me take them away.

1728: Gnome-shell is OK in general, but one thing speaks against it: size of fonts and widgets. It wastes space! Also, it would be cool to be able to disable some effects, for example animations shown when clicking on "Activities" just slow the user down.

1729: I don't like the new message area design in GNOME 3.6, since it's not easy to trigger, and can interfere other windows. I prefer the design before GNOME 3.6.

1730: Bring back gnome2 and name it gnome4.

1731: Please don't rely on shell extensions for advanced features, as - in my experience - even if they have worked once they usually soon become incompatible with recent versions of gnome.
Please add more configuration/customization options into gnome's graphical config tool. Maybe even make the tool script based (I only suspect it isn't, sorry).
Please don't expect your way to be the best in each and every case and give your users the chance to make gnome behave the way that is best suitable for them and not the way you want (obviously) to force upon them.
Otherwise Thank you for the Gnome Desktop.
Regards,

Roman

1732: easy theme access is a plus and updating your extensions

1733: Don't mess with a good thing!

1734: One thing is simplicity and another is simplicity for the sake of simplicity. A "show advanced options" button would not hurt from time to time.

1735: I want to start with the system, turn on pidgin and skype. For me it's important things.

1736: make more configuration options. as a pro user (non-developer) you just cant install new versions, because of the lack of features. stop copying mac and elementary os - do it linux way.

1737: better notifications

1738: wayland integration;totem improvement

1739: Let the people decide what they want. By voting! And concentrate your hacking skills on programs most often used - like Skype, VLC or K3b. Try to make them work flawlessly.
There are some 29.000 packages in Debian, and it impresses me, but right now I have a big problem with enabling my wlan. That plethora of programs is no comfort to me.
If Mint makes it with MATE, it will be the winner. Till then I'm still using Gnome-2 in Mandriva-2010.2 & Debian-6.0.6 on my two home computers.
KDE4 overwhelms me, LMDE is so poor and Unity... Well, it's just a carousel of icons that distract me.

Ida Kolendo, Poland

1740: Stop requiring gnome-tweak-tool to set basic things like sloppy mouse focus, window shades, etc.

Stop dumbing Gnome down as if suddenly removing buttons like "log out" is going to cause Windows users to flock to Linux in droves.

The general philosophy causing both of these complaints seems to be Gnome developers thinking Linux users want Windows or OS X. Some of us have been on Unix for decades and want X to act like ... X.

1741: Gnome 3 looks like apple application for linux - bleeeeagh
Why it cant just be normall organized like Gnome2?
If you still want to go you are going with the apple-bleeeagheaa style at least make those ICONS smaller. Come on I'm not blind. And searching trough whole system to start the application i want is horror.
Any way the icon arrangement sucks.
And the belt on the left side the worst idea ever. I'm just getting alergy whenever I have to do something in gnome 3.
Gnome 2 rulez, Gnome 3 not i prefer KDE then or xfce.

1742: The calendar thing in gnome 3 only allows some dumb ass fuck calendar app and not a general api any app can use.

I currently have Windows 7 on my pc, and Arch linux on my laptops.
My laptops use xmonad as a display manager and slim as a login manager.

I will not even consider switching back to gnome.

1743: Plase, do not do the same, what Ubuntu Team does...

1744: Biggest issue I had when GNOME 3 was dropped on us was doing an "Easter Egg" hunt for features that were commonplace in Gnome 2 and standard fare on most desktops. Not wanting to go through complete "discovery", I found that Xfce does all that I need, and is intuitive. I read that we can get GNOME 3 to work like we need with a library of "extensions", but why bother when Xfce works! Haven't seen any GNOME announcements that would entice me to go back.

1745: just listen!

1746: read what users have to say, and see what should be done.

1747: Gnome 2 was mature; there may be reason to start developing a revolutionary new interface based on new platforms and new paradigms, but there was no reason at all to abandon the completed product. It was Gnome's downfall.

1748: GNOME has to come closer in look and feel to that of Cinnamon.

1749: Stop breaking themes every version. I don't understand the GNOME mentality of trying to force all users to have the same desktop. It's not good for GNOME and if anything, will be the reason GNOME dies.

Stop trying to hide configuration options from people who want them. Stop trying to force your "brand presence" on your loyal users. I'm considering switching to KDE because of how dumbed down you're making everything. GNOME used to be my favorite desktop for a long time, but with the recent changes in developer attitude, this may be the end for me.

1750: Drop 'we know best' attitude.
Stop listening to crazy interface designers.

1751: Don't reduce functionality without making it configurable. Desktop icons across multiple monitors is a good example, you can now only place them on the primary monitor.

1752: do not try to mimic windows 8

1753: Gnome 3 is a work in progess. I have no problem with that, it is already good enough for me and looks nice.

1754: UI design is a science, test ideas and provide quantifiable evidence for changes, rather than mimicking other desktop environments.

And good luck with the balancing act you seem to be caught in. Change is good, stagnation is never the right choice, but neither is incorrect change. Genuinely listen to the users, but never let them dictate your actions.

1755: Change is neccessary, but please improve while changing.

1756: I would like Gnome to feel like a community, more like KDE or Linux.

1757: Don't remove abilities, like gnome disk utility benchmark, wine program's name when alter-tab, etc.

Improve OpenGL performance, better support for games, especially full screen games.

More options, even with dconf.

Improve notification tray, gnome 2 way is better.

1758: I mostly like what you do.

1759: Bring back gnome2 look, stop tool integration which makes g*tool harder to work on different desktop environment, no configuration tools by default are you serious?

1760: Make media keys / other special keybindings work in layout mode.

1761: Please integrate by default the "dash to dock" extension, windows overview is great but you have to go to the corner and you have to keep in mind which applications are open. The "workspaces to dock" extension will be great too. Gnome 3.6 seems much better than 3.4, i hope this will continue in 3.8!

1762: Support Wayland please.

1763: Developers stop forcing users into TouchUI. At the begining it was ok, but how it's getting silly. Gstreamer guys made a release a bit earlier than expected so that Gnome can be utilising it. Which you did half-way though in 3.6 and basically told us ... yes guy, grab some more dependencies, in case you do not have enough packages installed already

Simply put
* Listen to users
* If you' want Gnome3 to be a fully TouchUI, provide some althernative otherwise you're pushing people away
* More configurations

1764: Pull your heads out of your arses.

1765: Yes! I think that the idea that 'having multiple ways to do one thing is confusing' is utterly wrong! The new nautilus is completely unusable because backspace is ignored. I had to switch to double commander, but I did like nautilus.
The other nautilus changes are also bad. The new ordering of files is counter-intuitive (and cannot be changed). The status bar at the bottom was very useful (and cannot be brought back). I hardly ever used the double pane layout but... why was it removed? Software should have plenty of configuration options and sane defaults for those who don't want to customize. Why would removing choice be a good thing?
Also, more in general: the great thing about gnome 3 is that it can almost entirely be used without touching the mouse. Removing keyboard shortcuts and command aliases forces people to conform to a specific way of doing things. This is wrong. If I liked that I would have bought a mac...

1766: - start to add features, not remove them
- make the size of titlebar changeable, it is too big and consumes to much space on my netbook

1767: Continue to be awsome. Change is difficult for some people :).

1768: I am adaptable to pretty much any user experience. Of more importance to me is stability, freedom from crashes or errors.

1769: Keep up the great work people!
Lately I've also been wondering how the new message tray in 3.6 would look if it were to squeeze the view up rather than push it up entirely. It might be able to be incorporated in such a way that it resizes windows on the go and enables interaction while also monitoring notifications and messages. Just a thought.

1770: I like the way gnome 3 is taking. The reason I checked gnome3 as an improvement but I am less satisfied than gnome2 is just because system stability, but I hope this is just a matter of time.

To be sincere, default gnome3 sucks for me, but thanks to the extensions system, I have a desktop environment that is almost perfect.

Among extensions I use are, the most important are: auto hide top bar, task bar and shutdown button.

1771: MacOS X and Unity are the way to go. Used Gnome since version 1, but really it is disgusting to destroy Nautilus and Gnome

1772: Stop assuming that what you’re giving users is all they need, and hiding other configuration options in obscure places. Why isn’t there a way to arrange preferred wifi hotspots, for instance, or to remove unused/outdated connections (e.g. mobile broadband) from Network Connections option panel? Do you think that’s beyond the need or capability of the average user?

1773: Power management could still be improved. Attempts to introduce complex algorithm appear to largely fail on gpm. Where possible interpolated smooth changes of LCD brightness would bring a modern feel.

The lock screen really needs replacing. It really should be the same as the login screen.

1774: I have tested 3.6 and it feels slower then the previous versions. You should make a improvement release as you did in the 2.x series where the memory consumption and performance was improved massively.

1775: My suggestion is that the team could implement new GUI features think on touchscreen devices. Because, i think that desktops and notebooks will begin with touchscreen monitor by default and the interface needs work fine with them.

1776: Please, bring back system tray which is ALWAYS visible. I use a lot of chat programs and software with notification icons. I not always sit infront my computer all the time. I need to take a quick look on monitor to know if someone sent me e-mail or wrote PM on IRC. I don't want to be forced to hover my mouse on the corner of the screen.

Please GNOME devs - make that optional :)

1777: not everybody has a tablet with touch. ergonomically, forcing me to move the mouse all over the screen is a BIG FAIL.

1778: THANK YOU ALL! I'm a 42 years old IT Pro and I'm very happy with my Gnome 3 setups. It's the best DE available. Better than OSX and W8. Simple, elegant and productive.

Suggestions:
- Merge Unity + GS. Help Canonical develop Unity on top of a GS base. As extensions or whatever.
- The UI paradigm for Gnome 3 is excellent. I like the way future apps are being shaped up. But most current applications still don't adhere to the guidelines. For example, we have a "global menu" for apps like nautilus and not for others like rhythmbox. Not to mention firefox, gimp, illustrator and other heavy weight apps. Perhaps the apps maintainers can use some more evangelism and active help.
- A newly designed icon set could be very cool.

Cheers!


Pedro Castro e Silva
Portugal

1779: Fix the damn world clock! Kill Unity.

1780: I cannot use gnome 3 as many games just cannot play on Nvidia cards - I haven't tried with 3.6 but 3.2/3,4 I had the issues described

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=802567
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=677934

After realising I just can't play various games in gnome3 (unless in fallback mode)I gave up using gnome. I may try again in the future...

I think I personally just prefer KDE for general use.

1781: Improve nautilus, it totally mess things up with bind mounts in /home/user.

Let people choose a wallpaper subfolder in the Picture folder.

Improve overall speed. Just by adding an SSD I was able to make it snappy.

1782: I use ArchLinux and tend to be on the latest stable version fairly quickly, I find there can be many 'non' serious issues/bugs that are very irritating. Having said that, it may be noted that there are vast improvements with every update.

Also GNOME need to ensures that it is very responsive in terms of user 'feel'. If I do find at some point that its starts to become slow, I will make the switch to another desktop (thought I have been loyal for over 2 years now). The reason I say this I do work on a number of different systems that is a mix of OS's. If I find that my experience (in terms of 'feel') on other do not co-relate on GNOME I will be tempered to test out other desktops.

1783: Don't go overboard with stupifying settings, simply because you do not feel a need for a certain setting or option doesn't mean nobody else does either. GNOME users are usually quite savvy with computers and have strong personal preferences...

1784: Autohide titlebars for maximized windows.

1785: make better use of various screen resolutions/dpi and multi monitor/tablet spaces and functionality... better handling of notifications they just disappear... i think 12 hour am/pm is more friendly then the default 24hour time... the activities is nice but i'd like there to be more then just greeted with every app displayed by default perhaps add real activities kinda like unity does... great work love gnome keep it up

1786: Don't try to change the world

1787: Keep 'm coming! Well done so far! Only thing that irritates me is the blurry arrangement of the panel icons. I like to control them not my plugins!
And why can I not chose thunderbird over evolution? I don' t like evolution but I keep getting stuck with it. Lightning integration for the calendar (e.g. no evolution again)?

1788: Not everyone likes the tablet/touch UI concept, actually some find it quite unusable for productivity...

1789: Themes should be include in Gnome-Shell and tray should be at top-right corner.

1790: Drop Gnome,
put all efforts in Cinnamon

1791: The fallback mode should be support in order to run GNOME without graphics card.

1792: I think the application switcher (alt-Tab) needs couple improvements:
1. There are cases when there are two (or more) instances of the same application running. Lets say one application instance "displays" windows on workspace 1, another application instance "displays" windows on workspace 3. User is currently on workspace 2. In such case the application switcher shows two icons of mentioned application, however it does not indicate to which workspace it will switch if user selects one or the other application icon. I think it would be useful to decorate such icons with arrows or numbers which shall indicate the application workspace, or at least it could be doable through a shell extension.
2. Let say there is running an application that has two windows f.e. Evolution: main window and "Compose Message" window. If user invokes application switcher, selects Evolution icon and waits a second or so, then the application switcher shows preview of all this application windows. Currently if user presses (he's still holding Alt key down) Tab key again, then the application switcher will select another application icon. If think it would be more convenient in such case, if application switcher would switch through application windows (like Alt-~, but without cycle) until last window preview icon is reached (next Tab key press shall select another application icon).
3. This one is not actually about application switcher, but about tracking application windows. Some applications take time to launch (It would be perfect if all application could be launched instantly, but reality is not perfect). Such applications usually show a "splash" screen before showing the main window. If user switches to the workspace 2 while the application is showing the splash screen on the workspace 1, the main window of this application will be eventually shown on current workspace 2. My wish is to improve application/workspace tracking, so the main window would be shown on the workspace 1 as well in such case.

1793: Make the origin of Documents, Pictures, Videos etc. hidden from the user. So there will not be a need for special applications, except of Nautilus, if one wants to access remote files.

Keep the track of my activities and let me see and chose them in the calendar (like when and what I've edited etc).

Make an option to remove window decorations of gnome-terminal.

Make Evolution design similar to Gmail web client, i.e. clean and clear.

1794: Keep up the good work. Users do not know what they want, they think they do.

1795: I would like to see a more configurable gnome with text based
configuration files and not registry. no xml, only yaml or similar.

ok for gtk3, the focus should be on speed without GPU acceleration
(like E).

some gui redesign to meet the wide lcd panel of these days with
low vertical resolution. save as much vertical resolution as
possible.

1796: Keep up the good work!

1797: using cinnamon over ubuntu 12.04, with cinnamon it's fine

1798: simple but effecive: add a "glow" from the botten if there are any notifactions availible.

i often missed notifications, because i dont see them when they pop up. a little indicator that reminds you would be helpful

1799: Please take a look at the noticeable performance regression in GNOME Shell 3.4 compared to 3.2. On some low-end graphics cards (like my HD 6550D) GNOME Shell 3.2 works very smooth and nice, while 3.4 (and 3.6) is not usable at all, since it gives only about 15fps.
Please also consider making "Zukitwo-Shell" a default theme. Everybody that I know says that the first thing they do after installing Fedora (or any other distro with GNOME 3) is change the shell theme to Zukitwo. I'm not talking about GTK3 theme (I think Adwaita is a masterpiece), but only Shell theme.

1800: Listen to your users and don't try to think for them.
Work more on functionality and bug-fixing, not on graphic design.