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chrishall57 · Joined: Tue May 03, 2005 2:13 pm Posts: 45

Tried the LXF disk, dumped me to Gnome 2 Sad

I do have it running on mint Mint on my laptop and I do like it. Couple of annoying niggles at this early stage to adopt it permanently though. Anyways, Gnome 2 still does the business.
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cwr · Joined: Sun Apr 05, 2009 1:08 pm Posts: 6

I tried the Gnome 3 interface on a desktop, and it was pretty much a nightmare; I couldn't actually do anything useful, since Gedit immediately crashed, but I could mouse around in a typical workflow pattern.

I suppose the most characteristic example of the new, improved GUI was the volume control; it now takes up a 2x3 inch square on my screen, where the old one took 1.75x0.375, for the same functionality, and the new bar is horizontal, not vertical, giving no immediate affordance as to the direction of movement. And this is interface design?

You can't (or at least I couldn't) remove the lower toolbar, which I ditched long ago. You can't simply click between windows, keeping work on one, docs on another, and junk on a third. You can't even configure a theme, apparently, without resorting to the command line, which according to the developer is a wonderful new feature ...

A window full of icons is the only way to handle a smartphone or a netbook, but for a desktop machine it's all pain. Gnome are going to have to produce something for desktops at some point, or they'll just become irrelevant.

Gnome 2.32 will last me a while, despite its rough edges, but I really don't know where to turn after that dies of old age. It took five years or so for Gnome 2.x to be reasonably well documented and useful, and I can't see 3.x reaching that state any more quickly.

Pity, really - Will

felis_silvestris · Joined: Thu Apr 28, 2011 1:23 am Posts: 6

Sorry, I have been away and then busy, and failed to keep my eye on the replies that have built up here. Please note that the cheat sheet to which Brian Hunter provided a link in his post provides a solution to the specific problem I was experiencing, which I didn't manage to find myself. The keybinding to move between open virtual desktops / workspaces is Ctrl+Alt+Up/Down arrow, which is frankly less intuitive than just clicking on a little box in the panel, but does the job perfectly well. I'm still not convinced that I can be bothered to move back from XFCE, which is an extremely comfortable working environment for anyone used to the previous version of GNOME, but I will put some more time into using the new interface.

ajgreeny · Posted: Thu May 05, 2011 9:31 pm Post subject:

I have to agree with you about xfce being probably the best option for those of us who don't like either unity or gnome 3 shell. I had not even really looked at xfce before, but having seen the current moves I have spent some time with a live USB of xubuntu 11.04, and it is excellent; so much better than unity, and I think that when gnome 2 goes, as it surely will, and the classic desktop is no longer available, xfce will become my refuge.

PS, I have put lubuntu on my netbook and on that it is fabulous; it boots from power switch to full usable desktop in about 20 secs, and is less power hungry than ubuntu's gnome, which was on there before. So lxde could also be another port in my unity/gnome 3 storm; not so easily configurable as xfce, but still extremely good.
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cwr · Joined: Sun Apr 05, 2009 1:08 pm Posts: 6

I've done some digging, and the authors of Gnome 3 seem pretty clear - they've written the new interface for unskilled users (hence no configuration), with touch-screen interfaces as a major emphasis.

That's reasonable, since mobile phones and netbooks are fashionable, but they appear to have no clue that desktops are a different niche. I hate using menus on my phone (which is a very old and unsmart one); on a limited interface five or ten icons make things much easier. However, a desktop screen full of ten or twenty unlabelled icons is a really bad idea. And I want my computer to do what I tell it to do, not what someone else thinks might be useful.

It looks as if moving to {something else} is the only long-term solution, but fortunately there's no rush. It'll be interesting to see where most Gnome users end up.

Will

felis_silvestris · Joined: Thu Apr 28, 2011 1:23 am Posts: 6

Thanks for the nod towards LXDE. I'm using it today, after two days of patiently sticking with the new GNOME, and it has been really excellent so far: the one aspect in which it scores over XFCE for me is that it works far better with Chromium, on my system at least.

I'm still not impressed by GNOME 3, Shell, whatever. I fully appreciate that I might have a completely different user experience if my use of it was purely recreational, but I'm a small business user, which must be the case for many people using RHEL related distros, and it seems to have become unduly constrictive and complicated to do the mundane boring things I need to do every day with my desktop box. If I wanted this kind of heavily managed interface, I would go out and buy a Mac.

SpecialStuff · Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2007 10:06 am Posts: 53

I think a few people are trying it out on Ubuntu 11.04 (and earlier in some cases), and I don't think that's the best place to see it at it's best. Just looking at various recent YouTube videos with Gnome 3 on Ubuntu Natty reveals it's in a fairly poor state and isn't at it's best there. I'm running it on Opensuse 11.4 and it's been brilliant, with only a couple of minor issues. Certainly I've been happy to move to it as my main OS and DE. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBJNBfbmpfQThis one is a good example, with the desktop clearly glitching out and whatnot. It's something I haven't seen on the Opensuse version. It's a pity if people are basing their opinions of it on Ubuntu's unfinished implementation of it, is what I'm trying to say.

MartyBartfast · Posted: Wed May 18, 2011 1:07 pm Post subject:

Well I upgraded to Fedora 15 yesterday and I really don't like Gnome3, so had to stick xfce on PDQ. I'll revisit Gnome3 occasionally to see if it grows on me, but at the moment I can't see it.
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shaddack · Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2011 8:30 pm Post subject:

I tried out Gnome 3 on Fedora 15 (booted from live CD) and I like it! I don't understand the criticism. I just tried it out quite briefly but I liked what I saw. I think it would suit me quite well!

As far as I understand it is only Fedora and OpenSuse that provide Gnome 3 as a default desktop. Now I'm wondering over which one of these to use. I've had some problems with Fedora in the past when it comes to hardware compatibility. I have never tried OpenSuse.

Is it possbile to get Gnome 3 with Debian?

loebus · Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2011 9:54 pm Post subject:

I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, 10.10 and 11.04 all using gnome 2.

I've downloaded Ubuntu 11.10 and ran in virtualbox and disliked instantly. From when I tried it was uncustomizable.

Might try again if this happens:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/?p=19106

I just have one panel, with gnome menu, dockbarx, windows applets and system tray. Compiz works and I use Synapse.

pfnorris · Joined: Mon May 31, 2010 4:13 pm Posts: 15

I have been using gnome3 for a couple of months now. Mainly on Arch, but also on open suse and mint. After some initial scepticism I am now completely sold on it, helped in no small part by JR's article a couple of months ago on customising it with themes and extensions.

There are quite a lot of extensions available now, that will allow most people to get some sort of user experience that suits them, and bear in mind that this is still the .0 release. Over the next few releases it should start to develop and mature quite nicely.

I now find that I miss it when I have to use a machine using an earlier desktop.

felis_silvestris · Joined: Thu Apr 28, 2011 1:23 am Posts: 6

As I started this thread, I feel that I should post that I've been trying out GNOME 3.2 on Fedora 16, & really feel that the specific issues that made me grumble when the shell was first released have been addressed, one way or another, over the last 9 months.

I can now get all the functionality I need for everyday use without recourse to Cinnamon or Unity: there is still some loss of convenience, but it's balanced by the improvements over GNOME 2.

I was really dreading the kind of prolonged misery that KDE users I know suffered when version 4 was introduced, and feel that the GNOME developers are due kudos for being flexible while maintaining their vision for the desktop.

Please consider my words, hat, whatever, eaten.

Brian Hunter · Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2012 3:15 pm Post subject:

I'm using Gnome3 on Fedora 16 as well and I like it. Suits how I use my computer. I launch all my programs by pressing the special key, and typing the first few characters of the program and pressing enter to launch. That’s how I setup any docks to run anyway.

90% of my computing time at home is done within the browser anyway, so my browser versions has much more of an impact on me these days! :p