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I swear that one of the biggest problems that Gnome Shell runs into is that they don't put the documentation in an obvious place. As far as I know this is it: https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet

I agree with you. I didn't like 3.0. I went to KDE for quite a while, but I really like 3.4 now. What seems to have happened is that a lot of necessary functionality was originally implemented as extensions and over time it has migrated into the mainline code. I really like Gnome Shell extensions because they are really simple to implement. The tweakability that most people are missing is there. But again, it's really not obvious how easy it customize your desktop using extensions: https://extensions.gnome.org/

If there was a built in tutorial mode along with an extension installer (maybe you only need a clickable link to the web page), I think Gnome Shell would become much more popular.

I swear that one of the biggest problems that Gnome Shell runs into is that they don't put the documentation in an obvious place. As far as I know this is it: https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet

I agree with you. I didn't like 3.0. I went to KDE for quite a while, but I really like 3.4 now. What seems to have happened is that a lot of necessary functionality was originally implemented as extensions and over time it has migrated into the mainline code. I really like Gnome Shell extensions because they are really simple to implement. The tweakability that most people are missing is there. But again, it's really not obvious how easy it customize your desktop using extensions: https://extensions.gnome.org/

If there was a built in tutorial mode along with an extension installer (maybe you only need a clickable link to the web page), I think Gnome Shell would become much more popular.

Gnome 3 rocks...

Try the latest with:
  * Extensions for the stuff that really should be changed and also for some really cool enhancements https://extensions.gnome.org/
  * The Activities menu. I love that the launcher is full screen. I am attempting to launch a new program. I don't care what I currently have open and certainly don't want transparency to fuzzily show it.
  * Accessibility as close to a first class citizen as I've seen. I always want to increase font size, they make it easy. Button in top right.

There are negatives of course.. (pressing alt to shutdown, that's just stupid) but I really miss the launcher when I use LXDE.

And others don't. Opinions differ on merits of different desktops; story at 11. "Desktop A rules, desktop B sucks" is, absent data from a broad population of users, a personal opinion, not a statement of fact

Yes, but what IS a fact is that some desktops allow users to configure their desktop the way they like it, with focus-follows-mouse, click-to-focus, and other properties. The problem is that most desktops do not; the designers think they know what's best for everyone, and refuse to allow any configuration at all. If all or most desktops allowed users to set these things, you wouldn't see all this complaining.

Yes, but "more configurable" and "less configurable" are't ipso facto statements of objective merit.

"More configurable" is an advantage to the people who don't like the default configuration, and may be completely irrelevant to those who do.

As for "less configurable", at least when it comes to click-to-focus vs. focus-follows-mouse, some question are:

• whether introducing a vendor-supported focus-follows-mouse option would require work on the GUI code that takes away resources that could work on other parts of the GUI - it's quite possible that it would;
• whether it would add a point of potential confusion for users - I personally don't think an extra knob, especially under an "advanced" pane, would be a problem here);
• whether it would cause problems for existing applications - I have the impression that the focus-follows-mouse tweaks may break some Windows apps, although, apparently, Vista has a configuration option that gives focus-follows-mouse+autoraise, so perhaps those issues have been fixed; I don't know whether similar issues exist with OS X focus-follows-mouse+autoraise tweaks such as the one in MondoMouse, or whether it combines poorly with the single menu bar model of OS X; I don't know whether focus-follows-mouse-without-autoraise would be harder or have other issues on either of those platforms; note also that the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines speak of some issues that app developers have to worry about with focus-follows-pointer:

  Note that point-to-focus places a number of restrictions on GNOME applications that are not present in environments such as MacOS or Windows. For example, utility windows shared between multiple document windows, like the toolbox in the GIMP Image Editor, cannot be context-sensitive— that is, they cannot initiate an action such as Save on the current document. This is because while moving the mouse from the current document to the utility window, the user could inadvertantly[sic] pass the pointer over a different document window, thus changing the focus and possibly saving the wrong document.

  so I'm curious how Windows or OS X apps handle that case if focus-follows-pointer is turned on - autoraise might make that inadvertent focus change more obvious, but not everybody wants autoraise.

I'm a click-to-focus user myself, these days (I went that way when I had a Windows machine on my desk, even if most windows ended up being terminal emulators sshed into a UN*X box, as I figured if I got used to it I'd have fewer problems switching between different desktop environments, given that I could always turn it on for UN*X+X11), so I personally am fine with OS X in that department; people who like OS X and, presumably, don't mind click-to-focus shouldn't confuse that with "OS X IS THE BESTEST UNIX DESKTOP EVAR FOR EVERYBODY!!!!!!11111ONE!!!!!!!".

Somebody who loves focus-follows-mouse may want to ram his or her fist through the screen when using OS X, and that's a perfectly legitimate response for them - as long as they don't confuse it with "OS X IS TEH SUXXXOR FOR ALL UNIX USERS!!!!!111ONE!!!!!!".

From: Fedora 18's features page

"Note that this feature does not prevent you from using yum and other commandline tools to install updates whenever you want to. We also differentiate updates of 'OS components' (which we want to do in this offline fashion) from application updates and installations, which should still be possible from the UI without restarting the system. The differentiation between 'OS components' and applications is necessarily a heuristic, since Fedora only knows about packages. The initial heuristic is that a package is considered an application if it installs a desktop file that is shown in the menus. This is not perfect and can be refined when additional metadata becomes available. Also note that this feature is about implementing offline updates for GNOME. Other spins are not affected, although they could choose to use the same systemd and PackageKit infrastructure, and provide a similar experience. "

So we will still be able to do "yum update", and packagekit will remain behaving "normally" on the KDE Spin (at least for a while). So if it's just an option for GNOME users, it doesn't seem to be a big deal.

What is scary is the logic behind these changes, which seems to be: "Windows and OSX have nice screens to update and reboot so we must reboot too"

Gnome specs on software update

This offline-updates feature, if made mandatory, will kill both Debian and Gentoo. Are you sure you want to do this without coordinating with their maintainers? The conflicting features are interactive post-install scripts and the general concept of installing packages from source one-by-one.

In Debian, package installation (or, more precisely, postinst scripts) may be interactive. If this is a remote server, how do I connect to the post-install script to provide the required input? This applies, e.g., to all applications that use a database via the dbconfig-common package and have SQL files in a standard location – if the SQL fails they ask what to do. The solution would be to extract and run all the config templates before the reboot, and ban using interactive features of debconf in other scripts. This does require dropping some error-handling features from dbconfig-common.

In Gentoo, there is no PackageKit. However, if it existed, your proposal would amount to compiling all packages between the first and the second rebot – i.e. ~10 hours of downtime if both Chromium, Wine, Inkscape and OpenOffice happen to be updated at the same time. In other words, Gentoo users rely on their system to be usable while compiling and installing packages one-by-one. The solution would be to use btrfs (once it becomes usable) and compile/install all updates to a writeable snapshot, as already suggested in another comment.

-- Alexander E. Patrakov (Emphasis mine)

Are Gentoo/Debian really that intertwined with whatever Fedora maintainers decide? I can at see where the maintainers are coming from regarding a distro like Fedora, but if these changes affect other distros, I see it as very Not Good from my perspective.

I switched to Google Talk. I use the browser plugin in chrome, which is fine for me since I use gmail for my mail client anyway (ever since kmail broke down...) There isn't official voice/video support for other linux clients, but some claim to support it (e.g. Empathy says lists "Voice and video call using SIP, XMPP and Google Talk." as a feature).

I still miss 'window title search' and 'show all windows for an app' that I had in compiz.....

Window title search: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/317/window-display/ shows the matching windows in the Overview as you type.

Show all Windows for an app: Maybe I'm missing something but I use Cycle through the apps with Alt-TAB, Cycle throught the windows for an app with Alt-AboveTAB. Which means to cycle through the windows for the current app, one press of Alt-AboveTAB shows the set. I use the cursor keys in Alt-TAB to navigate as well - not sure that is in Vanilla Gnome 3.4.

That wouldn't be 'fixed', that would be regressing for the sake of people who hate change just because it is change.

If you are terribly bothered by it:
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/

But once you get used to it, it is a much more scalable mechanism to deal with many windows. Plenty of stuff in Gnome3 frustrates me, but this one I think they got right.

You can simply lunch the application...

I *never* dine with software. It's just a rule I have. ;)

It will appear on the left bar as an icon... right on the icon, and Pin it. That's all.

I can't test it right now, but that might work. The script itself l don't really want running in a terminal, but it uses Zenity for a few dialogs, so perhaps they can be pinned.

Anyway... good suggestion. Thank you!! :D

Horribly out of date vs. LibreOffice - see the comparison - missing a ton of filters, barely interoperable with Microsoft Office, etc. etc.

I wonder why Quadrapassel hasn't already been taken out of GNOME Games.

When I was setting up scale (aka Expose) on Compiz I could drag the speed slider all the way from 0 to 50.

It's funny you mention this because GNOME 2 set out to fix these silly configuration choices, and did just fine, although perhaps cutting some corners with the first release. Federico summed up some of the history here. Compiz has largely been developed by people outside the GNOME sphere as far as I know. The thing is that some people learned this lesson ten years ago, and some still haven't learned it. If you want to have your software free and have it your way, you either need to start educating those people or just go with the GNOME guys.

LibreOffice will be debloated compared to OOo.

I'm not particularly hopeful of a functional system given the mouse problems I've had from 10.04.2 onwards, but I'll download it, try to install it, and give it a shot.

I really do like Debian's APT system a lot better than Fedora's RPM, though both get the job done. But unless that mouse problem isn't present, it doesn't matter which I prefer -- I need to use a distro that works.

The kicker will be whether they're using a GTK based installer or not. While you can always resort to text/expert mode, it's a nuisance to have to do so.

Yes, I know it's not an Ubuntu specific issue, but this is the problem I have with the recent set of distros from Debian and Ubuntu (including Kubuntu's installer.)

Mouse clicks getting lost

The Undo/Redo file manager functionality was backported from GNOME 3. Good for them for merging new features from GNOME 3, but it's not like they developed the feature.

I believe you are mistaken. The undo/redo is from a patch to 2.x made long before Gnome 3:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167501

All but the cpufreq applet part is possible with Gnome Shell Extensions and I am pretty sure there is actually an extension out there for cpufreq that I just haven't found useful yet.

Here you go: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/47/cpu-frequency/

Maybe someone linked to this already, didn't check all the posts: the official extension repository

The extensions are implemented in JavaScript. You can get a debug console by typing "lg" in the alt+f2 run prompt. The extensions already in the repo includes ones that revert the UI to be more like Gnome 2, as well as at least one system monitor plugin of the type people seem to be pining for. I haven't tried hacking around with this and I don't know how good the API documentation is but people do seem to get stuff done with it.

GTK offers HTML5 as a backend. Network transparency at the toolkit level is what X11 intended (with it as the toolkit). You can't get much less chatty than an HTML5-forwarded app in terms of existing standards.

Oh, I even got an offer from Richard Stallman to push making sawfish a default GNOME's WM. Though I had to refuse due to lack of time.. since I focus mainly on scientific research and then keeping alive the tools I like (e.g. sawfish).

see full record on:

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/sawfish-list/2008-January/msg00007.html

Flash videos on YouTube work fine in Midori if you use Linterna Mágica with Totem plugin.

As for default to lauch - https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/67/dash-click-fix/

Ctrl+click?

You can't favorite a program you download off the Internet to a subfolder of your home folder without that .desktop file. That's a usability problem. I don't care what the standard says.

If you mean pin apps that don't have .desktop files - that is a freedesktop standard.

Fine.. .then have Gnome Shell create that .desktop file using the executable name and default the path to the folder you ran it from and add it to favorites. Is it really that hard? Currently, if I right click on an app in that bar there is no option to add it to favorites. I have to open a terminal to run the application every time. The only workaround without manually creating the desktop file is using alacarte, but I find that doesn't always put the run path in the desktop files and some apps don't like that.

You can do it in Unity, however. But Unity has some other really big issues that keep me from using it.

As for default to lauch - https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/67/dash-click-fix/

This should be a setting somewhere. I still don't know how to add/search for extensions (without this webpage?) Last time I checked by typing Extensions in launcher search, nothing comes up. There's also no apparent visible way to do it from the task bar or launcher. I can download new background images fairly easy... why are extensions hidden away?

Well said. I'd say open source projects are successful when they give those contributing what they want. In my case, I volunteer for projects that help blind/VI people, projects like Vinux - Linux for the Vision Impaired, SpeechHub - free voices everywhere, NVDA - the free screen reader for the blind, and Orca - the Linux screen reader. I also contribute algorithms, such as libsonic - speeding up speech for speed listeners, and an enhanced FFT algorithm for speech recognition.

So, my win is helping the blind and otherwise disabled with computing technology. In Open Source Land, it's whatever floats your boat.

You're trolling. The default on Ubuntu is brasero, which gives you the option to burn on the fly right in the dialog.

Next time, pick a less transparent lie.

Mart

To support the claim:
Brasero features

Quoting:

Features
...
Data CD/DVD:
supports edition of discs contents (remove/move/rename files inside directories)
can burn data CD/DVD on the fly
...

It is the firt time I find the multi-virtual-desktop thing usable : it becomes very practical to setup multiple virtual desktops for so many different tasks, and it is nice.

I had to customise it a little though, with the folowing extensions, right out from the https://extensions.gnome.org/ website :
- Coverflow Alt-Tab : Replacement of Alt-Tab, iterates through windows in a cover-flow manner.
- Dash Click Fix : Fix the dash's behavior when you click on an already running icon. The default behaviour is to switch to it, this extension changes that to lanch a new instance instead
- Places Status Indicator : Add a systems status menu for quickly navigating places in the system
- Power Options : Show Suspend, Hibernate (if available) and Power Off options in user menu.
- Remove Accesibility : Remove the accesibility button from the top panel.
- System Monitor : Add a system monitor to the left side of the message tray.

Hardware / software base : Debian "Wheezy" (testing) on a high end full HD laptop with an external monitor attached to it sometimes.
Usage : web / email / some games / office work / platform prototyping with virtual machines, modelling.

The external display behaves like a charm (with really minor glitches : le login screen will somtimes not appear properly if the monitor gets plugged off before one unlocks the screen, but it still work).
I miss the cube. I miss a screensaver, I miss the capacity to change windows themes and colours and the "control pannel" lacks several usefull features, but overall, it is very usable and properly translated in French.

It does have elements akin to that of tablets in that the activities pane (launcher) is a tiled icon display (like many mobile interfaces...and Windows 8), and there's a focus on having single-layer workspaces with no min/maximizing. Really, though, GNOME 3 has a lot of potential once you apply some of the tweaks mentioned in the article, and browse https://extensions.gnome.org/ for a bit.

I use this for alt-tab switching and it helps quite a bit: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/38/windows-alt-tab/
Combine it with https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/16/auto-move-windows/ (albeit annoying to set up) and things work quite nicely.

I use this for alt-tab switching and it helps quite a bit: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/38/windows-alt-tab/
Combine it with https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/16/auto-move-windows/ (albeit annoying to set up) and things work quite nicely.

Very cute how you modded yourself up there, Behdad. And exactly how are we supposed to read the bugzilla report "very carefully" when you've had one of your GNOME dev friends close it from public viewing?

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664611

That's right folks, a GNOME dev's answer to a glaring security flaw is to try and shut people up from talking about it, and particularly from criticizing his poor response. Now Behdad can tell people whatever story he likes because his actual words are no longer available to be viewed by the public, who are the ones being affected both by his arrogance and his negligence.

Go ahead, mod me down with the many accounts that you've created in the past few hours to boost your own karma. You know, rather than actually fixing the damn bug. Incidentally, guess who _did_ fix the damn bug? Kees Cook, a developer for Ubuntu provided a patch in the thread that is now _also_ no longer available to the public, thanks to Behdad. That's right, a fix is available, made by an Ubuntu developer (worth mentioning that Behdad himself used to be a Redhat employee), but because Behdad has made a public embarrassment of himself now we don't even get access to _that_, let alone see the truth of the sort of person he really is. The absolute height of irresponsibility, Behdad. You're an embarrassment to the entirety of the GNOME project, and if you think this is going away just because you managed to coax one of your friends into censoring the bug report you're a sadly mistaken, pathetic little man.

Not according to Behdad it doesn't:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664611

Instead of fixing the security hole in VTE he'd rather accuse the poster of trying to garner some sort of "fame" from reporting the bug, he even threatens in his own comments to put off fixing the bug if he's further "insulted." Rather amusing that he's running around Slashdot telling everyone to read the thread for the bug more closely, the more closely you read it the more you realize that Behdad is just an overgrown infant with an inferiority complex...and everyone using libVTE is suffering for it.

And see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664611 for an example of what Behdad is really like when confronted, not just the PR nonsense he's smearing the comments of this thread with. The _real_ story is that because his fragile ego has been insulted, every machine with libVTE installed is going to remain vulnerable to this bug. He simply doesn't care. It's a level of irresponsibility that's unique even for the GNOME team.

Better yet, behdad@gnome.org and slashdot@behdad.org to ask when this man-child is actually going to fix the code he's made everyone's systems vulnerable with. I'm sure his input on the situation would be amusing.

Anonymous Coward,

You may want to read the end of this comment before jumping to conclusions:

    https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664611#c10

Ie. I offered to fix it, before the report was published. And the report is deliberately misinformed to make it look like I said I don't have any intention to fix it. And the report author tweetted [1] "Apparently not a lot of people read Slashdot anymore or RTFA. I've only had 971 hits to the article so far. :-(", which makes me believe that his true intention was to get Slashdot / Reddit / Hacker News bragging rights. Comes handy if you are a sysadmin I guess...

behdad

[1] https://twitter.com/#!/climagic/status/177796284755873793

Yeah, try reading said author's reactions to this with a straight face:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664611

He's basically saying that if anyone complains about the bug further he'll take his ball and go home like a little child. This is a security issue that affects anyone using his buggy code, not just an insult to his over-inflated ego, but that's exactly how he's treating it. No small wonder that no one will take GNOME developers seriously any more, they have the mentality of children with anger management issues.

Funny, Behdad, I thought you weren't going to pay attention to this bug: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664611

I suppose once your name hit Slashdot you decided to change your tune, did you? Because it sure sounds like you're an arrogant prick from the thread you and Andre are trying to suppress.

Just take a look at what the GNOME developers call "community relations" these days:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664611

The very first person that tries to protest the lack of response by the VTE developers gets his account disabled immediately. And people wonder why GNOME 3 is such a clusterfuck, it's full of people like Behdad.

Aah, I assumed you were upset about Unity's global menu (I know that bugs the crap out of me, but then so does a lot of things in Unity). The new Application Menu makes sense in a way, it's not a replacement for window menus, it's truly an application menu. So each window has menus which are relevant to that window's context, while you have a separate menu for the whole application. Contextualization like that seems like a win to me, but I guess we'll have to see if apps use it the way it's intended (a mix of window and application menus), or if they end up abusing it by jamming all the menus into one form or the other.

Will the application/global menu replace the normal window menus (in the long term)?

Nope, the application menu is strictly for global actions affecting the whole application rather than those in the window context.

https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/Whiteboards/AppMenu

I wonder how Canonical's Unity Global Menu will account for this, they put the context menus in the location App menus are going to be taking, and while the Unity Global Menu only allows for a single menu to be on the screen at a time, the Gnome 3.4 Application Menu is a separate menu from the window context menus (thus requiring at least two menus on the screen at a time for an app which uses both).

Here are some reasons from somebody that uses both GNOME 3 and Windows 7 on a daily basis:

This is not meant to be a slight in any way but I suspect you did not use GNOME 2 very much. Several of the things you mention are in G2 already. I note them below. I should mention these were also present without being hostile to new or power users. To me G3 is just not good for either of those groups which begs the question who IS it targeted at?

New users don't know the "magic keys" and struggle to get basic tasks done. It is very unintuitive in this aspect. I support and have rolled out G 2.x to more than 20 users. Every single one of them could get up to speed within 10 - 20 minutes on their own. When I tested G3 with 4 "average" users none of them were using it on their own within 20 minutes. The fact that this page exists : https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet shows exactly what I am talking about.

Power users have simply been crippled in G3. For them the one app focus is the death knell of productivity and the an extra keystroke or 2 to launching apps, changing desktops, getting anywhere is just insult to injury.


I organize your comments into a couple categories.

New G3 functionality:

* In Windows, if I want to switch to an application that has multiple windows (like a chat application) and I used Alt+Tab, it only brings up one window and I have to use Alt+Tab multiple times in succession to get all of the windows up. In GNOME 3, application windows are grouped by default so if I switch to my chat window, it also brings up my buddy list. If I want to switch to a specific window only, it lets me do that too with minimal effort.

* It creates multiple desktops on-the-fly. I used to be the kind of person who had 4 desktops in a square formation, each for different programs, but with the new Alt+Tab functionality that has become rather outdated to me. In the event that I do need another desktop and I drag an application to another desktop, it makes a new, empty one right below it. My desktops dynamically adapt to my workflow instead of the other way around.

* I can click the application name in the top bar and close every single window owned by the application instead of hunting them all down.

G2 functionality that was already there:

* In Windows I feel like the Start menu is hard to navigate properly. Applications are sometimes grouped into folders and some aren't. There are no categories whatsoever. In GNOME 3 I not only get the same, handy "search" function that Windows 7 has, but I also get a much more intelligent application list which groups them by category and sorts them alphabetically without them being shoved into pointless folders.

* Chat integration! I used to be a Pidgin fan when it comes to IM, but I tried Empathy and, while it has less features than Pidgin, it has just enough for me and it makes up for the lost features by being extremely simplistic and easy to use. No matter what window I have brought to the forefront, I can quickly respond from the nice little pop-up at the bottom of the screen without switching windows. Changing my availability from the status menu in the upper-right corner is also very nice since I don't have to hunt for a program icon in the "notification tray" or whatever people call it.

Poor justification for removing features (i.e. they could be done in G2 with ease):

* In Windows I feel like my application launchers are a distraction from my work. GNOME 3 helps me stay focused (yes this is an actual problem for me) by keeping the icons on the Activity overview, which is just as easy to open as the Start menu (Windows key).

* The clock is in the center of the top bar instead of useless white space. This isn't huge but it feels like a much better place for a clock than being shoved in the corner with a tiny font. This way it's larger easier to read from a distance and, sin

Oh I almost forgot to add one very, very important detail that really sets it apart: one-click extension support! If you go to extensions.gnome.org while running GNOME 3, you can click any extension you want, slide an on/off switch, and it's installed! You can change lots of different aspects of GNOME with this, like adding buttons to the User Menu in the corner, removing things you don't need in the UI, making the behavior more like that of GNOME 2 or other desktop environments, and whatever else you can code in javascript. Nearly any major problem you may have with GNOME 3 can be remedied with an extension, and there have been some very comprehensive ones released so far! I only use one extension, the "Alternative Status Menu" one, but I could easily live without it.

I haven't had to do any clicking to launch apps from the search. Super, search, optionally choose right result with arrow keys, enter. Of course I use the shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+T if I don't rebind to Super+T) to launch terminals.

Alternatively you can add them as favorites to the dash by right clicking, then it's as easy as hitting the left corner with your pointer (no need to click) and clicking the icon in the dash.

If you really want them on the top bar (or really any other non-standard functionality) check the extensions, I haven't looked for a launcher one but it's quite possible it exists.

So, no matter what, with weeks of working with it and reading docs and tweaking what I can it STILL requires more mouse movements, clicks, and/or keystrokes to accomplish the same tasks (compared to Gnome 2, XFCE, and even Windows).

Not for me it doesn't, so where does that leave us?

Yea, sure, it's "pretty". Not willing to sacrifice productivity for "pretty", I guess it's just not for me.

It's not pretty, most of the time it's a black bar at the top of the screen. I don't like the shell because it's "pretty", I like it because it's out of the way when I interacts with apps and provides and integrated window management/application starting interface when I'm doing that.

• Launching a new terminal window. G2: keyboard shortcut. G3: keyboard shortcut.
• Switching desktops. G2: custom keyboard shortcut. G3: custom keyboard shortcut.
• Switching windows, the mouse way. G2: try to decipher the right one in the tasklist, carefully aim for it, click. G3: fling the mouse into the left corner, decipher the right one in the window grid, carefully aim for it, click. On the downside I have an extra (very easy, huge target, can't miss it) fling, on the upside I don't have to have another panel to keep the tasklist somewhat readable.
• Switching windows, the keyboard way. G2: alt-tab trough long list of windows. G3: alt-tab through apps alt-~ through app windows, I really prefer this to a long list of terminal windows no matter what I'm looking for (there's alt-esc or an extension if that's more your cup of tea). G3 alternatively: the mouse way via keyboard, something that there wasn't an option for in G2.
• Running apps. G2 stock: dig trough menu, click. G3: Press super, type in the first two to four letter of the name.

The Gnome 3 way is about the same effort for me, but with less Gnome in my way. The fact that there are more easily installable extensions for the Shell then the respective portions of Gnome 2 got over it's entire live span is just icing. It's fine it it's not for you, but that doesn't mean it's bad which is an important distinction to make. For some reason though folks ranting about Gnome 3 feel the need to make it bad, not just not right for them.

So, no matter what, with weeks of working with it and reading docs and tweaking what I can it STILL requires more mouse movements, clicks, and/or keystrokes to accomplish the same tasks (compared to Gnome 2, XFCE, and even Windows).

Not for me it doesn't, so where does that leave us?

Yea, sure, it's "pretty". Not willing to sacrifice productivity for "pretty", I guess it's just not for me.

It's not pretty, most of the time it's a black bar at the top of the screen. I don't like the shell because it's "pretty", I like it because it's out of the way when I interacts with apps and provides and integrated window management/application starting interface when I'm doing that.

• Launching a new terminal window. G2: keyboard shortcut. G3: keyboard shortcut.
• Switching desktops. G2: custom keyboard shortcut. G3: custom keyboard shortcut.
• Switching windows, the mouse way. G2: try to decipher the right one in the tasklist, carefully aim for it, click. G3: fling the mouse into the left corner, decipher the right one in the window grid, carefully aim for it, click. On the downside I have an extra (very easy, huge target, can't miss it) fling, on the upside I don't have to have another panel to keep the tasklist somewhat readable.
• Switching windows, the keyboard way. G2: alt-tab trough long list of windows. G3: alt-tab through apps alt-~ through app windows, I really prefer this to a long list of terminal windows no matter what I'm looking for (there's alt-esc or an extension if that's more your cup of tea). G3 alternatively: the mouse way via keyboard, something that there wasn't an option for in G2.
• Running apps. G2 stock: dig trough menu, click. G3: Press super, type in the first two to four letter of the name.

The Gnome 3 way is about the same effort for me, but with less Gnome in my way. The fact that there are more easily installable extensions for the Shell then the respective portions of Gnome 2 got over it's entire live span is just icing. It's fine it it's not for you, but that doesn't mean it's bad which is an important distinction to make. For some reason though folks ranting about Gnome 3 feel the need to make it bad, not just not right for them.

https://developer.apple.com/library/IOs/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/Introduction/Introduction.html
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/Intro/Intro.html
http://developer.android.com/design/index.html
http://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/
http://docs.blackberry.com/en/developers/deliverables/36511/index.jsp?name=UI+Guidelines+-+BlackBerry+SmartphonesBlackBerry+Smartphones7.1&language=English&userType=21&category=BlackBerry+UI+Guidelines&subCategory=
http://docs.blackberry.com/en/developers/deliverables/27299/index.jsp?name=UI+Guidelines+-+BlackBerry+PlayBook+TabletBlackBerry+PlayBook+Tablet1.0&language=English&userType=21&category=BlackBerry+UI+Guidelines&subCategory=
http://wiki.eclipse.org/User_Interface_Guidelines ...

Yeah, its hilarious an unusual that Microsoft publishes a design guide for their OS because obviously the author didn't spend 5 minutes on Google...

Have you had a look at Evolution? They used to position it as an Outlook competitor.

There's:

• ChromeVox
• NVDA
• Orca
• VoiceOver

all of which are free (some open-source as well)

That's the whole thing: we are talking about stability and maturity. We are now in a time where desktops should strive for those qualities, and align with the server mentality.

Let me start by saying that's a more defensible position. We aren't now arguing about facts, what actually caused the Gnome committee to re-architect but a more philosophical question. I image you think stability is not a goal in and of itself but rather are concerned with switching costs. I would suspect that increases in productivity would quickly swamp any switching costs.

At the current time, the Gnome Committee believes Gnome has failed to gain the market share it should. In general most end users consider Gnome2 to be worse than either WindowsXP or OSX in terms of user interface. They see Linux as less feature rich and less well executed than proprietary desktops. Given that situation they don't believe they have maturity and stability would be a negative. The goal of the Gnome project is to maximize end user productivity.

When it's completely dead, will Gnome3 have feature parity? Nobody knows either!

Sure they do. The Gnome community publishes roadmaps well in advance. The answer to your question is no. Gnome 3 will have a different feature set than Gnome 2. The underlying applications will bill be different. Gnome is re-architecting the system keeping what worked in Gnome 2, and in other systems and discarding what didn't.

But it would be unquestionably useful to have code in one pane and a browser window in the other, so you can update the code and see immediately what effects your changes had.

Epiphany ( http://projects.gnome.org/epiphany/ ) will automatically reload any page opened on the local filesystem when that page changes, so it's a reasonable standin for that use case. Not a great one, mind, but it should work.

Nice blogspam, but why don't we link to the original blog post from Michael Meeks (Libreoffice developer)?

Beware: even the article says: "over half the UNUSED code in LibreOffice has been removed" and not: "half of ALL the code" In november 2011, there were about 5000 known unsed methods, today there are about 2000... See blog by Michael Meeks http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2012-01-09-unused.html for more detail

Dashboard (the spotlight equivalent) was announced before spotlight was. Indexing, started in GNOME first. In fact with Zeitgeist we are taking it to the next level. For instance, it's possible to click on a file and get all the git version logs on it. How many versions did it have etc. KDE is following suit as well. So, Linux desktops are innovating. You're giving an opinion without trying anything recent. I suggest you try Fedora 16, or Ubuntu or whatever and try both KDE and GNOME and see how they fare. You might also consider that GNOME now has http://extensions.gnome.org/ which can now modify your desktop behavior. GNOME 3 will continue to evolve and because we now use web technologies to rapidly change behavior we'll be able to try out new UI faster than both Mac and PC.