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Gnome3 is fantastic and this is all you need to start loving it too. Oh and maybe this one too.

Gnome3 is fantastic and this is all you need to start loving it too. Oh and maybe this one too.

seriously, you do not want to use a programming language without object orientation for GUI programming.

GNOME does use OOP.

If you don't like the syntax of GObject (understandable), just use Vala. It compiles to C (no performance loss).

I played with Red Hat back in the day and had Fedora 11 on my spare laptop, just cuz. But mostly I used Windows, occasionally a Mac. Everything I am about to say is filtered through that lens....

I was used to Gnome 2 on Fedora 11. It was similar enough to the windows and mac ui so that I could get around it very easily. When I installed Fedora 16 and used Gnome 3.x, I had to struggle to find things. Gnome Shell Extension allowed me to put back the features I liked from Gnome 2, while keeping the clean look of 3. I just would like to see GSE as a standard install item, not an add-on

did you even google your question? http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ubuntu+lockdown maybe this will help you http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=456549 http://users.telenet.be/mydotcom/howto/linuxkiosk/ubuntu01.htm http://library.gnome.org/admin/system-admin-guide/stable/menustructure-13.html.en

I'm dumbfounded that people get to ask such simple questions of /. readers. A simple Google search would have turned up many Debian-based solutions, forget about all the *nix ones out there. I used to think this kind of thing was lazy to ask at Ubuntu forums, but it's way worse here. I am seriously thinking about taking this site out of my rss feeds because I keep getting fooled by this crap. If anything, this is just more filler on a slow day for Ubuntu stories...a very cheap maneuver.

did you even google your question?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ubuntu+lockdown

maybe this will help you
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=456549
http://users.telenet.be/mydotcom/howto/linuxkiosk/ubuntu01.htm
http://library.gnome.org/admin/system-admin-guide/stable/menustructure-13.html.en

Evince (gtk) and Okular (ex-kpdf, iirc, Qt) both seem pretty usable to me.

At work, I'm stuck with windows, and the Evince win32 port seems to work quite well there too. Only issue I ran into was that be default it tried to print things in landscape mode or something like that, and I didn't notice.
A nice feature is that it does djvu and postscript as well, instead of having multiple readers (although I seem to think ps might not work with windows in default, probably relies on ghostscript or so..?).

install it already

Yeah, too bad none of that is documented in a place which is easily discoverable by reading the release notes, or using google. It's a shame people have to brute force everything about the learning curve instead of reading a manual or something like this:

https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet

Hey thanks.. I don't know about it :)
Gnome should publish this and other features so user know what they are getting.

They did, a long time ago: https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet

Task oriented ... you have no idea how right you are

Yes, gnome3 uses gobject-introspection. At compile time, your gobject library is scanned (part static scanning, part running the built code and introspecting) and a large lump of xml is written describing the library. It also generates this information in a compressed binary form.

When you include your library in your Python/Ruby/Javascript/whatever program, the interface is generated from this compressed binary description. The interface is generated lazilly as your program runs so there's no startup cost. Because the interface is exactly the C interface (with some simple rules to adapt it to the calling language) everyone can use the same documentation.

It's a nice system, quite a bit better than swig, in my experience.

Yes! I too keep hitting the windows key on windows desktops and getting annoyed that I can't see all my windows like I wanted. I've got the Gnome 3 key shortcuts solidly embedded in my muscle memory over the last 6 months, and trying to do things in other desktops just seems really clunky and inefficient now.

For my use, Gnome 3 is faster and easier than any other DE I've seriously used. An investment of five minutes spent reading the Gnome 3 cheat sheet pays off handsomely.

And on my wee netbook (AA1 ZG5), Gnome 3 (Fedora 16) is faster and smoother than Gnome 2 (Fedora 14) was. Honest, it is. How much of that is due to Fedora getting better, and how much to Gnome 3, I don't know.

t's also a royal pain in the ass to develop for, although this has always been the case for GNOME. GObject is a pathetic hack. If you want object-oriented C, then just use C++ or Objective-C.

The nice thing about using vanilla C is that you can then easily wrap it for use in other languages, which you cannot easily do with Obj-C or C++ (Obj-C selector names are too idiosyncratic for most other languages, and full C++ object model is too complicated). My take on GObject is that it's not there to be used directly - it's more like an API and ABI for higher-level bindings. If you want a "native" language, with matching object model and all concepts exposed directly - akin to what Obj-C is for Cocoa - then Vala offers that for GObject. Otherwise, there's PyGtk, Gtk# etc.

This link just floored me.

https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/FAQ#Why_no_window_list_or_dock.3F

"A persistent window list or dock would interfere with this goal, serving as a constant temptation to switch focus."

Who wrote this? How did this become the official position of GNOME 3 officially?

On the one hand, I sort of respect that they aren't letting tradition shackle them. They are trying to boldly change things, to make something really new and really better.

On the other hand, they have changed a bunch of stuff and made it worse!

They got rid of some stuff that takes up space; and I always use GNOME on a giant desktop display with lots of room to spare. Even my netbook has a 10.1" screen and I don't begrudge a few pixels for a window list.

They got rid of the window list, it seems, because it is a distraction. But I am used to it being there and I don't notice it when I'm working; whereas with GNOME 3 I have no option but to have a distracting animation of windows flying about and arranging themselves any time I want to change apps. I have to hit the logo key, watch a dazzling display, find the window I want, click on it, and watch it zoom to full size. This is less distracting than clicking on the button for the window I want, and having it instantly be the topmost window? (Answer: no, it's more distracting, not less. At least that's true for me. But GNOME gives no option; this is the new One True Way that we must all use.)

If the GNOME 3 developers ever build a car, it won't have a steering wheel, a brake pedal, and a gas pedal. They will boldly re-engineer the driving experience. There will probably be a miniature replica of the car mounted on a joystick; you will twist the little car right to turn the real car right. So intuitive! Of course those of us with many years of experience, expert car drivers, will not be able to apply our experience; and if we are recommending a GNOME car to our friends, they will ask us "why is this different from every other car I have ever seen?"

The really frustrating part is that this is a total replay of what happened with the "object oriented file manager". Originally, the GNOME file manager worked pretty much the way it works now. Then they decided that this is overly complicated for newbies. There should be only one window for any one directory, and that one window should remember where it opened last and open in the same place, to build a sense of persistence and make the file system seem more like a real place. (This is similar to how the original Mac Finder worked, I believe. But the Finder in Mac OS X doesn't work that way anymore, and I believe didn't work that way when the GNOME guys made this decision.)

In true GNOME style, they didn't provide a convenient option to turn this off; why would you want to turn it off? It's better. And that is why I, and so many other people, first learned how to use gconftool, to find that option and turn it off.

The very next release of GNOME they changed the default back to the original behavior, and never changed it again. But for GNOME 3, they are sticking to their guns.

In some ways GNOME 3 is nice, but I bitterly resent the amount of control the GNOME guys are trying to assert over how I use my computer. I'm going to try Linux Mint 12 on a spare computer and see how I like it. From what I have seen, MGSE is a giant step up over either of Unity or GNOME 3 Shell.

One of the core goals of GNOME Shell is to provide the GNOME desktop with a consistent and identifiable visual identity.

Why isn't the core goal "make the user be happy and productive"? How does this "visual identity" thing help me? Why should I cooperate with this?

P.S. GNOME 2.x is my favorite desktop environment ever. The GNOME guys have really squandered all the good will I used to have toward them.

steveha

will it offer any benefit over just using GNOME 2?

GNOME 3's other improvements, performance, desktop search, themes, enhanced user interface layout engine ?

GNOME 3 is not just GNOME 2 with a few panels removed and window switching changed around.

I wrote a program that runs on MS Windows that allows you to quickly assign alt/winkey+ to windows.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/linkkey/

Basically if you suddenly have 5 windows you need to quickly switch amongst, just click/raise them in reverse order of precedence (window #5 to window #1), then press "winkey+0".

After that:
winkey+1 = window #1
winkey+2 = window #2
and so on, till winkey+9 in most recently raised order.

Probably only a few people in the world would find it useful, but my turn to say "Works For Me" :).

FWIW I actually suggested it to the OSS GUI bunch:
lists.kde.org/?l=kwin&m=114068120330057
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/DesignersPlayground/KeyboardShortcuts

Open source screen reader http://live.gnome.org/Orca This package can be used to operate a computer for people who are totally blind, read content etc etc.

From experience I can say by far the thing that takes the most extra time when I am writing in C (compared to Java) is the lack of a good library, with common data structures like hash tables and lists and regular expressions.

Seriously?
GLib provides common data structures and regular expressions.

From experience I can say by far the thing that takes the most extra time when I am writing in C (compared to Java) is the lack of a good library, with common data structures like hash tables and lists and regular expressions.

Seriously?
GLib provides common data structures and regular expressions.

From experience I can say by far the thing that takes the most extra time when I am writing in C (compared to Java) is the lack of a good library, with common data structures like hash tables and lists and regular expressions.

Seriously?
GLib provides common data structures and regular expressions.

At work we actually mostly use Dia.

I have used OmniGraffle a bit at home though, the UI easily beats Dia. Haven't tried the Visio import/export functionality though...

Have you tried Dia ?

Your definition of decent seems to be a bit off. Decent software isn't slow, bloated, and buggy. I'll put up with slow and bloated. However buggy is never "decent" enough for use. Thank goodness there are alternatives.

I have to agree. Mono should have been a liberation path _outside_ of .NET. languages and run-times are plentiful in the OSS world, with almost all working the same in Windows, Mac OS, Linux, BSD, Solaris or whatever you what to use (barring iOS, that is). We have dynamic and static languages, compiled and interpreted, imperative and functional, new and well stablished. Hell, we even have executable line-noise and white space!

By the way, I have been told that Vala is very nice for people coming from C#, as it's based on it, but runs faster because it's compiled to native code.

The problem that I have with all the new GUIs that are coming out it seems like it's all just change for the sake of change.

I think the only people saying that are those that either:-
a) Don't bother trying to think about what advantages a change may bring.
b) Don't bother seeking out or listening to explanations of changes.
c) Instantly dismiss any such explanations without much thought.

There are design documents that can be read, blog postings, discussions and so forth.

I'm programming in this right now: http://gcc.gnu.org/

And the IDE is absolutely terrific: http://projects.gnome.org/gedit/

Gnome shell was made to take in account tablet, that's part of the design document ( http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design ). They never said otherwise. Now, unlike unity, that's rather usable on a laptop. I do use it daily and the uncluttered interface is rather nice, even if I still do not like the way windows are switched on keyboard.

During the LibreOffice Conference, The Document Foundation has announced:

• LibreOffice Online Prototype: you can watch a demo video at the
  following address:
  http://people.gnome.org/~michael/data/2011-10-10-lool-demo.webm.
  LibreOffice Online is based on GTK+ framework and HTML5's canvas, and
  has been developed by SUSE's Michael Meeks, built on Gtk+ broadway from
  RedHat's Alex Laarson.
• LibreOffice port project to Android and iOS, based on the voluntary
  work of Tor Lillqvist, a SUSE finnish developer know for having ported
  GIMP to Windows. The LibreOffice Android and iOS port has the objective
  of bringing the office suite to iPads and Android tablets, and
  eventually smaller devices. The user interface work has yet to start in
  earnest but the bulk of the code is compiling.

Please note that these are not products available to end users, but
advanced development projects which will become products sometimes in
late 2012 or early 2013.

• 500.000 desktops, mostly Windows, at several French Government
  entities switching from OpenOffice to LibreOffice (this increases the
  Windows installed base of LibreOffice by 5% in a single move)
• 800.000 USB keys with LibreOffice and other free software distributed
  to students of the Paris Region (Île-de-France)
• Region Île-de-France becoming a member of TDF Advisory Board

blog post: http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2011/10/14/libreoffice-conference-announcements/

Wow! There is no mention anywhere in these articles about LibreOffice, which is where all the energy and development behind the project has gone. http://people.gnome.org/~michael/data/2011-10-10-lool-demo.webm OpenOffice isn't dying. It finally shook itself free from its corporate shackles and got a new name in the process.

Are there any Russians that contribute something positive to the world of software?

rarlabs, akella, http://l10n.gnome.org/languages/ru/

You know it all went to shit when GNOME developers release a tool to tweak "advanced options" like how the laptop behaves when you close the lid, font sizes or if the shell clock shows date or not.

Here are some more links:

• Sourceforge help wanted page
• A similar Slashdot story from before
• Some similar Stackoverflow questions: 1 2 3 (C related)
• One comment from above I especially agree with -- Look at GNOME Love -- Large enough projects have bugs marked as "easy to fix for newbies" -- This is for you!

It certainly can't be that many if they need to drop anything but KPW as available and supported desktops...

I wouldn't call dropping everything but KDE as proof that they have very few contributors left. SuSE includes GNOME but officially supports KDE, Slackware dropped GNOME long time ago and doesn't include them at all. GNOME 2 was tricky to build and maintain. GNOME 3 is in, "I don't even know" land. GNOME with all of its dependencies, vast array of configuration options for each dependency, and magic order of build instructions for each dependency; does not tend to be easy to maintain a workable tree from source. A couple of people have built build systems that do nothing but build GNOME. Thankfully, most builders have given up on their own build systems and have gone to JHbuild.

KDE on the other hand is a pretty straight forward process to maintain a working tree. You can check it out here. Of course, that's something that the average user isn't going to do but there again we are talking about Mandriva. They have to maintain a working tree of the DE and still include their things. GNOME/KDE aren't targeting a single distro, they are making a DE for whoever. Distro have to take that and add and remove what works for their distro. To do this with GNOME is almost like putting stitches in yourself. KDE is very easy to customize distro-wise.

Red Hat and SUSE are successful because they have stuck to a single and coherent vision for their brand of Linux, because they have a good sales model that pushes support for their brand of Linux, because they have played major roles within the Linux community in general which attracts community contributors to use and support your distro, and because they have had strong word of mouth within the community.
Mandrake had that as well, but as you can tell from some of the comments here on Slashdot, that all changed with when they purchased Conectiva. I don't know if they got inflated head syndrome or what, but the quality of software and the number of upstream contributions began to cool quite a bit. Bug reports were not being followed up by Mandriva engineers and the community wasn't taking up the slack either, so bug reports would go on for months and months with no answer. Hardware support issues abounded as not incredibly smart defaults were chosen, the most famous (infamous) example is the decision to ship the distro with the main volume on mute.
The distro has had its hard core followers and commercial users who have stuck around, but as I noted in my last post, the politics behind the distro have played out into two things: Focusing on KDE alone and better release schedule. Those two things will make it easier for the community and Mandriva to support the distribution.
Finally, you have to remember that we are talking LTS for their free product. If you are a company you can purchase their "enterprise" Linux which has a different support cycle than the community version. Also, Mandriva has forty-five engineers to date, most of them are in Brazil (which by the way is very KDE heavy country.)

It certainly can't be that many if they need to drop anything but KPW as available and supported desktops...

I wouldn't call dropping everything but KDE as proof that they have very few contributors left. SuSE includes GNOME but officially supports KDE, Slackware dropped GNOME long time ago and doesn't include them at all. GNOME 2 was tricky to build and maintain. GNOME 3 is in, "I don't even know" land. GNOME with all of its dependencies, vast array of configuration options for each dependency, and magic order of build instructions for each dependency; does not tend to be easy to maintain a workable tree from source. A couple of people have built build systems that do nothing but build GNOME. Thankfully, most builders have given up on their own build systems and have gone to JHbuild.

KDE on the other hand is a pretty straight forward process to maintain a working tree. You can check it out here. Of course, that's something that the average user isn't going to do but there again we are talking about Mandriva. They have to maintain a working tree of the DE and still include their things. GNOME/KDE aren't targeting a single distro, they are making a DE for whoever. Distro have to take that and add and remove what works for their distro. To do this with GNOME is almost like putting stitches in yourself. KDE is very easy to customize distro-wise.

Red Hat and SUSE are successful because they have stuck to a single and coherent vision for their brand of Linux, because they have a good sales model that pushes support for their brand of Linux, because they have played major roles within the Linux community in general which attracts community contributors to use and support your distro, and because they have had strong word of mouth within the community.
Mandrake had that as well, but as you can tell from some of the comments here on Slashdot, that all changed with when they purchased Conectiva. I don't know if they got inflated head syndrome or what, but the quality of software and the number of upstream contributions began to cool quite a bit. Bug reports were not being followed up by Mandriva engineers and the community wasn't taking up the slack either, so bug reports would go on for months and months with no answer. Hardware support issues abounded as not incredibly smart defaults were chosen, the most famous (infamous) example is the decision to ship the distro with the main volume on mute.
The distro has had its hard core followers and commercial users who have stuck around, but as I noted in my last post, the politics behind the distro have played out into two things: Focusing on KDE alone and better release schedule. Those two things will make it easier for the community and Mandriva to support the distribution.
Finally, you have to remember that we are talking LTS for their free product. If you are a company you can purchase their "enterprise" Linux which has a different support cycle than the community version. Also, Mandriva has forty-five engineers to date, most of them are in Brazil (which by the way is very KDE heavy country.)

If you want to put items on your desktop, that's simple: use gnome-tweak-tool or set the org.gnome.desktop.background.show-desktop-icons property to true manually. The fact that this isn't enabled by default doesn't convey an arrogant attitude, but is a simple design decision that flows from the fact that Gnome3 doesn't implement a traditional desktop metaphor, and it wants to minimize visual distraction. For sure, this doesn't mean Gnome 3 is finished. It's only just taking off. There's a lot more in store in the area of 'finding and reminding' in upcoming releases, for instance. In the mean time you can try out some of the Gnome Shell Extensions to tweak the environment to your liking.

Let's say, for example, that GIMP has an extra awesome macro-recording/playback capability that makes Photoshop look like a toy in comparison. (I don't know if this is the case or not so please forgive my ignorance.)

I forgive your ignorance, but I feel compelled to respond here by saying that it's actually the other way around. Photoshop has an awesome recording/playback capability (called Actions). You just hit record, perform the steps you desire, hit stop and there you go.

With the GIMP the nearest equivalent are scripts, but you have to write them yourself using a pseudo-scripting language. There's no simple recording feature, and I wasn't going to sit and waste time learn how to code up a script for an equivalent workflow of what I was used to doing in Photoshop, because the scripting is actually very complicated, particularly if you can't find the commands to do what you want.

People have complained about this (from 2001! - https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51937), but nothing has happened because as the last post in said thread says, "we simply don't have
enough developers."

I won't bug them about it, but I won't bother with GIMP anymore because it simply lacks easy of use and important functionality. Open source doesn't always work in practice.

I think anything Gnome 3 will ever try to do will be too complicated for users... it'll never amount to anything but rubbish. Gnome 2.32.1 http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.32/ was the last good version.

I'm not terribly familiar with calendar apps, but Evolution is probably the best known choice. (It tries to be like "Microsoft Outlook" and probably would fit in rather well for people used to MSOffice)

http://library.gnome.org/users/evolution/stable/usage-calendar.html.en

There's also Mozilla calendar apps to look at. (e.g. Mozilla Sunbird, or the new calendar app that comes with Thunderbird)

I'm sorry I can't give you any specific advice.

I didn't care for GNOME shell at first but it's been growing on me as I use it more. The last remaining thing that I don't like are the huge buttons and menu headers on the windows. I think that it would be possible to hack in some changes for that but I haven't tried.

alt+` on a US keyboard layout (whatever the key above tab is for other layouts) switches between windows of the same application. There are some other good shortcuts in the GNOME shell cheat sheet .

There are some mature libraries like GObject (and Vala, Genie) that do objects for C.

You're never too old to learn. I'm in a similar situation to you: I learned a number of computer language and now, being almost 40, I don't do any programming at work anymore, I just do fancy diagrams. That doesn't prevent me from maintaining my programming skills in my spare time and learning new stuff. In the past couple of years, I've dabbled in Vala http://live.gnome.org/Vala, Python (to create scripts and desktop apps rather than web apps), re-acquainted myself with ANTLR and played with a number of other languages. If you want to have a go at an interesting variety, get yourself a copy of "Seven Languages in Seven Weeks" by Bruce Tate: http://pragprog.com/book/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks.

There are too many DE projects, so the already scarce human resources are scattered among them. The final result is the slowness in bug fixing, where not in the development itself.
Then there's a lot of focus on "user experience" which I translate with "eye candies" and "cosmetic features" and not enough focus on "real user experience" which I translate with "real life use" and "meat".
Try reading the latest release notes for KDE and GNOME (both core and apps).
A few examples.
NetworkManager GNOME's front end is quite usable. KDE's is not working properly, especially with system wide connections.
CD/DVD burning KDE's (K3B) can do almost anything you need, while GNOME's (brasero) is too basic.

Then you have a number of GTK+ (GNOME) pieces of software with no real competition in QT (KDE) and vice versa, And a few which don't use either and are real leaders like Mozilla Firefox 5.
And, finally, the bloatware is spreading everywhere. It's almost impossible to run KDE without running MySQL at the same time (bacause of the Akonadi PIM)!

In the end, XFCE still needs bits from GNOME for full functionality. LXDE and friends are either too embryonal or are actually toys.
The same seems to happen with Linux distributuions.
The only thing to fear is that the whole Linux world will be exiled to servers and not spread on desktops and portables, where the DE is among the main components.
DE developers, unite!

There are too many DE projects, so the already scarce human resources are scattered among them. The final result is the slowness in bug fixing, where not in the development itself.
Then there's a lot of focus on "user experience" which I translate with "eye candies" and "cosmetic features" and not enough focus on "real user experience" which I translate with "real life use" and "meat".
Try reading the latest release notes for KDE and GNOME (both core and apps).
A few examples.
NetworkManager GNOME's front end is quite usable. KDE's is not working properly, especially with system wide connections.
CD/DVD burning KDE's (K3B) can do almost anything you need, while GNOME's (brasero) is too basic.

Then you have a number of GTK+ (GNOME) pieces of software with no real competition in QT (KDE) and vice versa, And a few which don't use either and are real leaders like Mozilla Firefox 5.
And, finally, the bloatware is spreading everywhere. It's almost impossible to run KDE without running MySQL at the same time (bacause of the Akonadi PIM)!

In the end, XFCE still needs bits from GNOME for full functionality. LXDE and friends are either too embryonal or are actually toys.
The same seems to happen with Linux distributuions.
The only thing to fear is that the whole Linux world will be exiled to servers and not spread on desktops and portables, where the DE is among the main components.
DE developers, unite!

The wonderfully-named GString in GLib works the same way.

The downside to this approach however is it requires some extra steps when retrieving a string from a C-based API. And of course if the external C-based library has a string handling bug, you're back to square one.

Where is Epiphany Browser in this study????

One of the nice things about Linux was that it was lean & mean, then the desktop guys trashed that reputation.

  I too would like to see more emphasis on performance for Linux desktop components. When Ubuntu started they made it a stated aim to run well on whatever hardware Dell was selling for $500. So neither third-world nor top-of-the-line. Today versus even 5 years ago a $500 Dell is a lot faster, with more RAM, and better graphics hardware. Why hamstring the OS experience of Ubuntu or Fedora to not take advantage of all this? There are other distros that focus on running well on special-needs hardware, without the "bloat" of GNOME etc.

I have only love for GNOME, but it is interesting to consider whether the resistance to LightDM from within GNOME is a reasonable caution of dominance by Ubuntu or an inertial stop on needed improvements to the Linux desktop experience.

Your solution is desired when more than one DE is installed, but most users would only have one, in which case the menu gets needlessly cluttered.

Anyway, they came up with a way to solve it such that you'll see "System Settings" for KDE settings in KDE, but "KDE System Settings" everywhere else. Whether GNOME will do the same for their app is yet to be seen (somehow I doubt it).

That is precisely how they decided to solve it, to everyone's satisfaction. Nothing to see here anymore, move along.

That is precisely how they decided to solve it, to everyone's satisfaction. Nothing to see here anymore, move along.