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GNOME 3.0 Delayed Until March 2011

Posted by timothy on from the so-little-time-until-2012 dept.

Julie188 writes "GNOME 3.0 was scheduled to be released in September but during the developers conference, GUADEC 2010 in Den Haag, the organization had to face facts: the much ballyhooed GNOME Shell really wasn't ready. The Shell is supposed to bring 'a whole new user experience to the desktop.' So now, in September, what users will see is GNOME 2.32, distributed as a new stable release. Next target date for 3.0: March 2011."

20 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Miguel is ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...and his boyfriend is pissed about where he got it from!

  2. Smart by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Better than releasing the Gnome equivalent of KDE4.

    1. Re:Smart by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Better than releasing the Gnome equivalent of KDE4.

      ...unless it ends up as the Gnome equivalent of Vista - late and not what anyone wants.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    2. Re:Smart by jadrian · · Score: 5, Informative

      They wish they had something even remotely close to KDE 4.0. All they have is a new desktop shell.

    3. Re:Smart by akanouras · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Devil's advocate here - two things they have over KDE are:

      1. Telepathy
      2. gvfs-fuse

      Apart from these two, I'd prefer they took the HIG and the other design principles and built a new GNOME over KDElibs.

    4. Re:Smart by diegocg · · Score: 4, Informative

      Telepathy

      Kopete is being ported to work on top of Telephaty

    5. Re:Smart by the_womble · · Score: 4, Informative

      gvfs-fuse

      For what I want to do (mount remote file systems) KIO works better.

  3. Not a huge loss... by Sheetrock · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I like the looks of the new interface, but am rather concerned it might put people off by being too different from Windows.

    I've been playing around with soft lighting in the GIMP, and I think one innovation I'd like to see come up (in X-windows or wherever) would be to allow users to "tint" the whole desktop with a particular color scheme and pattern... something that can hit the windows and wallpaper evenly not unlike the sun is currently hitting my monitor, only not so bright, blurry and distracting.

    Think looking at a monitor with the faint reflection of light hitting rippling water... ahh, soothing!

    --

    Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
    -- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.




    1. Re:Not a huge loss... by MBGMorden · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Making Linux more Windows-like is no good for usability or differentiating Linux. Gnome should move in it's own direction.

      While true, I also think that it shouldn't go in a different direction just to be "different" from Windows. Windows isn't like the anti-christ. Sure, it's got some things wrong with it from both a technically and political standpoint, but as an OS it also does many things right (as painful as that might be for many of us to admit).

      Those things that it DOES to right I have no issue with doing the same way in Gnome/Linux. Afterall, the whole POINT of OSS is sharing ideas and avoiding reinvention of the wheel. We can't do that with Windows' code, but we most assuredly can do it with good UI elements (same with UI elements from MacOS). If what they're doing works, then our own direction should be the same way they're going.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    2. Re:Not a huge loss... by LWATCDR · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How about this.
      I want an UI that isn't totally different from Windows, Gnome, and OS/X?

      Frankly I am begining to feel that OSs are getting to much eye candy at the expense of usability.
      What I want from an OS is really simple.
      Fast
      Reliable
      Launches applications
      Manages files
      Handles IO.

      Wall paper is nice and attractive icons are also nice.
      Clean readable fonts is a must.

      Oh and use the CTRL and ALT keys and not some stupid Windows or Apple key to do stuff. If you start using a stinking TUX key for commands like copy and paste I may have to hurt people!

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  4. Learn Lessons From KDE4 by SlashdotOgre · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I truly hope the Gnome folks observed the KDE4 fiasco and learned some good lessons. They really need to make sure the product they release is stable and doesn't include significant feature regressions (although knowing Gnome, they'll probably call them usability enhancements...). There's certain types of software that can be unstable, and a desktop environment isn't one of them. I'm very much in favor of them holding off as long as it takes.

    --
    Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
    1. Re:Learn Lessons From KDE4 by SlashdotOgre · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually, I stick by my statement, "as long as it takes," because:
          a) It's an open source effort and if I want to use it, even though they haven't officially released it, I can do it any time I want. In fact I have already tried it using the Gentoo Gnome overlay, and I do agree it's not ready.
          b) They're continuing to work on Gnome 2.XX which is actually my primary desktop. This is very different than the KDE4 situation which basically caused the excellent KDE 3.X DE to be unsupported.

      Now I do agree that repeated product delays are not a good sign (although I wouldn't go so far as to necessarily call it a, "sign of ineptness or a demonstration of gross incompetence"). Fortunately with open source software, I can determine for myself when a product is ready for my use regardless of an official release. There may be consequences with that choice (e.g. a redesign causes a significant break or lack support), but it's still my choice.

      --
      Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
  5. New GNOME Shell design by supersloshy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Another reason they're pushing GNOME 3 back is that Shell's design isn't quite usable yet. I would know because I frequently use daily builds of GNOME Shell for testing purposes. I mean, look at it. It's so... blah and thrown-together. The design team is working on the design, and the final design will look much different. If you clone the gnome-shell-design git repository, you'll get the most current mockups. Here's a link to those of you unable to use git including the latest mockups as of today. These mockups look amazing and make the shell much easier on the eyes as well as usable. Ever since they announced this new design, I've been looking forward to it much more than I already have.

    --
    "Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
    1. Re:New GNOME Shell design by MBGMorden · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Totally agree. It's like they all got together and said "Alright guys. People think Gnome is boring. Lets do something REVOLUTIONARY!!!!!". And they then set off to make something that was as "different" as they could. Not useable, not actually "revolutionary" - just different. Personally, I have no qualms with using an old desktop metaphor if it works well, and the current one does. Refine what works - don't topple the whole thing just to try to build a better one.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  6. What about GNOME 3? by assertation · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I haven't kept up on it. What will be special about GNOME 3, particularly from an end user's perspective?

    1. Re:What about GNOME 3? by Beelzebud · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Using a marketing slogan like "it just works" doesn't describe anything about the new features Gnome 3 has... What is it with Mac users and their eagerness to repeat ad slogans over and over again?

  7. Probably a good thing by MBGMorden · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm a pretty dedicated Gnome user, but I'll admit that the new shell isn't something I'm looking forward to. It's too non-traditional IMHO. Some basic designs have evolved in the computer UI world because they work very well, and this seems to be trying to shake things up for the sake of being different.

    IMHO, the current Gnome UI with the taskbar replaced with a dock (I use Docky for this) is nearly perfect from a useability standpoint. Rather than major UI shakeups, what I want is polishing work. Smooth out the eye candy. Font rendering. Better artwork on default themes and icons. Performance tweaks. More work on specific apps.

    All in all, the BASIC system is is perfect. Now's not the time to be changing it. Focus on the little things.

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    1. Re:Probably a good thing by MBGMorden · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Think about it this way - does it really matter where things go specifically, so long as you can get there easily? Do I really care that I can find and open a picture at ~/Documents/Pictures/2010/07/28 in seven double-clicks and nearly as many context changes, or do I care that I can go to "Pictures"->"Sort by date"->double-click on today's photo in four mouse-clicks and get a more holistic view of what's on my machine at a given moment? Do I care that I can find some music at ~/Documents/Music/Artist/Album/trackname.ogg, or would I rather just be able to "Play all songs in album Foo by artist Bar"?

      What you seem to be describing is a meta-data based filesystem. Believe me, I have NO issue with that. The filesystem itself I see as outdated. HOWEVER, that's not what Gnome will be acheiving with this. They're shaking up the desktop metaphor, and needlessly IMHO.

      I mean, seriously, look at this:

      http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/GNOME_Shell.png

      Do you realize how much of that screen is wasted by unneeded UI clutter? And none of it is really doing some great revolution in the way we store or perceive our data. It's just goofing around and shaking things up.

      As to your statement about the different between the way we perceive information on the net vs locally, I've always viewed that more as a side effect of the limitation of HTML pages. I know that personally, I can typically find something much faster, and have it presented in a cleaner fashion, if it's on my local system vs a web page. Granted, I like the centralized storage options (hence, I do use Gmail), but that goes but so far.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  8. Re:Havoc Pennington? by pavon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you didn't like the UI simplification that occurred in GNOME 2.0, you will positively hate the new Gnome Shell that is being introduced in GNOME 3.0. Just stick with XFCE.

  9. Re:Havoc Pennington? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    He is one of the main programmers of gnome-shell.

    Where did you get this from and who the hell modded you Informative?

    The top 10 contributors to gnome-shell since last years GUADEC was presented in the talk this year. It certainly didn't include Havoc.
    If anyone would even bother to look at http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell/log/ they would realize not a single commit has been made with Havocs name on it.

    What's a "main programmer" anyway?

    Oh well, why bother.... I'm just feeling sorry for people who thinks anything written on slashdot is even remotely true... this article certainly drew alot of crappy comments.