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GNOME 3.2 Released
supersloshy writes "Today marks the release of the latest edition of the GNOME Desktop for Linux-based operating systems. There are numerous fixes and improvements in this release such as smaller title bars (for small screens), the integration of GNOME Contacts and GNOME Documents for easy data management, web application integration, many more configurable settings, and other updates such as a more unified appearance and better chat integration."
Quick search reveals an 8 minute overview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnxvRr-3MSA
Thought it might come in handy; TFA only contains a few shots.
I think overall it looks better, it's great. But there is still something about the icons that needs to be improved. Maybe too colorful? The shape? It becomes more apparent when compared to an OSX desktop (or other simpler desktops, if you like that kind of style)
And, of course, user-defined window manager. Seriously, how do those people expect anyone to use this?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Have there been any fixes to how it handles multiple desktop setups? I've been using Gnome 3 for a while and applications like libreOffice still show the splash screen split across both, and the second monitor limited to a 'sticky' surface common to every desktop is irritating.
It would be really nice if the second desktop darkened like the primary in the overview, displayed a similar thumbnail view as the primary but on the left side (when the secondary monitor is on the right it would look cool, and when its on the right it wouldn't be pixels away from the app launcher), and if the 'sticky' functionality was preserved with a second button displayed as an overlay like the close button is.
Last I heard, configurable settings were bad -- they scare, confuse, and intimidate users, and they open the possibility that someone might choose to configure their desktop wrong, which is antithetical to the GNOME way.
Seriously, is this a new direction? Did they make a public announcement or something? Or is this just a one-time concession to reduce the GNOME 3 backlash, perhaps as an experiment so 3.4 can replace all the new options with a selector amongst the most popular configuration for each of desktop|netbook|tablet?
I don't get this. Why was work and detailing involved in such a feature? Was I able to login before? Yes. Am I still able to login? Hope so, unless they botched something.
3 years ago, I had to patch and rebuild GDM to allow fingerprint authentication, with code from an IBM developer (awfully sorry for not remembering the name). Today - do I have fingerprint by default? Hell no, but it is "integrated with the rest of the user experience". Quite disappointing.
Apple didn't get ahead by being a better desktop though, they've got ahead through "synergy"/halo effect with iPod/iPhone/iTunes. So much so that my flatmate who loves his iDevices has been considering buying an iMac despite not wanting to touch any other OS than Windows in the past..
which is totally what she said
Last I heard, configurable settings were bad
Someone lied to you or you misheard. Go read the original article by Havoc Pennington.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
The icons are ugly and the styles never seem to get there. The layout does though.
KDE has the same issue. So many things done right, but missing the polish.
The two should really merge and create a desktop that doesn't suck. KDE 4.x is buggy, and mediocre at best. Gnome 3 is, from what I have experienced, trying to hard. Both rip off OSX instead of ripping off KDE 3.5 and Gnome 2x.
http://fluxbox.org/
If you need a windows replacement, that looks exactly like and functions exactly like windows, you can go to...
a. the store
b. the piratebay
Seriously, fluxbox has everything under right click, and it's easily and fully customizable, and it's pretty lightweight, those are my big 2 arguments for it, besides its had transparency for like a decade lol.
I wonder how it works with a laptop whose lid is closed an external monitor is attached? With both Fedora and Ubuntu, I find the most recent version still uses the laptop's monitor to show all the controls and panels. I can mirror the display but then my 24 in monitor is running in 1024 x 768. Trying to disable the built-in monitor just locks everything up.
I'd use an older "stable" version, but they don't support the built-in video card of the Intel i7 very well (software render only).
I'd much rather they focus on working with my hardware than working with my chat programs.
Oh wait! this is linux...
Linus said that Gnome 3 sucks and he's switching to a sane UI. So don't blame him.
...I quite liked where the interface was going. It reminded me very much of my experience with WebOS - just start typing for whatever you want. Get rid of all of the stupid buttons you don't really need. It is a big paradigm change, but it seems they actually thought through it.
Yeah, I like where it's supposedly going, but that's nothing new and it's not nearly there yet.
My Gnome 2 desktop has worked like that for years thanks to applications like Gnome Do. Gnome 3 is nowhere near Gnome Do in ease of use or features. Especially not in ease of use since it doesn't learn which applications I open the most. With Gnome Do I can just hit Super T and get a terminal running. Someone who doesn't use the terminal might hit Super T and get the text editor. In Gnome 3 the application that opens when you type Super T is set in stone.
Gnome 3 seems to me like a promising tech demo that needs a couple of more years of work before it's ready for general use.
"Just start typing for whatever you want?"
That's what I have been doing in my little terminal window for 15 years already with tab completion.
It pretty much seems Gnome is trying to combine the shortfalls from the command line with the shortfalls of the GUI. Make a GUI that is supposedly "optimized for touch" and then you have to "type" to get to stuff?
Good thing I already fled to LXDE.
Like a working desktop pager?
Well, that's what Linus says about gnome 3 anyway.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
So don't blame him.
I didn't know Torvalds was on the gnome development team.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
The wow factor is nice, but I still haven't seen anything that makes want to switch over.
Mac OS X has the most terrible UI in the world.
The GNOME 2.x UI is pretty decent though.
GNOME 3 looks like GNOME for tablets.
Gnome 3.0 does not even start up on most systems with nVidia-based graphics cards. I've been trying to get it started to no avail. Nobody seems to know or care about the problem. I've had to switch to xfce.
Makes no sense to me; KDE4.x works fine, so does Gnome 2.x. X itself has no problem either for 2D, 3D or sound. Hope they have fixed this in 3.2.
I'm running GNOME 3 on ubuntu using the ppa and it feels very stable. However the lack of a taskbar is annoying (I had to install one).
null
Its a bait and switch approach. They did it during the 1.x era and then again during the 2.x era.
There is not going to be a 3rd time. Ditch gnome. The whole project has jumped the shark, all they they care about are non existant users.
GNOME is the only major Linux desktop for which all of the following points are true.
o it's developed entirely in the open without a single corporate overlord
o it's trying out bleeding-edge design concepts instead of rehashing old interfaces and patterns
o it's successfully targeting non-geek users AND proving quite usable for technical users.
KDE fails the non-geek user test - it's both obtuse and verbose. XFCE is like a crappy, featureless GNOME 2/Windows mashup with a hint of SharpE. GNOME 2 is like a weird Windows/OS X mashup - functional, but nothing new there. Unity is slick and crufty at the same time (quite the feat), and its direction is dictated by Canonical. Blackbox, Fvwm et al aren't desktop environments.
All you people criticizing GNOME 3 are doing exactly what your parents did when you tried to get them to use Linux years ago - holding on to what you know, fighting change, refusing to let old habits die or to see the good in a *different* way of working.
The GNOME team is actually trying something new, and that seems rare in the open source world. With the amount of vitriol being thrown at GNOME's developers, it's not really surprising that we seem doomed to keep cloning commercial software so that we can have it for free or tweak it for our piddling little edge-case requirements.
Turn in your geek cards, old dudes, from someone who was using Linux way back in the days of Slackware 4.
someone might choose to configure their desktop wrong
Last I understood that's kinda the point of a *NIX system, the fact that you have so much control.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Way to miss the blatantly obvious sarcasm.
Eh... As of late the ACs have seemed to be even more stupid than usual so I thought OP was serious...
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Someone lied to you or you misheard. Go read the original article by Havoc Pennington.
You don't read what someone writes, you look at their actions. The behaviour of the Gnome project over the years says otherwise.
The new shell is absolutely fantastic. The flow between the apps and tasks is incredibly smooth. It's really too bad that Ubuntu didn't see the potential and decided to go their own way. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for competition but it would be really nice to see Ubuntu join the GNOME shell effort. Unity is just getting in the way when it's trying to get out of the way ironically. If you haven't tried the new GNOME shell, you're missing out on a really cool experience. I haven't this happy with my desktop since I ran a very customized AfterStep about 10 years ago.
ayottesoftware.com
I'm sure there are some real advantages to using a desktop environment that I'm just not getting, so please educate me.
No problem. The advantages:
- Applications written for a DE are better integrated with each other.
- Apps written for a DE tend to use the same toolkits and work in predictable ways.
- Desktop environments tend to have collections of blessed applications. Less hunting.
- Desktop environments tend to have communities filled with like-minded people.
- DEs are installed by major Linux distros, providing a standard interface.
- Commercial support is available for some DEs.
It all comes down to convenience. Sure, I used to fuck around with Enlightenment and Blackbox and fvwm. Then one day I realized that powerful computers were cheap, and my time ought to be expensive. So I installed GNOME and never looked back.
No disrespect - you can choose whatever you want to use, or whatever your hardware can support. But you're outnumbered by people like me.
I do miss Blackbox though.
Everyone, please note that a slashdotter with a 4 digit UID likes GNOME 3.
Hey bashers, take note! :-)
I agree that it is a terrible for you and me however not for the general public. If you think about it from a typical users perspective where they don't interact much with the OS, all their programs are available at the bottom of the screen. That's very convenient for them compared to other DEs where applications are hidden within menus.
Most users simply want to use their programs for some simple basic computing and that's why OSX is in some ways a good UI for their target market. I don't think the same holds true for linux. We don't want to sacrifice ability for simplicity hence why the UIs are typically more complicated.
Still no support for screensavers (other than blank screen)? :'(
For a half hour, I just looked at this interface and it simply baffled me. I don't know what the organizing principle is supposed to be, and believe me, I don't care anymore. A half hour is all you get. I'm not saying that it's a train wreck. I'm saying that after a half an hour, I was unable to figure out how it's NOT a train wreck. I was unable to discern how these icons and windows are supposed to work together. It looks to me like gnome discarded the organizing metaphor of the desktop in favor of the details of the interface. To me, the details don't matter. If you discard the desktop metaphor, you need to have something better to take its place, or your users have every reason to scream bloody murder.
Because point and click is slow. Hell, I'd already long since switch to launchers like quicksilver on mac, and gnome-do in previous versions of gnome. Even Unity is better--super key+three letters+enter almost always gets me the right program faster than I could even move the cursor to the menu with my touchpad.
Any desktop manager that forces me to do every task the slowest possible way should be considered a failure. I use my computer to get work done, not to waste my time dragging my finger across the touchpad.
Sorry I don't see that. And the basic argument that each option comes with costs was correct.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
You're being snarky, but exactly this happened, mostly due to a change of mind caused by this year's Desktop Summit conference where the thousand Gnome and KDE core devs got themselves collectively their ass handed for not listening to their users. The chewing out was epic. Expect both desktops to have a better user experience in the near future, I hope it's not just a one-time concession. A constant reminder from the user base should help them keep their discipline.
I already switched to XFCE
If you wanna try out without waiting for official distribution releases like Ubuntu Linux 11.10 (with apt-get install gnome-shell) and Fedora 16 (full GNOME 3 desktop by default), try Fedora 16 Desktop Live CD nightly builds from here: http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/ (As currently available alpha is way behind in fixed bugs sense). Drop it on Flash USB and you are set. You can even install it on hard drive if you like what you see. Click on 'Desktop' Spin and use ISO file from Output.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
I'd suggest reading the interview with Jon McCann, who heads up GNOME3 development and who brought us the "user configuration is bad, because the user will do evil things" gnome-screensaver. Note particularly the following:
"And I think there is a lot of value to have that experience you show the world to be consistent. In GNOME2 we didn't do that particularly well because everyone's desktop was different."
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.
Gnome's been great to me. If it hadn't sucked so badly, I wouldn't have given up on Linux desktops after 13 years of trying and gotten a Mac. Thanks!
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
You're wrong, though you're better than your -1 as of now.
Have those who modded you down see the crap of windows placement in the video? Totally top left. Huuh. I though we had been over this in the last millennium. And then Forefox pops out in the centre. No idea, why we need the extra 'window' around its window?? I mean, what is is good for when you open a Firefox to have it centered with real estate margins? And then he opened the system information, and - up popped a ridiculously large grayish area with around 5 lines of information, and 98% of vide. Of course totally obfuscating the underlying Firefox and showing almost nothing.
Then it was time to stop the self-flagellation and close the YouTube video. When the Steves see this video, they'lll have an extra drink on the Gnome developers, who have shown a very gnomish stature in designing - if one may call this so - a user interface.
See, this is the misery of the Gnome developers (pun intended). They can't understand - worse: they can't accept - that different people have different concepts. I for one feel that a taskbar was the worst invention in UI-land since ... MS-DOS. So I don't want one. Point taken. But now, I want anything but Gnome. It is plain crap, though it does not have / need a taskbar. And the nail in the Gnome coffin should and will be that the developers still know exactly what I want.I have tried and Gnome 3 is about the worst taskbar-less UI that one can imagine; yes, that's just my opinion. But since they don't want to allow me to configure their interface to make it suit my needs, I have to go elsewhere; and that currently is KDE that I was able to tweak into a taskbar-less UI. It could be better, still, but at least they allow me to configure my own desktop as I so like.
Yep, the very very sad story is that while MS was stuck in panel/taskbar-land since W95, we could have developed a totally free and useful interface. Instead, we felt we had to duplicate either Windows or OSX.
I couldn't tell you, the last time I interacted with a Mac was in the late 90s.
X11 is the windowing framework. It's very low level. GDM/KDM/XDM are session managers. The session manager handles your login (note, you can log into a remote X11 display!) and starts your specified Window Manager. These are also called "sessions" and GDM/KDM/XDM should have a dropdown on the login screen somewhere to select them.
The Window Manager tells X11 what to do. At that point, the *DM is out of the way.
The "Desktop Environment" is typically considered the whole stack excluding X11. Note it is entirely possible to use GDM with KDE for instance. It's also theoretically possible to run, say, Metacity within KDE... though in practice this is not so usable or easy.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Nice piece of work in the quoting there:
Note particularly the following:
"And I think there is a lot of value to have that experience you show the world to be consistent. In GNOME2 we didn't do that particularly well because everyone's desktop was different."
Actual context:
We are also not only users of free desktops, but we are also its advocates, we are in the marketing team. Everywhere we go people look over our shoulders and say "Hey that's cool, what's that?" and then we get a chance to talk about GNOME, a chance to talk about free software. And I think there is a lot of value to have that experience you show the world to be consistent. In GNOME2 we didn't do that particularly well because everyone's desktop was different. So when people are looking at it, they don't see something that is idiosyncratic, they see you as part of a larger movement. And I think that's worth considering when customize your desktops. But that's not something we will ever prevent.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
If I wanted a GUI with hidden/broken workspaces, I'd use windows or OS X.
No worries, though I appreciate that thought!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
... to move a page per click I'll get excited. Windows still rules in that regard (I threw up in my mouth a bit saying that) - RSI sucks.