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GNOME 3.4 Preview
A couple of days ago, GNOME released the first beta of version 3.4. Designer Allan Day has posted a tour of the major interface changes. Some of them seem good (everything looks shiny and clean), but some of them seem questionable. The big thing to take from this release cycle appears to be improvements to the underlying technology that might help other window managers take advantage of the GNOME 3 infrastructure (leading to a world where hackers, tablet users, and grandma can all get along).
Any time now.
Can't say I'm happy about the global application menu that they've half-inched from OS X. It's one of the annoyingly unintuitive aspects of the OS X interface, and I'm disappointed to see it here. The other changes look sensible though.
Thanks for all the hard work, but Ubuntu will just ruin it, because they have some crappy new interface chages they been working on and they insist that it be used instead of your efforts
GNOME 3 is the first desktop I've used in a long time that actually tries to do something fundamentally different and better, and, you know what? They've more or less succeeded. I'm glad to see the open source community actually try something different, interesting, and better.
Yes, GNOME 3 is wildly different from the traditional WIMP interface, but once I got used to it, I really think it's the best desktop experience I've had since my NeXTstation days.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
All the screenshots show tiny text with gigantic margins around it. Sure it may be pretty, but for people who have to use the interface all day long, couldn't they have chosen something easier on the eyes?
Sorry people I don't understand all the bashing on Ubuntu. I been using since 2001 linux desktop. Red Had, Mandrake/Mandriva, Debian, Mint, Ubuntu.
I first thought Unity was a big problem, certainly after using it and reading all the bad comments.
Well guess what since I use 11.10 I think the new Ubuntu interface makes me super productive. It is actualy great. I don't know what you guys see in the old interface but unity is far more productive. I work about 10 hours per in it and very happy about it. Yes it can improve a little bit.
I think we have here a case of people having difficulty with change. It says to me we getting an old user base. Also it great that a guy like Mark Shuttleworth has vision and sticks his neck out, takes risk in doing what he believes in. Give it some credit for this.
Just try the new interface for 2 weeks. I also used gnome 3 and this also looked very good. So please look at the positive side of things. And what people are doing for you...
In fact, it is shiny and suited to some of my use cases, but in other cases something more like old GNOME, XFCE or KDE works better. I think the big problem with GNOME 3 has been more that it basically abandoned the most popular desktop environment in Linux (and the break was much bigger tha even KDE 4's), and suddenly there was nothing that exactly fitted the niche. Maybe Cinamon or MATE will fill it, but I think a little dismay is understandable. Personally, I ended up going back to KDE 4.8, which seems to have *finaly* matured (although the whole Akonadi thing is still a little buggy). Still, GNOME 3's a nice UI(and yes, Unity's ok too), and they've squashed a lot more bugs in a lot less time than KDE 4.
I really really wish the Gnome control panel had an advanced settings pane built in, instead of having to download and install gnome tweak tool. Every version of Windows, OSX, OS9, just about every thing else out there let the user change the UI appearance, why has this been removed and relegated to a third party application in Gnome.
I like Gnome 3, nice design, easy to extend via JS, it just desperately needs a BUILT IN appearance customization pane.
No, but luckily they've decided that everyone who thinks it's bad is just not being logical, so they did a perfect job in their own minds.
I haven't actually used the Gnome Shell yet - I don't want to upgrade my machines to Debian Testing, and the one time I tried to run it in QEMU it refused to even try to run the shell and just used the fallback mode. But from the screenshots there seems to be lots and lots of empty space around every bit of information, with every menu entry or filename floating in a sea of emptiness. Why all that waste? Isn't that a bit counterintiutive for an UI that is designed to work with small screens like "tablets"?
And there was me thinking Xwin was just a graphics drawing subsystem , but no , according to Mr A. Coward its got a GUI built in! Who knew?
but some of them seem questionable
I know that it's considered traditional here on Slashdot to rant on GNOME 3 and how "awful" some people think it is, but can we at least keep that in the comments section? The article summaries should just say what's new, not whether or not you like the changes. I'm sick of hearing things like "maybe it's time to move to KDE for me" or "when will the GNOME developers listen to the community?" or similar things in article summaries here on Slashdot. Unless there's someone you're quoting who says that, please keep your comments in the comments section.
Anyway I'm really looking forward to GNOME 3.4! I'm really enjoying 3.2 on my desktop and I might just put it on my netbook too with this new update. The only real problems I've ever had with it are a couple problems with the notification area, to be honest. If they could improve that then I'd be willing to give it my full recommendation to nearly anybody... Well, excluding the people who like to really customize their UIs. I've grown past that and I'll just try to use what I'm given now, and this is honestly making it really easy for me instead of being really frustrating.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Does anyone else have problems with 3rd party apps looking like crap in these new desktop environments? I tried Unity, and I think the latest GNOME I messed around with with 3.2 Things like Netbeans and Eclipse just didn't seem to fit and looked and acted awkward. The Unity sidebar was clumsy, and the unified menu in GNOME didn't work right. I always end up going back to GNOME 2.
It would be nice to feel like I'm not stuck on a Windows 95 based desktop, especially since everything seems to be going forward with these new ideas. But it all seems so clumsy compared with what Apple and Microsoft are doing with their interfaces.
And when can I get wobbly windows back on GNOME3?
Too much whitespace.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Did they remove the suck?
Nah, just replaced it with BLOW.
Actually, it appears to be the final nail in the coffin as far as my love-hate relationship with Gnome goes. Yup, I tried it like everyone said and after heavy configuration 3.2 kind of works so-so for me if I hold my nose. I was hoping it would get better with a few more extensions or through cinnamon. Now this. I use sloppy mouse focus as a work-related feature in my image processing work. To lose a valuable work related feature just to get a serial-number filed off OS X clone desktop gets me off this train for good.
It now raises two other questions:
Is gnome software going to work outside of gnome if it looks for this top bar to place a menu all the time? If not, too bad for open source in general.
Is cinnamon going to be able to work around this? Obviously their alternate top menu bar will have some problems.
(leading to a world where hackers, tablet users, and grandma can all get along).
And that's the problem. When I'm on a tablet, I want a tablet interface. When I'm on a desktop, I want a DESKTOP interface.
Stop trying to make one interface to rule them all. When I can use a keyboard and mouse on a tablet, I'll consider having a desktop interface. Until then, KEEP THEM SEPARATE!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Will it suck^H^H^H blend?
No, but luckily they've decided that everyone who thinks it's bad is just not being logical, so they did a perfect job in their own minds.
Or they decided to not pay any attention to people who aren't their target audience.
The only interface change I saw mentioned in the article was provisioning for a top-of-screen style menu bar.
Everything else is tweaking widgets and pickers, not adding functionality or new features.
It's great that they're taking the time to polish and tweak the UI, but I didn't see a single thing mentioned that would be worth the hassle of an upgrade unless it were automatically done by my distro's update service.
i.e. If I had to work to install the upgrade, like rolling my own build, I wouldn't bother.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I've heard complaints from the time gnome3 was released that it broke the traditional GUI model, and the changes get in the way of the user. It baffles me where these criticisms are coming from; it took me 5 minutes to configure gnome 3 so that it behaved exactly like my gnome2 interface did. Multiple windows, menus, configuring panels etc are all supported out of the box.
Now with five toes!!
Or they decided to not pay any attention to people who aren't their target audience.
Yeah, life's much easier if you ignore anything the users say until they stop using your software.
As far as clones, my local Cult of Apple members spent a lot of time teasing me by placing the Gnome 3 "System Settings" panel side by side with the OS X "System Preferences" panel. I certainly could not defend against the assertion that that feature at least was a wholesale ripoff. Perhaps you could have done better. The categories are the same, the icons look the same, only difference in the end is that the OS X panel seems to offer more options for customization. If you're keeping score I wouldn't count that as a win for Gnome either....
It does reinforce my initial impression after reading about Gnome 3.4 that after trying to adapt to 3.2 has resulted in nothing more than a massive waste of time I could have otherwise spent being productive had I jumped ship immediately upon the first performance hits. The "one task at a time" idea makes me feel like I am performing surgery with ski-gloves on when doing image processing where you are constantly flipping between an image window and menus/terminals which manipulate it. On a 30" monitor I have been fighting how silly it seems that a terminal dragged too far up becomes a 30" wide terminal. It feels unnatural to have to check the motion of the terminal and drop it several tenths of an inch from the top bar, wasting as much space as I was supposed to be saving. I guess maybe it's supposed to be fun -- goof it up and it's just like the guy's nose buzzing in Operation. I used to be able to balance my thoughts using the desktop as a way to keep an overview of my various tasks in minimized windows or iconified desktop switchers (which to me functioned kind of like a heads-up-display) but in the new Gnome, out of sight is out of mind without hands on the keyboard. I tried, with an open mind, to get with the program on the advice of Gnome advocates and out of a loyalty to Fedora which I've used since RedHat 4. But after seven months it still doesn't feel right --it's awkward and keeps me from getting things done.
Now the user experience demands that applications start placing the menu on the top bar? I guess if you run one application at a time that's a strength but I don't nor can I. I see people worried about how sloppy focus pays a penalty for this happening and I believe you've just told me that this concern is a price you're willing to pay for a user experience. In essence this is a big warning that I will end up rewriting code if I wanted to stay with gnome. I was paid to write the code, I am most certainly not going to be paid to rewrite it. I am currently paid to produce with it.
YMMV obviously, but it's a warning I cannot ignore about what Gnome's future will mean for my work...
"The big thing to take from this recycle bin appears to be improvements to the underlying technology that might help other window managers take advantage of the GNOME 3 infrastructure"
Huh? That was radically unexpected.
Is that the goal?
Will it ever run on real operating systems like FreeBSD or only on Linux?
This is a shoutout to all the KDE developers. All you have to do to win is DO NOT SCREW UP. Don't change KDE radically. Just keep is slow and steady. I had to switch from Gnome 3 to KDE, and I like KDE. Many will be abandoning Gnome 3 in the months to come. KDE is fine just like it is. All you have to do is not screw it up! That's it. Just don't mess up the user interface like Gnome, Unity, etc. Don't make KDE look like a tablet, Mac, Windows 8, etc. Just keep it the same. Don't screw it up, like I said already.
Like many out there, I'm surviving the recent GNOME "upgrades" by running fallback mode which mimics GNOME 2.x. That's the only means to maintain sanity and a semblance of productivity. Going at this rate, keep an eye for a GNOME branded one-button mouse, because right-click is for pussies.
Is there a way to get the top bar to be at the bottom of the screen? I could not work out how to do that with the latest versions of Ubuntu, so I stopped using it.
Please hold your breath while I find the time to figure out your new stuff.
I tried on four or five systems to get gnome fallback mode to work without success (the bar never worked in a similar enough way) so eventually had to roll them back to an earlier gnome or a different window manager entirely (eg. KDE + Compiz to make it act like the previous gnome). If all else fails you can fallback to twm, but that's a pretty long fall :)
On my home system with fedora 15 or 16 (not sure when I tried it) gnome wouldn't even start at all from a fresh install. I couldn't be bothered working around what either fedora or gnome broke so just run E17 instead. It gives you the old gnome menu structure from a mouse click on the desktop instead of having to move all the way to a "start" menu (although you can have that as well if you like).
And yet there's still no minimize button.
What is the sound of one user clicking?
Have they fixed so it's easier to disable the static workspace on the non-main screen if you have multiple screens?
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
Gnome - Fisher Price inspired shit for drooling idiots.
'Tractor' Barry.
The entire Gnome project is one giant Microsoft funded troll designed to cripple the Linux desktop. Seriously. Do some research into who's running the project. Follow the money.
Why else would they keep failing to provide basic functionality ? why else would they keep arbitrarily changing things around instead of fixing bugs ? Why else would they make the whole thing so hard to customise ?
Gnome is designed to destroy the Linux desktop experience and prevent Linux takeup in the domestic market. And it's doing quite well at it.