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GNOME 3.4 Released
supersloshy writes "The popular GNOME desktop environment has just announced the release of version 3.4. User-facing updates include, among others, a new look for many GNOME applications, smooth scrolling support in GTK, integrated document search in GNOME Shell, a new dynamic background, improved accessibility configuration options, new high-contrast icons, and more documentation. Developer-facing improvements include the release of GTK+ 3.4 and updates to standard GNOME libraries as part of the latest GNOME Developer Platform."
What's to flame? GNOME 3 was good, now it's better
<runs and hides>
-- no sig today
Yet another new look for no apparent reason. (shrug). I guess it ain't so bad. I'll adjust. Or just keep using Lightweight ubuntu/LXDE instead.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
The look isn't any departure. From what I see on the screens it is similar to 3.3, 3.2, 3.1. And the things that did change i personally like. search bar in overview mode has much better visibility this way and the transparent buttons also seem to be more effective. The other optical changes seem quite minute so I hope they also worked on some bug squashing and didn't just wax poetic about the illustration the whole time...
-- no sig today
"Epiphany, the GNOME web browser, has been renamed Web. "
Ok. Now that I learned what Epiphany is, it changes. Not that the original name meant anything useful, but Web is even worse: too general.
My problems with Gnome 3:
-Extensions are a very awkward approach to what should be simple config changes. For example, there are two hotcorners by default, upper-left and lower-right. Rather than offering a straightforward configuration to disable it, you have to dig through extensions and find either the extension to disable upper-left, the different one to do lower-right, or the third one that disables both. This accumulates quite atrociously with all the settings.
-Because of the extensions being particularly invasive and pretty much required, the 'oh no' screen is easy to hit.
-In the event of an 'oh no' screen, gnome shell does not care that your apps are still running and could conceivably be used if gnome-shell would just let you restart without logout. It just says 'screw you, log out and kill all your applications'. I've tried starting metacity and it will run, but I can't get rid of the 'on-top' oh no screen.
-No window title search, like has been in Compiz scale and KDE for a very long time. Very hostile to large window count scenarios.
-No way to show all windows belonging to an application in activities view exclusive of other windows
-The application button is sloppy-focus unfriendly
What I like about gnome 3:
-Hot-plugged multi-display is handled pretty well (one of my biggest reasons to lean toward gnome away from KDE, less work when I dock my laptop).
-I actually do like the new alt-tab,alt-above-tab. Having two tiers helps that be almost useful (had given up on alt-tab as unscalable without this)
-Nominally having all task switching/launch elements hidden, but taking over the full screen when you want to switch or launch applications. Keeps my workspace cleaner and doesn't limit the real estate used to facilitate task switching/launching to some small corner of the screen when it is the only thing I am thinking about while that is happening.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
It's just like Lion, only different.
(Actually, with the right extensions, and Docky? I quite like Gnome 3.)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It added two more desktop environments to the linux world: Mate (a fork of Gnome 2 http://mate-desktop.org/ ) and Cinnamon (a fork of Gnome 3 http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/ ). These new alternatives to Gnome 3 don't get the attention that they deserve.....
I think it's time for Gnome to have a feature and UI freeze, for perhaps a year or two, and concentrate on fixing bugs in all the various subsystems. Every new release focuses on new features, but there are numerous bugs in Gnome from five or more years ago!
Take Apple as an example. Their UI has undergone little change since OS 10.4 (minor tweaks excluded) and they have concentrated on improving the underlying stuff. This could be a methodology that Gnome might take to heart.
Instead, the Gnome developers and design team will continue to sparkle a phone / tablet friendly UI on top of a desktop system, with the unrealistic goal of making legacy software work on a touch UI with a simple recompile. Sally buggers.
Comice OS - a distro of Linux - took GNOME 3.2, and made it look exactly like OS-X. I'd think it's not difficult to tweak it so that it looks like Lion.
Actually, with the right extensions, and Docky? I quite like Gnome 3.
Are you using multiple monitors? If so, which extensions made the difference for you? I ask this because I tried Gnome 3 and gave up on it due to its nastiness towards multiple monitors. All of our PCs at home are now on xfce due to the apparent nonexistence of sane Gnome options.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
This is great news! Gnome 3 is certainly surpassing Windows 8 now. If only they could implement all that "log in with your web account" stuff like Windows 8 does, it will be awesome!
For my tablet.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Does the GNOME3 team have any plans to make their DE run on Wayland?
No. That would result in such an accumulation of suck in one place that the universe would implode.
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?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Name ONE! I can't think of any. I can think of one that uses KDE's Active Plasma - the Spark.
Cinnamon is not a nice compromise. It is simply great. Its a way of accessing everything that is great about Gnome3 without any of the short term regressions.
My graduate students and I happily live in blissful ignorance of all this, running GNOME 2 under Ubuntu LTS (long term support) 10.04. I am able to configure my entire desktop without any need for downloading extensions. I have been able to go for a long time without a reinstall; this wonderful stable setup was an LTS to LTS upgrade from Hardy.
Now 10.04 is not going to be supported forever. I am greatly looking forward to flushing all my hard-won knowledge of this desktop down the drain and spending time looking on line for this-or-that extension that will enable us to maintain the smooth workflow we have had so far. Indeed who am I to question to the wave of progress in GUI engineering. I bow down to my software engineer overlords who will enlighten me with the flaws in my current workflow and who will teach me to use my time in more efficient ways. I am grateful to you, GNOME 3 dev team, for this bountiful treasure of GUI improvement that awaits me in the near future.
(Mate) looks like a dead-end. I'm sticking with xfce. Those guys should, too. It will probably be easier to do what they want with that base instead of the Gnome 2 base
Using cinnamon http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/ its a step forward from Gnome 2 without the regressions.
The other alternative was to start fixing Gnome 2's numerous bugs, and where's the fun in that?
Yeah, why fix bugs we know when we can go write a whole bunch of NEW ones!
Easy answer to this one - are you willing to pay premium prices for an Airbook, or any other Mac? If not, you could buy OS-X and try installing it on a normal PC, but you'd be on your own. OTOH, there is a Linux distro called Comice OS which has the Mac look & feel, so if you wanted a Mac but were on a budget, it would make pretty good sense to get this distro on one's laptop. Unless of course one thought it was too much of a hassle, and more worthwhile sinking the extra cash on a Mac
KDE is beautiful, but buggy:
It won't play videos over an smb:// connection. VLC simply throws an error.
How is VLC supposed to play videos over KIO slaves when VLC is a pure Qt application that does not support KIO?
I don't know the answer to this question. As a user (and not a KDE/QT developer), all I know is that VLC will do this in Windows and in GNOME. The fact that VLC (as with several other applications like XMMS) will not stream in KDE seems to (apparently to the user) be a problem with KDE and not the various applications themselves.
Well you would be wrong in that assumption, and frankly I'm disappointed that someone with a UID as low as yours would be unable to track down the actual problem; a bug in VLC, which is already fixed.
http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/6158