Slashdot Mirror
GNOME 3.6 To Include Major Revisions
supersloshy writes "The launch of the GNOME 3 desktop environment sparked heated debate and criticism. GNOME developers have been listening to the concerns of its users and it is rolling out several significant changes in GNOME 3.6. The message tray, often called hard to use, was made much more visible in addition to being harder to accidentally trigger. The "lock" screen can now optionally control your music player, the system volume, and display notifications so you don't have to type in a password. GNOME will also support different input sources directly instead of requiring an add-on program. Nautilus, the GNOME file browser, is also getting a major face lift with a new, more compact UI, properly working search features, a "move to" and "copy to" option as an alternative to dragging and dropping, and a new "recent files" section. These changes, among many others including improvements to system settings, will be present in GNOME 3.6 when it is released later this month. Any other additions or changes not currently implemented by the GNOME team can be easily applied with only one click at the GNOME Extensions website."
Ha! Gnome. Worst Desktop ever.
GNOME 3 users are extremely excited!
It's still GNOME3. 'Nuff said.
Over 6 releases to have them starting to listen to their user? I am out!
After a few more iterations, it'll look just like OS X.
:P
My Ubuntu box with Gnome 3 is sadly neglected - after I spent days laboriously recreating my working environment on OSX.
I use docky with Gnome 3. This makes them superficially similar. I re-built the key mappings that I live with.
We'll wait cautiously and see.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
...Microsoft's favoured bedfellow in the free software community.
Why is there no "year of Linux on the desktop"? Well, my friends, it is not because Apple are cunning this or Microsoft are abusive that. It is because no-one has yet come up with a compelling reason to deploy POS like GNOME outside the basement.
PFFFT!
(The "too little" part doesn't even matter anymore.)
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
"Now with only ONE button".
Switching to Debian 6 XFCE.
You had your chance, GNOME, and you wasted it.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The one that makes me give a shit.
This is something Ubuntu (Canonical) never learned when they introduced Unity. Their attitude, according to their Reddit AMA, was basically "Fuck our users. We know what's best for them"
the window/desktop manager I'm still using?
WindowMaker.
As I have been since 1998 or so, whenever I originally started using X on linux. It was intended as a clone of the NeXT workspace, and was for a time the official windowmaker of GNUstep. And you know what? They haven't fucked with it beyond a few minor usability improvements in 10 years. Basically the only changes were adding truetype fonts (Which helped with a few font related issues on later X servers, but otherwise hasn't added much), 'live' editable menus (previously text files that required a restart to change the right-click/f12 menu layout), and some inter-desktop fixes that came out whenever the release popped up on slashdot earlier this year.
It doesn't have a desktop shell, and finding updated wmapplets can be a hassle, but the former can be fixed by borrowing thunar from XFCE, the latter by fixing them yourself (or suc...er 'convincing' someone else to), but it'll run on any computer you have dating back to at least the pentium era (and would probably run on older if it wasn't for the 'mandatory' freetype support.)
Point being: What has gnome offered in either the 2.x or 3.x releases that made it so much better than the original versions, and did any of those features make up for it's unusable bloat on legacy systems?
I know nobody bothers to code for legacy systems anymore, unless they already were, but the point is program efficiency and usability is being reduced by wasting cycles on things that.... don't add to the apparent front-end usability! A problem that the GNOME project seems to be embracing from the wrong end wholeheartedly.
Actually they removed compact view. To say it's "more compact" is the opposite of what happened.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
...can (3.0 + 0.6) be less than 2.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Hipsters and people that sway easily to trendiness, are why computers are starting to suck. Whoever let these monkeys program needs to be drawn and quartered. "Oooh, let's take the close button, and not actually close or exit the application, let's just make it disappear but still running in the background, because users don't know what they want to do anyway." (Banshee, Pidgin, just to name a few). Let's just throw away 40+ years of HCI and ergonomics because touch screens are the new rage.
I'm glad to see GNOME finally adopt Copy To and Move To in their file manager. That was one feature which I loved in KDE and drew me away from GNOME, oh, about ten years ago. Odd it has taken them this long to include the feature, but I'm glad they finally did. The summary doesn't mention it, but have the developers finally enabled the shutdown button by default? The "press ALT to show" concept was really silly.
...and Gnome in specific.
Some rogue programmer often makes it his or her holy mission to force everybody to use the software the same way that THEY USE IT. This means that something I've used for a while might suddenly lose functionality in the name of a "bugfix". Also, these programmers almost never consult usability groups in order to figure out how peopole ACTUALLY use the software.
And yes, I realize that this is going to be -1 (troll) within a ten minutes. I do not care.
Nowhere in the post does the word performance even come up. As computers become faster, there are those of us who want to use that increased speed and power for the applications we run (whether it is video processing, video games, or just a ton of youtube tabs open in our bulky web browser of choice). Don't get me wrong, we want a desktop environment that is aesthetically pleasing and intuitive to our workflow. I just don't see why we need to keep significantly bumping up the performance cost of the desktop to get there.
Please enforce a 12 month moratorium on copying anything, absolutely anything, from Windows 8 that is not already in common usage. Do not under any circumstances tolerate or condone Windows 8 penis envy.
Why are you using Linux desktop? Windows 7 and MacOS X deliver you a premium experience without having to worry about broken shit like this.
GNOME 3.6 To Include Major Revulsions
Yup.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Why even have a lock screen if you can do things on it under the current user?
The point of a lock screen is to prevent other people from using your computer while you're away (if you're not away, then why was it locked?) Say I'm playing some music then pause and lock the computer to go do something. It sounds like another person can just walk by and resume my music and turn up the volume. Not good.
A person could also come by and max out the volume on all locked computers. What a way to troll someone. This feature lets someone physically damage the user's hearing! User keeps his/her volume low as the music is very loud or his headphones amplify the sounds. User pauses music, locks screen and gets up for a break, stupid student/co-worker/random cafe person comes by and maxs out the volume while leaving no traces, user comes back puts on headphones, and unlocks the screen. Then he un-pauses his music expecting it to be as he left it, but BAM! HAY HAY HAY, [NOW YOU HAVE HEARING DAMAGE] GOODBYE
Do people no longer think about their changes or why things are the way they were?
I've been running Vista on my computer at home for years. No GNOMEs yet, but plenty of gremlins.
I'd prefer it if it included major reversions... of all the bad ideas that have crept in over the last couple years.
Protect your browser with the Force Safe Search add-on
And I start to wonder if these are just Apple Trolls. Listen, It's easy enough to switch to KDE or XFCE. I run Mandriva 2011. I use KDE. I have my own custom KDE theme installed with rpm. It works fine. There is no reason to abandon Linux because Gnome sucks, just run whatever programs you please under XFCE or KDE if Gnome is so awful.
You are an idiot if you switch to OSX or Windows over this.
I don't care all that much if application "foo" now comes with a "bar" button, or if the "fubar menu" has the item "dingbat" in it.
I want a project that welcomes users to play with it. Something like:
"We think that most people don't need the "dingbat" item, which is why we left it out in the default, but if you need it, here's the config file and here's the man page."
not the gnome way: "noone really should use foo, so we removed it. -oh, wait - we got so much bad press, we'll put foo back. (for now)"
As a "rogue programmer who forces everybody to use the software the same way that I use it", I also have a complaint from my side of the story. Every time I make a UI change that I believe makes the software easier to use, you complain that you can't keep doing things exactly the way you have been doing. And it's true, you often can't; but the other side of this complaint is stagnation. If you are not interested in trying something new that may give you a way to do things faster and easier than you are currently doing, why are you using my new UI? It's either innovation and having to learn new things, or the stagnation of keeping things exactly as they used to be. While you're thinking about this choice, keep in mind that I'm not holding your nose here; you are free to use a multitude of alternative applications, or to keep the application version you currently have. If you dislike GNOME 3, use Xfce or whatever GNOME 2 fork suits your taste. Why are you trying to force us all to keep using the same UI you are using just because you're so used to it?
If you are not interested in trying something new that may give you a way to do things faster and easier than you are currently doing, why are you using my new UI?
Because you stopped supporting the old one.
Why it has taken so long to have 'move to' and 'copy to' implemented has always been a mystery to me. That has really been a major reason I have kept using Windows and even then you have to hack the registry to get that.
Ignoring the usability issues. Love the renaming of Nautilus to files. They need to continue on that trend
Seems like.
Support is not free. You want to keep your old ways, while I want to move on. If I am a commercial developer, I'd weigh the value of keeping you as a customer and offer you a support contract to compensate me for the work required to keep you comfortably in the past. If I am an open source developer, you are not likely to be interested in paying for my efforts, so what incentive have I to do things your way when I believe I can do things better my way? That's what forks are for. GNOME 2 has been forked and people like you who love the old interface can keep working on it. GNOME 3 in the meantime can continue trying new things that may bring about an easier and more comfortable future for users who are not already set in the ways of GNOME 2. If you want GNOME 3 developers to instead support your old ways, why not put your money where you complaints are? How much are you willing to pay for continuing GNOME2-style UI support? Nothing? Well, what did you expect for that? Slavery is not cool.
And get it over with.
I go out of my way to complicate the simple things, so that I can simplify the complicated things.
bizeso.com best in business networking
AFAIK, gnome-panel has continued to be available. Why all the complaining?
The menu bar following the app has always been a feature of the Mac OS. It's nothing to do with using one app at a time, it's to do with the muscle memory advantage of just shoving the mouse to the top of the screen regardless of which application you're using.
More specifically, it's an attempt to apply Fitts law to computer user interaction. Tog has an article on the thinking behind this.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
For some reason, you spelled "Xfce" as "KDE"...
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
these superficial changes don't fix the GNOME3 philosophy of dictating user's workflow, and needing a fucking developer to make changes that are configurable by user in sane desktops. forget the fork, get a fire extinguisher for GNOME3, it's burnt beyond salvaging in the GNOME3 dev's oven; the smoke is stinking up the desktop Linux house. Listening to the remaniing few users fixes nothing.
This line of reasoning would be easier to appreciate if GNOME 3 had been a new project, or had been built with a new namespace so as to be able to coexist with 2.x on the same system.
It seems that steps were taken to deliberately force people to choose and move, and deliberately break the older stuff.
I used to hate both but now I just love them. The major problem with Gnome 3 is a little slow at 800mhz(cool N quiet) six core but flies at 2700mhz but hopefully 3.6 fixes this. Unity is indeed faster than gnome 3. Both are great at accessing your files, folders, and programs quick. This is why microsoft dumped the old start button in favor of a pop up interface(metroUI) that is able to access files, folders, programs quick even when using the search. But, the good thing about linux is that if you hate unity and gnome you can always go back to the old classical gnome or just use the eye candy kde 4.8 or kde 4.9 distros. Than you have xfce,lxde, cinnamon.
Stop bitching and whining about unity and gnome ruining the desktop you have plenty of other interfaces.
That is an eye-opener and no mistake. I never realised Gnome's problems ran so deep. I just thought the pigs had taken over the farm and were now putting on a little lip gloss to make themselves pretty.
You have to assume that Mate has inherited all of these problems and while Unity is still as ugly as a bulldog's backside and less use than a chocolate ashtray you have to wonder if its completely rewritten core could not in fact one day be used as the basis of something both elegant and useful.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
Sing along to the tune of 'Developers, Developers. Developers!'
"Extensions, Extensions, Extensions!"
Its better every release. At least if you dont have a touch screen device KDE 4.9 is the my new old way of getting work done.
Unlike gnome which seems to regress every release. I am waiting for them to release their own version of X and Linux. .exe and .so files could be called dll i guess...
A system with integration of all components into one monolithic thing.
Like Kernel/X/DE/... in just on bin.
Also might want to start calling bins excecutable files and shotren their extensions to
You want to keep your old ways, while I want to move on. If I am a commercial developer, I'd weigh the value of keeping you as a customer and offer you a support contract to compensate me for the work required to keep you comfortably in the past.
that's, of course, your call. and vanishing confidence on any present or future shit you might roll out is logical consequence.
If I am an open source developer, you are not likely to be interested in paying for my efforts, so what incentive have I to do things your way when I believe I can do things better my way? That's what forks are for. GNOME 2 has been forked and people like you who love the old interface can keep working on it.
you just looked at the true beauty of open software. and you just explained pretty clearly why I have no interest at all in comercial closed software. if it isn't open, it just aint "software". it's more like a service you can (and will) disrupt or discontinue as you please. not interested.
GNOME 3 in the meantime can continue trying new things that may bring about an easier and more comfortable future for users who are not already set in the ways of GNOME 2. If you want GNOME 3 developers to instead support your old ways, why not put your money where you complaints are?
does not compute.
first, "gnome3 may bring about an easier and more comfortable future for users" is merely an assumption, there isn't any objective analysis showing it can do or has done so nor is there actually enough user experience at all. in spite of what you my think and all the hype, mac-osish or gnomethreeish desktops are a rare minority today. feel free to experiment, though, but before you blow the trumpet you might first check if the idea actually works and is acceptable... for anything besides tablets or casual use, that is. of course someone may like it.
second, the problem never was the existence of gnome 3, which is nothing but cool, but discontinuation of gnome2 and the fact that it was pushed on some major distros like ubuntu, forcibly replacing a metaphor which has proven productive, efficient and liked alike for decades, with some "may be cool ideas" which were unproven, poorly implemented and not even finished. it should have been an option and this dumbass move hurted both gnome and ubuntu, and also defies linux purpose in general. linux was never meant as yet another platform to shove new products down user's throats, and ubuntu was supposed to be "linux for human beings", not a "fancy linux for clueless consumers".
How much are you willing to pay for continuing GNOME2-style UI support? Nothing? Well, what did you expect for that? Slavery is not cool.
slavery? now you're acting real emo. criticism doesn't imply any demands on the gnome dev community, which no one doubts has done an impressive contribution. doesn't mean everybody has to follow any new direction they may happen to wish to take either. in fact the gnome3 turn has given momentum to other desktop projects which weren't under the spotlight, they are also developers, and have ideas too.
as for me, a long time gnome user, i have ditched gnome completely. it turns out i don't really need it since I can go along very well with some minimal window manager (there's dozen of awesome out there) and a terminal. no need for the slaves to keep maintaing gnome2 at all if they don't feel like doing so. no hard feelings, no nothing but thankyou and farewell. but i still believe they fucked up.
Linux users do not have to use Gnome. There are many other desktops to choose from.
I use Windows 7 at work. For me, getting home to my Linux system is like a taking a breath of freash air.
Any other additions or changes not currently implemented by the GNOME team can be easily applied with only one click at the GNOME Extensions website
Uhm... No! Not even for basic things that are taken for granted in normal desktop environments.
Does anyone think any of this is going to fix most people's problem with desktop linux? Shit just doesn't work. It's not as usable as any of the alternatives for most things. Most features that people use are used to with windows 7 simply aren't there. It's hard to get things to work and interoperate without breaking out a command line.
so who cares? gnome can 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0 it's ass off. It's not going to change the fact that it's not nearly as usable as windows.
I run arch, slackware, and windows 7 on my computers. I love arch for servers. I love slackware for my laptop (because arch kernel panics on installation boot up).
Windows is just usable. It just freaking works.
Gnome 3 can kiss my ass and take that bullshit desktop back to where they came from.
Will I be able to make Gnome 3.6 function as I see fit, as was the case with Gnome 2? Can I do things as simple and mundane as easily autohide the annoying top panel? At least they put it on top, where it belongs, but jeez... Gnome 3 is a major debacle, whether the Gnome team admit it or not, so hopefully 3.6 regresses in the name of progress, er, at least in the name of shit that works. And hopefully if it is back to business as usual 3.6 comes before I get too used to KDE (still not really digging it, XFCE is ugly, and Cinnamon and MATE are not yet ready for prime time), since I dropped Gnome like a rotten potato when they killed the 2.x line. Lots of alternatives that work, but I want an updated, evolving Gnome 2, while 3 is at the bottom of the list.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
In GNOME 3.4 I have to spend 2-3 seconds whenever I want to use the mouse to switch between workspaces. I usually switch back and forth between the editor, the terminal and the browser very rapidly, so this wasted time is really annoying for me.
Apart from that (and a few crashes) GNOME 3.4 works fine for me.
The strangest thing about the entrie situation is that they are bringing DLL hell to linux at about the same time MS Windows is getting rid of it. Linux and just about everything built on it was devised to avoid such a situation since day one and they have deliberately brought such a stupid problem to the platform.
All right; I dig the willingness to communicate, and am prepared to contribute my two cents.
I think you know EXACTLY why your complaint rings completely hollow to a user. Add your UI change AS AN OPTION. If it catches on, fine; that means you were right. If it doesn't, fine; that means you were WRONG. Actually, no matter what, it will catch on with SOME subset of users, and not with others, and both groups can remain happy. Everybody is happy. You are happy, those who follow your lead are happy, and those who reject your lead are happy.
Finally, with this stagnation thing. First, it won't happen if you offer changes that are optional. But far more important, where you see stagnation, others see STABILITY. Cars use the same old round steering wheel at an angle in front of the driver decade after decade. Same clutch pedal if any on the left (I THINK that's right, it's been a LONG time), same brake pedal next, and same accelerator pedal on the right. The blinker stalk is almost always on the left, down for left turn, up for right turn. Windshield wiper stalk on the right. Glove compartment almost always in exactly the same place. There is ZERO reason to EVER change any of this.
That is news. Wow. No disrespect, please keep doing that.
Its still slow as molasses and craves memory like a zombie craves brains. If i wanted something to really tax my spare cycles i would install Windows.
Had it been fast and slick i could have taken the asinine interface but when its slow and unworkable its a no go for me.
HTTP/1.1 400
I find gnome-shell to be really unreliable and freezes upon me several times a week.
fix that first please
Reckless optimism: It can only get better.
I use it everyday, and I love it. I installed it for my office (an actuarial firm with about 12 - normal - users), and everyone loves it. If people like everyone who whines about change were in charge of shit, progess would stall.
After All These Years. Still impossible to move the status bars to the side (vertically). And that was the feature that made me drop Gnome after beeing a happy user for years. I even used to ridicule KDE users. But now I'm on KDE too. And don't tell me my gripes can be fixed with extensions - no extension will give me vertical status- and tool bars. It's sad watching someone you love sink m'ore and more into the quagmire every time they move. But they won't listen and be rescued. It's like a Greek Tragedy in six acts.
Unfortunately not on my planet. Ford one way, Nissan other way. Turn wiper stalk towards on one, away on other. AND WHERE IS THE F'ing HORN GONE? Squirts self in eye while cyclist emerges from side road!
People who sell cars with the horn not in the centre of the steering should be charged with wilfully causing accidents.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I've found Lubuntu to be more than sufficient to my needs - less is more !
AccountKiller
If any Gnome developers read this discussion (probably not since they don't care about users), it's too late - I've already made the painful and difficult migration from Gnome 2 to KDE. I am not about to migrate back.
Mine too. She sounds hot.
The biggest issue I have with GNOME is some apps waste a heck of a lot of vertical space when they're maximized due to the way that there is a global bar, then an application bar, then a menu, then some toolbars and finally the actual content. It looks ugly, especially in Firefox. Chrome works a lot better in GNOME 3 than Firefox does at the moment.
Have they done anything with the fundamental functionality regressions that they introduced with GNOME 3, like proper multi-screen support? I'm not talking about a single-screen bastardization of multiple screens like nvidia twinview or xinerama but multiple discreet screens?
And I am not even talking about just making them pretty or just *more* usable (i.e. being able to define what you want on each screen in the way of panels, etc.). I am talking about just having GNOME be able to start when multiple screens are connected. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=648156
How the GNOME team can continue to fuck around with goddamned eye-candy when such fundamental functionality is broken I don't know. Well, I do know.
Hi XFCE. XFCE's support of multiple screens is simply wonderful.
XFCE even allows you to drag a window off of one workspace and onto another. GNOME has never done that. The GNOME devs need to look to the XFCE team to see how to get it all back on track.
I think you know EXACTLY why your complaint rings completely hollow to a user. Add your UI change AS AN OPTION. If it catches on, fine; that means you were right. If it doesn't, fine; that means you were WRONG. Actually, no matter what, it will catch on with SOME subset of users, and not with others, and both groups can remain happy. Everybody is happy.
Except the developers, who now have to maintain and debug additional code paths and deal with an exponentially growing configuration space. And some users who see a lot of options they have no use for, or even no idea about, as a nuisance. Every option: 1) brings in a permanent maintenance cost; 2) increases complexity of the UI. Slashdot is full of people who don't mind complexity. In this wide world, there are a lot of others who are confounded by screenfuls upon screenfuls of options. So every option should better be justified, in that it addresses an important need for a lot of users.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
The "lock" screen can now optionally control your music player, the system volume, and display notifications so you don't have to type in a password.
Oh, great. How about also adding in a function to enter commands into a terminal from the lock screen. Adding new functions to lock screens is always risk-free, after all. I'm sure jwz would approve.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Being able to control your music player and volume from the lock screen (Android ICS features, or was it even in Gingerbread?), notifications being accessible at lock screen (Jelly Bean, or was it it ICS, too?).
As a current Gnome 3 user at work and home (home since Gnome 3 beta days), and a holder of an Android Jelly Bean phone (Galaxy Nexus), I welcome these changes with open arms.
Me neither, but I'll try to explain anyway.
That's not actually the point. The screen lock is a possible solution to a set of common problems. If you insist on a single solution and then use a rigorous description of that solution as your criteria for whether the problem is solved or not, that's the opposite of good software engineering practice. The point is to define and solve the problem, not force expectations of what the solution should look like to shape your perception of what the problem is.
In most cases, the screen lock exists to prevent other entities from pre-empting your input - for example, I have to protect my keyboard from cats and small children at home, at work I need to prevent other people from sending mail under my username or deleting my local filesystem. I won't give a damn if anyone sees a notice that says "you've got mail" or if they can turn down the volume of my speakers - in fact those are desirable features for nearly all real world users.
In some cases, though, you may also need to prevent others from accessing your output devices - for example if you are carrying on a torrid affair without your spouse's knowledge, performing industrial espionage on your employer, or surfing porn while you're supposed to be babysitting, you'll want your screen completely hidden and you'll want a "hot button" that invokes lockout of all video and audio output instantly. Most people with this use case are also going to be satisfied by a screen lock that displays prominent notifications (without content) and allows control on audio outputs. They aren't going to want to have to type a password to stop the moaning sounds from their speakers - that's not a sufficiently responsive control for them - but they may want the screen lock to automatically mute audio outs.
The least common use case is going to be people who want total input and output device lockdown - when they are away from the computer, they want audio, video and network to be totally inaccessible until they type a password. That use case is important, because it is the highest possible security setting, but almost nobody wants their download to stop when they step away from the computer, almost nobody wants to have to pull the battery out of their kid's laptop to make the music stop.
So instead of focusing on what the meaning of the phrase "screen lock" is, a good solution would probably default to total lock of all inputs and outputs (on the principle of maximum security defaults) but would allow the user to trivially permit notifications and external device controls through a simple settings panel (as well as during any configuration dialog you might provide at setup time).
The parent post cannot possibly be described as "troll".
I hope the moderator is caught in metamoderation.
In the last incarnation of Gnome, I've seen a user interface stripped of usability. Yes, the new interface looks good, but usability has taken a backslide. I feel that Gnome has stripped the desktop to the usefulness of a tablet. We need power, to move files, start programs, reboot the computer. I don't agree on making Gnome a testbed for whatever fanciful bimbo flash-in-the-pan UI experiment, they dream up.
Get back to the basics. Save on mouse clicks. Don't bury things. Don't hid things. Don't remove things. Don't dumb it down for people who should never use computers in the first place. We want a usable interface the power of a desktop computer.
Gnome.org is just not listening to anyone anymore. They are are an organization completely out of touch with the people who use their GUI.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
will be thrilled!
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Stable APIs are the most important issue for Gnome. PERIOD.
Everything, everything needs to follow after that.
Backwards compatibility would be 2nd.
...to read patch notes for GNOME 3 that read "You can now auto hide the top bar without installing a third party extension."
I do hope they have mimicked Dolphin with Move to and Copy to in the context menu. Currently, Nautilus only offers Desktop and Home as destinations for these. Dolphin offers all sub folders under the Home Directory and the mouse slides smoothly to present these options. Bang-click, you are done in two clicks. It was short-sighted at the least and silly to only offer two places to copy and move files. Sure there are scripts to add additional destinations but that only adds a gui to choose the file destination and takes about three extra clicks to make it happen. Scripts by the way that are notorious for breaking on an update or upgrade. By that time, I could have hit F3 and just moved or copied the files manually via split screen. Oh wait, they are removing the split screen option in Nautilus 3.6. Never mind. That makes adding the sub-folders even more important, but with Gnome's drive to remove features instead of adding them, I am not hopeful.
Windows assumes you are an idiot...Linux demands proof.
Singularly unconvincing points. Rich options can be "simplified" my just adding an "Advanced" button in the config UI. You don't even see most of the options until you hit "Advanced". End of THAT objection, PERIOD. And end of the duplicate of that objection, which you call "increases complexity of the UI". Poof. These are not real problems. This is not rocket science.
Granted, added code to maintain is a given. Does that mean there should be no options whatsoever? Any bugs which crop up AFTER an option is implemented are regressions, and almost certainly can be worked around, because one or the other of the two paths is still going to work. They are unlikely to be critical problems.
I'm actually looking forward to some of the GNOME 3.6 changes. Once I went out and grabbed some extensions ( http://extensions.gnome.org/ ) to tweak things more to my liking I really started to enjoy GNOME Shell. I was kinda hoping to wander into the comments here and talk to other Shell users about what they like and don't like and what extensions they use, but instead there's just this incredible hate-fest. Other GNOME 3.x users, what extensions are you using? There's like a million and I'm totally curious if I've missed some.
My top 5:
- Calculator (lets you type equations into the search bar)
- Weather (It's just a classy weather applet)
- Window Options (puts close/min/max options in the app dropdown menu on the top panel)
- Maximus (Removes the title bar of windows when maximized. Combines well with the 'Window Options' extension)
- Blank Screen (Adds a menu option to blank the screen without locking it. Puts the monitor in power saving mode)
^I'm with stupid.^
to include major revertions.
Ah well long live the GNOME!
Granted, added code to maintain is a given. Does that mean there should be no options whatsoever?
There should be options that matter to a sufficiently large share of users.
Any bugs which crop up AFTER an option is implemented are regressions, and almost certainly can be worked around, because one or the other of the two paths is still going to work. They are unlikely to be critical problems.
It's this attitude that produces so much buggy, overcomplicated software.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
you are free ... to keep the application version you currently have
It's not that easy on Linux. Often, keeping an older version of some program involves using a really out of date distro like Debian stable, compiling a bunch of crap yourself, or hoping that someone has decided to make binary packages for the old version that work on your distro.
Why are you trying to force us all to keep using the same UI you are using just because you're so used to it?
If anyone's forcing anything on anyone, it's really GNOME 3 which is doing the forcing. This is what upset me the most about GNOME 3 - it seems you deliberately removed and hid a ton of configuration options that existed in GNOME 2. Why do you need to install an extra program to change the theme, the fonts, put back the minimise/maximise buttons, disable GUI animations, etc? Why is it no longer possible to specify a custom GUI colour scheme like it was in GNOME 2?
Why isn't the classic style interface easily available as an option? Well I suppose there's the 'fallback mode' which works like GNOME 2, but I heard that it was going to be 'deprecated' and removed at some point.
It's either innovation and having to learn new things, or the stagnation of keeping things exactly as they used to be.
Great. How would you like me to come over to your house and innovate things for you? "I don't think you should have your TV here. It'd increase usability and look better over here. Alright, btw we're going to paint all your walls white because that's how Apple does it. Looks nice right? Of course it does. Oh this toaster is awful, it has far too many buttons. Better replace that right away"
You probably aren't even going to read this anyway. But whatever. Sorry if this is inflammatory, it's just that I used GNOME 2 for six years and really liked it. It had some problems but it was good. I felt like GNOME 3 took everything I liked and threw it away, and at the same time tried to force everything I hated on me.