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GNOME 3.6 Released
kthreadd writes "Gnome 3.6 is out. The announcement reads: 'The GNOME Project is proud to present GNOME 3.6, the third update to the 3.x series. This latest version of GNOME 3 includes a number of new features and enhancements, as well as many bug fixes and minor improvements. Together, they represent a significant upgrade to the GNOME 3 user experience.' Andreas Nilsson, President of the GNOME Foundation, said: 'The GNOME Foundation is proud to present this latest GNOME release, and I would like to congratulate the GNOME community on its achievement.' He described the release as 'an important milestone in our mission to bring a free and open computing environment to everyone.' New applications include Clocks and Boxes. Clocks is a world time clock, which allows you to keep an eye on what the local time is around the world. Boxes allows you to connect to other machines, either virtual or remote. For developers there's the new GtkLevelBar widget in GTK+, and GtkEntry can now use Pango attributes."
not only is their logo a smelly foot, but they haven't fixed the usability issues from the previous versions!
too bad the 'k' in KDE stands for krap.
Does anybody still care ? Legitimate question.
Adios Gnome.
mate-desktop.org
It still sucks. Stick with MATE.
Happily running KDE. Stable, pretty, highly configurable, defaults require minimal tweaking by me, just does the job. Kubuntu introduces some minor blemishes but survivable. Had to run Windows for a few days, was impressed what a poor experience it is compared to KDE. Just one of many annoying Windows habits: likes to wake up from sleep in the middle of the night and nag me about spending money on McAffey and Norton. Likes to shut down without asking instead of sleep if I make the tinyiest miss with the mouse. Like to reboot a lot. Sometimes just acts strange until rebooted. Argh.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Both users are thrilled!
(They are the two remaining developers.)
Do they have even one developer who actually owns a touchscreen device yet?
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Because having an easy way to manage wireless network roaming, Bluetooth, fast-user switching, audio and system power (battery/AC) and removable media without writing scripts or integrating it all yourself is desirable.
I'll just get these out of the way for anyone who feels compelled to post them.
<sarcasm>
GNOME 3 is the worst desktop ever!
Actually, Unity is even worse!
This is why Linux on the desktop will never succeed!
GNOME 2 was the only decent Linux desktop!
I haven't seriously used Linux for 10 years, but I know that my Mac is 1000x better in all possible ways!
</sarcasm>
Personally, I'm looking forward to checking out the new GNOME.
For the 50th time: Unity doesn't replace GNOME, it only replaces GNOME Shell, which is a single component of GNOME 3. Unity actually uses the GNOME platform "under the hood".
I suppose you also think RPM is comparable to APT (as opposed to dpkg)?
And good network-transparent file managers (and file dialogs). And a wallet to remember your passports. And desktop search, and integrated utilities. And app launchers more clever than xterm, and the magic that is alt-F2 with launchers. Seriously, under KDE, you can do "Alt-F2 ; =1V*1A" and it answers 1W. How cool is that ?
Still on GNOME 2 (with CentOS 6.3).
I sure hope RHEL doesn't go for this tripe for their next release. If they do, I'll finally have a good reason to switch to one of those tiling, mouse driven, low resource WMs*. Only reason I use GNOME 2 right now is because I can easily make it look like GNOME 1 did... pretty much all I need to do is get rid of the top panel and re-arrange things in the bottom panel.
Still relevant:
http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html
* anyone have any good suggestions?
Currently my KDE 4.9.1 is broken due to latest (4.83?) or thereabout libqt which broke by some patch from webkit or whatever.
Anyway, so I'm currently in razor-qt. And saved 300 MB or thereabout of RAM by doing so.
Also it starts within the second.
(Razor-qt + openbox so kwin won't crash.)
I switched from kde to openbox some time ago.
Although I can't quite remember why i didn't choose fluxbox.
I think it was because I wanted to try something new.
Unity (the Ubuntu shell, not the game engine) is based on Gtk, not Qt.
There was a Qt version, but it's no longer developed.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Oh, sorry. I didn't realise you enjoy wasting time manually configuring such basic system services.
"Daddy, what's GNOME?"
I've got applets for almost all of that in Window Maker.
Fuck, now I'm suddenly tempted to get back into X development and write a WMesque file manager. Especially with Window Maker development rumbling back to life. I'll probably be accused of ripping off OSX (fitting, since it's all NeXT anyway).
Obligatory post describing my preferred environment that is not GNOME 3.
/* No Comment */
I think gnome 3 is great. At first no, but when I got used to it I really fell for it. Not sure why everybody hates on it so much... It might not be a one size fits all but its great for smart people! Sorry all you dump people who can't learn something new.
(i kid)
Clocks is a world time clock, which allows you to keep an eye on what the local time is around the world.
That's awesome! I never thought I'd see the day where you could get a clock on your computer.
Do I really need to switch to GNOME for this?
Surely others will port this marvel to other platforms?
I'm sure something could be figured out, perhaps using a stick in the ground?
I don't see anything in this announcement that tells me they have wound back some of the bats**t crazy design retrogressions in the 3.x release. Clocks? Wow... let me just pick myself up off the floor while I recover from the excitement at this prospect. How about making it a usable D.E. like GNOME 2.3x was? I'm now happily using KDE again and will continue to do so for some time for as long as the bats**t effect doesn't infiltrate KDE or until GNOME 3.x is actually usable. And if Apple can find their way to releasing a Mac that doesn't have a built-in screen, miniscule form factor, or is overkill like the Mac Pro that costs an arm and a leg, I might even consider switching to that. But as for GNOME 3.x, it's dead to me :-)
For the 50th time: Unity doesn't replace GNOME, it only replaces GNOME Shell, which is a single component of GNOME 3. Unity actually uses the GNOME platform "under the hood".
I suppose you also think RPM is comparable to APT (as opposed to dpkg)?
And goddamnit! WINE is NOT and Emulator!!!!!11!1!
Get off my damn lawn and RTFM.
newbie.
I'm curious to give Gnome 3 a spin (not Unity). Can anyone recommend a relatively pure up to date Gnome Distro? preferably apt based?
I'd like to hear from people who have used GNOME 3.6. Is it actually usable for sofware development?
Does it fit any kind of reasonable workflow?
Or is it just full of eye candy for the end-user?
-- hendrik
When I'm not on OS X my Linux boxes are happily testing and running KDE 4.8.2 and GNOME 3.4.2 from Debian. I look forward to 3.6 and especially the day I can modify the magnetic attraction to the upper left corner that takes control of my mouse when moving menu windows and I happen to miss. I also look forward to being able to not have my applications always launch and position themselves upper left (0,0) [relative to the menu top bar] of Gnome which often has me dealing with the mouse flying up and bringing out the hidden list of application options. I cannot effin' stand KDE's little widget approach--embarrassing relative to OS X, and it's Plasma puke all over the desktop environment so I reduce it's presence to the limit allowed.
The experience for both is different but grow on you. GNOME 2.x is overtly dated and always looked like an aborted version of the old Mac OS desktop. WindowMaker reminds me of how little people understand NeXTSTEP and what Keith Ohlfs and the Graphics Team at NeXT did to make it.
When Debian gets around to KDE 4.9.x I hope it's more refined because there are many areas [System Settings for example] that are just garbage, especially the toxic multimedia settings section
So I should have left him alone because he's a "newbie"?
A newbie who is experienced enough to know what a toolkit is, yet have no clue what he's talking about?
No, I think I was justified in calling him out.
Many of us are aware of KDE's strengths.. for me, configurability, familiarity, visual appeal, stability and speed. One can make the interface visually dense and informative. Scrolling cpu/memory/network stats, rotating yawp weather reports, and various application status indicators are on my desktop.
Gnome3 removes me from this. I love the way it dynamically manages the virtual desktops, and the clean 'distraction-free' environment. I feel like I can reach 'flow' easier here. Simply hitting the 'windows' key or snapping the mouse to the top-left corner to visually see the desktops and their running applications, dragging my emacs or xterm sessions around as needed. It gives me a different and visual way to logically organize and partition the tasks at hand. Yes, KDE and Unity both support these features, too, but in my experience they're not quite as clean. Also, Gnome3's notifications system is brilliant, and I'm looking forward to the enhancements found in 3.6.
While many of the complaints of Gnome3 are valid, I do appreciate that Gnome has had the courage to try something different and controversial. It works for me.
1,500 Accessibility Options.. ..still cannot change a font or theme without a third party application.
OK OK.. Gnome 3.6 isn't terrible. It's a decent step forward but still the slow death march to tablet obscurity whilst purging every actual user is kind of disheartening.
Because sometimes people cannot be bothered, wasting so much time and energy, tweaking and fiddling with things they would rather 'just worked' . I know Linux pretty well but I actually can't be bothered with trivial desktop shit - I'd rather that stuff just worked out of the box. It's not that I can't - I just can't be bothered..
I suppose you also think being a snarky asshole is comparable to being smart (as opposed to just being a snarky asshole)?
I never used the early releases of Gnome 3, but coming from the latest KDE I'm actually pretty happy with 3.4. Needed to get a good number of extensions to customize it like I like it but it's sleek, good looking and easy to use. Looking forward to 3.6, it already looks like it's going to obsolete some extensions and overall make my desktop even smoother. Plus, it performs smoother than Compiz and Kwin, especially with resizing and 3D applications. Maybe 3.0 and 3.2 were crappy, but I'm not seeing where the hate is coming from now.
Shouldn't you be installing Arch and ricing xmonad with anime wallpaper?
fast-user switching
Something that I always regret using because it is full of nasty bugs. I've sworn it off for at least another year.
Then why do I still need to fucking restart gnome-shell every day? (yes, I know, it's the plugins, but it's totally unworkable without them and they claim to do a quality check before allowing them into the "app store"). Why Can't I arrange my workspaces the way I want to and assign hot keys to them? Why do I need to hack my way into the system to get something mundane like Xscreensaver working? All those features were in gnome2 already, there was a lot of mischief about these starting from gnome3 3.0 and they still haven't been fixed. Yet, somehow, they found time to add a bloody world clock to the gnome3 core? Come on, this is ridiculous, it was ridiculous starting from 3.0 and it will remain ridiculous until they stop this and fix the broken code and missing features they already had in gnome2.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Or is it still, um, for lack of a better phrase, a kludge of "turn your computer into a mobile phone" - but better!
YankDownUnder Veni, Vidi, volo in domum redire
I installed Cinnamon the other day, and was almost tempted to switch to it from KDE, so I fail to see what's all this fuss about Gnome 3. Isn't that what Cinnamon uses under the hood?
(What do you mean I'm supposed to use Gnome 3 without Cinnamon?!?!?)
Just work? Networkmanage is as trustable as the average windows' network administrator...
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
How good can be gauged when people say "don't use GNOME use Mint". Mint is Gnome shell extensions and demonstrate the fact that you can change the shell to resemble pretty much anything you like including a classic GNOME 2 style desktop.
Personally I think the GNOME 3 behaviour is mostly very good and far better than GNOME 2. It's discoverable, it's clean, it's task centric, it's extensible. While there is plenty of valid criticism there is also much which is irrational from people being used to the old way and being unable to countenance change of any sort. It's certainly not perfect and I could cite half a dozen gripes of my own but nothing which would make me want to switch desktops.
A new version of a UI-centric project, and there's not a single screenshot in the announcement. Yes I know the release notes covered it pretty well, but still, this is not how you communicate to users that you're on the forefront of visual thinking.
I thought all the developers more or less stopped using GNOME after about 2.
It doesn't matter how good a platform is - I think there were already a conclusion here on Slashdot that if you can't make your stuff compatible, you'll lose developers.
This is the biggest threat to Linux.
Maybe I'm wrong and 3.6 is really compatible all the way to GNOME/GTK2?
Gnome recives a lot of hate for a open source project. I've been using it since 1.2 And all I see is improvments. 2.x was much better than 1.x I've upgraded to 3.x and cannot think of going back ..
How is Razor-qt, btw? Also, if there is a problem in libqt, how is Razor-qt, which is qt based, unaffected by it?
But do they always work - are they 'tightly integrated' w/ the underlying distro? I mean, if making a change to, say, kwlan, doesn't automatically change file contents in one's /etc/, then it turns out to be worthless.
Qt becoming LGPL did not make GTK obsolete, but GNOME dropping its goals of becoming a 'Networking Object Modelled Environment' certainly did. One compelling reason to look @ GNOME was that it would be another object oriented UI, like maybe OS/2 or NEXT, but that goal got dropped. And once it got dropped, there was no more reason to stick w/ GNOME.
During the time I was using Linux, I tried both GNOME 2.3 and KDE 3.5. I was amazed @ some of the things I could do in the KDE Kontrol Panel, and also the fact that I could do a live switch b/w users, similar to XP, but I couldn't do anything even close under GNOME. I ended up dumping GNOME as one of my options. Since then, it seems to have only gotten worse.
Anyone have a link to a list of the features they removed?
It may not be unaffected by it. Or it may just not be using that functionality. The bug obviously wasn't enough to prevent release of the libqt version and I only think it's affecting x86_64 (and I think it was qtscript related which maybe razor-qt doesn't use.)
I don't have much to say about razor-qt. A start bar with menu, four virtual desktops, quick launches, window listing and a clock. Yay, totally not like many others ;)
But it's QT instead of GTK :)
Well for that kind of thing I prefer config' files - but I don't want to have to write LUA scripts just to get a functional desktop. It's best that a desktop provides me an interface ready to go for file management and key-bindings - that's all I care about in terms of a desktop - as long as it's not clumsy. XFCE4: for all it's imperfections I still find it the closest thing to Gnome 2. Admittedly I haven't tried any of the Gnome forks but for what it's worth XFCE4 does the job. I have looked into things like Enlightenment and Awesome but they don't provide anything other than bells and whistles. Shit like Unity is just the kind of thing I would find on an Apple device. Maybe if there were some more readily 'install and go' window managers I would be prepared to use one - but to maintain and configure one is still a large time sink for something so trivial.
Seriously, Fuck Gnome 3.
I'll run XFCE till gnome pulls their head from their asses
Specifically, what is wrong with Unity?
Actually,
Gnome is alive and kicking.
would it be possible for this post to contain responses which don't just say which desktop they're using instead? I don't bounce on the mate posts and say HAHAHAHAHA MATE IS SHIT, I'M USING GNOME 3!!! honestly, get over it. If mate makes you happy, then stop whining and use it. I was hoping to read some interesting stuff about what's actually in 3.6 here. that "offtopic" flag is being seriously underused here.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
.. on parole?
.. after it escaped?
.. as opposed to "in"? It definitely isn't in.
I know awesome is not for everybody, but getting forced to do a common task in 3-5 seconds instead of fraction of a second is wrong, I have seen the strugle of a few long time gnome users just to find the previous windows they've used.
I will definitively loose a couple of hours configuring a lua script just to save 4 seconds on a task I perform hundreds of times every day, the windows OS style of working with maximized windows is not productive at all, and awesome allows me to arrange the windows in a virtual desktop so that I can see them all in just 1 or 2 seconds, I dont have to waste a lot of time resizing just to be able to see a cuple of coding terminals and the browser executing the webapp, for instance.
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
Yeah but I can hit Super+(number key) to switch desktops; alt+F2 for quick launch. super+m maximise, super+z for terminator, alt +h or v to split terminals. a ton of other shortcuts for individual applications - like my browser - all with XFCE. Anyone worth their salt manages their work flow efficiently like that - I barely have to touch the trackpad on my netbook - but more importantly - I still get the option to. I just can't be bothered with desktops beyond hotkeys and resizeable windows - I use a shell for most tasks anyway. XFCE is ready to go - straight out of the box - and for what I need it for it just works and doesn't change; break. I might try out a window manager in the future - which would you suggest?
Most of those shorcuts exist on awesome, and a few of them are set to the exact same keys combination. I think xfce is great, but I have a close friend who migrated from it to awesome and says he is very happy with the change.
Awsome takes a couple of days to get used to, but after that it's pretty much just as any other wm/dm
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma