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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."
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 ?
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.)
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.
Creatures that steal underpants... for profit.
Fedora (my distro of choice) is about as bleeding edge as you'll get (and still be relatively stable). It is of course based around YUM/RPM, though. I honestly love Gnome 3 on it; it needs polishing, but I find it much more efficient for my workflow than Gnome 2/XFCE/whatever. YMMV
Fear the penguin.
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.
All these "remixes" are just changing the default. There is nothing stopping you from installing GNOME 3 on Ubuntu now (it is in the repositories), and selecting it before you log in (the selection is sticky by default).
There really is a lot of "OMG! Someone moved my food dish" going on. The move from ed to vi must have really shook them up as well. _
^I'm with stupid.^
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..
As others have said, Fedora and Ubuntu Gnome Remix are good options. Just keep in mind however that both Fedora and Ubuntu time their releases so that they come in about 1 month after Gnome releases. In turn, Gnome releases are timed to be about 1 month after X.org releases. This is intentional, and is supposed to ensure that new versions of Gnome make it into the releases quickly.
The current versions are Fedora 17 and Ubuntu 12.04, which both ship with Gnome 3.4.
The next versions are Fedora 18 and Ubuntu 12.10, which will both ship next month and both have Gnome 3.6.
If you want to try out 3.6, you should probably grab an Alpha of either Fedora or Ubuntu GR.
The Gnome team broke a bunch of stuff in the name of "progress" while removing useful features. Gee, I wonder why people had an adverse reaction. It's like they actually wanted to use their computer for applications instead of being forced to learn a new interface with less functionality.
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?
Sorry for calling you a troll. There's just a lot of noise in this thread from GNOME3 haters and a total lack of specifics. It seems like most people have decided they hate GNOME3 and not much can change their mind. About removing functionality from the core for people to re-add as extensions: I have mixed feelings about that myself. That aside most of what you're looking for is definitely available as extensions if you do decide to try GNOME again:
not having a normal task bar down the bottom
Looks like Frippery Bottom Panel would do the trick.
not having a normal menu at the top
Axe menu looks awesome and I actually use it myself. There's also Frippery menu which looks more minimalist.
not having a decent range of applets to add to the top bar (which I can't put things on anyway, so I guess there's no point having applets if you've got nowhere to put them)
Yeah. Agreed there, but it's getting better. It's just that instead of applets they're extensions now, and they're not installed by default.
Nautilus having found new ways to strip out features where previously I thought they had hit rock bottom
Are you referring to the double-pane thing that they borrowed from mc that they recently removed?
^I'm with stupid.^
Instead there's a whole bunch of people who seem to take any GNOME article as a chance to complain loudly without citing any specifics and mention how they switched to something entirely different without even mentioning what it does better.
Because they really pissed people off with the way they handled Gnome 3. It was arrogant and reckless. The Gnome hate isn't going to go away for a long, long time.
Have you looked at the direction Gnome kept after 3.0? As TFA speaks about 3.6, Nautilus changes are a prime example. They break four things for one being fixed.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I guess I expected more from /. . Somehow I remember the desktop/editor/distro flamewars being a bit more technical in nature. Maybe that's just me looking at the past with rose colored glasses. Either way, it makes me feel old.
^I'm with stupid.^
I'm surprised at the vitriol launched at the Gnome team for their release policy. It is especially ironic considering that most of the critics want to keep Gnome2, which followed the exact same policy: release a working base system first, then start working on configuration options and extensions/applets.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?