GNOME 3.6 Released

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Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday September 26, 2012 @11:05AM from the get-it-while-it's-hot dept.

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."

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Switched to Mate desktop, not going back. by Picass0 · 2012-09-26 11:18 · Score: 4, Informative

Adios Gnome.
mate-desktop.org
Don't waste your time with GNOME 3.6 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-09-26 11:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

It still sucks. Stick with MATE.
1. Re:Don't waste your time with GNOME 3.6 by lofoforabr · 2012-09-26 12:28 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  I second that.
  I abandoned Ubuntu after it incorporated Unity. My loss of productivity was too big to continue using it. I was used to a functional desktop with Gnome 2. Gnome 3 is bad enough, but Unity? There is no way in hell I'm sticking with that. Hell, it's so bad I even thought about using Windows, and that's really something for someone who's been using Linux for about 17 years.
  I found out Mint, a very nice distro, based on Ubuntu, made by people like me who couldn't stand Ubuntu+Unity. 2 flavores there, one using MATE (a fork of Gnome 2), and another running Cinnamon (a fork of Gnome 3, customized to look and function like Gnome 2).
  I'm really happy after the switch. I'm back to having a functional desktop. I still miss Compiz for some stuff (screen glitches and some things missing), but I can live without it. I'm not going back to Ubuntu, or "upgrading" to Gnome 3.x.
  After being bashed by so many people, I really don't know what Gnome devs got on their minds. We used to have something wonderful, and they stick going in the wrong direction (IMO, of course).
2. Re:Don't waste your time with GNOME 3.6 by jcarr · 2012-09-26 12:37 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  You post should be reworded:
  Attention all linux users: This is the solution you have been looking for!
  I installed it 10 minutes after seeing your post. This is what you have been looking for if you want a linux workstation again. I've been using XFCE4 for a year or so. Mate worked correctly on top of ubuntu 12.04. It has the polish that Andy Hertzfeld put into nautlius. The original look and feel is back. It's really excellent. This is the bar to start from.
3. Re:Don't waste your time with GNOME 3.6 by Tough+Love · 2012-09-26 15:54 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  I abandoned Ubuntu after it incorporated Unity. My loss of productivity was too big to continue using it.
  I don't have a problem with Unity. It works well enough to install Kubuntu, which I do immediately, then I can sit back with popcorn and watch the Unity devs continue on their voyage of discovery. I'm even willing to admit that Unity has some cool ideas, provided I'm not forced to use it. From time to time I log into it and play around a bit, then go back to KDE pretty soon. Which does exactly what I want in exactly the way I want to do it.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Amazing! by David+Gerard · 2012-09-26 11:20 · Score: 5, Funny

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
1. Re:Amazing! by AchilleTalon · 2012-09-26 12:27 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I must admit there is much more innovation in this release of Gnome than in the iPhone5.
  
  --
  Achille Talon
  Hop!
2. Re:Amazing! by quippe · 2012-09-26 21:25 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Modal dialogs are indeed "forced on people"; anytime an eclipse modal dialog pops up (popped as I am on lxde now), I couldn't move it away to see what I needed to see on the main window, it was "glued", cut&paste out of question. I could fix the missing focus-on-hover installing a tweak plugin; but to fix this one, it was not enough you need to launch gconftool, which obviously is something I could cope with, but it's out of question for the average user. It's indeed one of most broken design decisions I have ever seen in my life.
obligatory comments by binarstu · 2012-09-26 11:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.
Re:Happily running KDE by SomeKDEUser · 2012-09-26 11:28 · Score: 4, Insightful

Same thing when you are forced on OSX. Seriously, KDE has the best window manager bar none. How no one has gone postal on the MS and apple folks responsible for that part of their respective interfaces s a mystery to me.
Re:In 2014.... by geekymachoman · 2012-09-26 11:50 · Score: 4, Funny

Creatures that steal underpants... for profit.
Re:Happily running KDE by SomeKDEUser · 2012-09-26 12:36 · Score: 4, Informative

kwin is fully scriptable -- how much more power do you need than per-window/window class/app rules?. Also, it only does its job of managing windows, and the rest is taken care of by the desktop. Enlightenment is a wm+launchers+set of apps but refuses to admit it would like to be a DE like XFCE. They can't admit that because OMG BLOAT!
xmonad is a very interesting experiment, which some people find great. But these are the same people who think that the purpose of X is having more terminal windows open at the same time -- or their spiritual descendants.
Personal experience with both Gnome3 and KDE by rr0 · 2012-09-26 13:18 · Score: 4, Interesting

I use both on a dual head box, and appreciate them for entirely different reasons. On any given week I'll switch between the environments a few times, usually at the start of a new task. I find that the context switch is refreshing and helps productivity.
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.
Re:After years by GigaBurglar · 2012-09-26 14:50 · Score: 4, Insightful

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..