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GNOME 3.8 Released Featuring New "Classic" Mode
Hot on the heels of the Gtk+ 3.8 release comes GNOME 3.8. There are a few general UI improvements, but the highlight for many is the new Classic mode that replaces fallback. Instead of using code based on the old GNOME panel, Classic emulates the feel of GNOME 2 through Shell extensions (just like Linux Mint's Cinnamon interface). From the release notes: "Classic mode is a new feature for those people who prefer a more traditional desktop experience. Built entirely from GNOME 3 technologies, it adds a number of features such as an application menu, a places menu and a window switcher along the bottom of the screen. Each of these features can be used individually or in combination with other GNOME extensions."
...and did something about it that didn't ruin their code base.
Kudos Gnome Team.
I kinda like the KDE they forced me to try with their second-to-latest abortion, but I'll give Gnome 3.8 a try.
I tried Cinnamon on Mint 14.1 and found it to be freezing frequently when changes to it were made. Not ready for prime time IMO and back to Ubuntu 12.10. Unity isn't perfect, but it just works.
... will it be available on Ubuntu?
Personally, I wonder if there are any use metrics for Gnome3's default mode, vs running on fallback/classic.
Personally, I can't stand either Unity or Gnome3-standard modes. One of the first things I do with Ubuntu boxes is nuke LightDM and Unity from orbit, and replace them with something less resembling a botched ST:NG computer interface. I actually happen to LIKE menus. That Gnome has listened to the sound of angry feet stampeding to XCFE and KDE over the issue makes me happier, but still displeased over the "No, we don't do it that way anymore, nanaananananannaa" mantra they were using for so long previously.
You're like an Ubuntu user that shuns Debian.
Moved on, XFCE and it's at least replaced all uses for what Gnome was doing for me. Instead of creating a rich unified DE for all to use (with small enhancements and extensions), they flushed down all their good will in re-inventing something that many/most? of their community didn't seem to want.
I wish you well, but this is one ship I simply refuse to sail on (In the same likes as Windows 8 and unity alas).
Bye!
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A non-Ubuntu distro with XFCE or an Openbox (Crunchbang Linux) environment keeps me hard and satisfied!
And as for KDE, I always feel like I have a beach ball in my rectum when using it. Fun for some, not for me.
When I realized they took away my minimize button I damn sure needed some free beer
"He's using a quantum encryption scheme! That'll take hours to break!"
Wait, wait, wait... wait, just wait... I thought the world DIDN'T end in 2012 like those crazy Maya believers said. The gnome team listening to feedback... wow what's next, no wait don't tell me. Microsoft will realize the folly of Windowz 8 in time to 'add' a feature in Windowz 9 SP1 that'll make the IT industry happy again. There it is, you heard it first here kiddies!
It is so frustrating to fire up a new install of "linux" and have all the important parts of the OS hidden away from access, requiring more than a couple of clicks to get to or even requiring you to open a Search Dialog and search for the app that you want.
UI designers should really take notice of the reception things like Windows 8 and Gnome 3 and Unity have been getting lately. Remember that most business is still done with a mouse and keyboard at least.
Over at datamation.com they have two reviews worth reading. One general review on GNOME 3.8 and a separate review on the all new GNOME Classic.
I tried Cinnamon on Mint 14.1 and found it to be freezing frequently
Very little I install on my computer does not just work. I don't mind Unity, and prefer it to Gnome shell but Cinnamon has been an incredible project. I am more than happy to provide you with a working video of my desktop :) I suspect your overstating the position. BTW you can install cinnamon on Ubuntu.
i too felt much relief as as linux vacated itself from the bowels of myself and my computer
Oh no! Let's fork 3.7 and make sure that no one returns to the look'n'feel of the good old 2.x.
Hear, hear!
'Impossible' is a word that humans use far too often. -- Seven of Nine
It sounds as though the GNOME developers have re-implemented the GNOME 2 interface using GNOME 3 technology, which is pretty much what most people wanted to begin with. The only drawback is, judging from the article, is that the interface will look like GNOME 2 yet still requite 3-D video support, something which is still pretty hit-or-miss on Linux. I suspect most people will be better off using either Cinnamon or MATE.
...no need for Gnome 3.8 now that Elementary OS is coming along so nicely. It tends to be forgotten around here as an alternative, so I thought I'd mention it.
I switched to Cinnamon and was ok until new laptop graphics driver crapped out, in that case Cinnamon reverts to Gnome2 for some reason, or simply refuses to work. Gnome fallback session on the other hand works. Moreover, they fixed bugs that originally plagued the fallback session. So i am back to gnome fallback, but it looks like they are going to beak it again....
Why does Cinnamon fall back to Gnome2 is beyond me. It gives impression of unreliable overly complex software. It has layers.... like Ogres.
The jerk(s) that decided to copy Apple by putting the minimize, maximize, and lose buttons on the left--can go screw themselves.
They keep breaking keyboard switching every release. Here's the story in 3.6:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=681685
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=684210
(If you read the comments, you'll see the usual attitude of Gnome devs - bilingual users who actually use this functionality are telling them that it's been broken, while devs who don't really use it but own it reply by coming up with invented reasons as to why the new behavior is the right thing, and everyone else should just shut up and learn it.)
You'd think they would pay more attention to this area in the new release, but apparently they have emasculated (the official press release calls it "simplified", in the usual Gnome bullshit-speak) it even further in 3.8, and there are bugs reported about erratic behavior of the new switcher. All that because XKB is, apparently, not good enough anymore.
With this kind of attitude towards their users (of which the above is but a single example), how come they still have any?
I hate gnome shell, but considering Gnome continues to be a great product, and moves forward. I just replace Gnome Shell with Cinnamon, and plan to continue to do so, considering the cripples "classic"(sic) mode.
Seriously did nobody notice the replacement of Tomboy, my last dependency on mono...because its great. I've been waiting for an Android version for *forever*, but this http://worldofgnome.org/bijiben-or-just-gnome-notes/ looks like something I like more.
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/08/gnome-founder-says-desktop-linux-is-dead
I guess this guy could be considered an expert on the subject!
I tried Cinnamon. It was absolute shit. Ended up using xmonad which once you get used to is actually quite good.
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/08/gnome-founder-says-desktop-linux-is-dead
I guess this guy could be considered an expert on the subject!
He is only interested in presenting other peoples interest, in how it fills his own pockets, and there is nothing wrong with that. Rock stars do it all the time. Its just kind of ironic that he does this at a time when Linux is growing market share as a desktop, and Apple is devastated with 25% drop is desktop sales. This is him saying OOXML is superb http://blogs.kde.org/node/2985, he is just that guy. I'm sorry is Mono project is looking dead in the water,; I notice Mono is being cut from the Gnome desktop. love the replacement for Tomboy :)
Want to know about Linux...ask me I use it everyday; Its the fasted growing desktop OS in the World.
One of the things in Gnome 2 that I rely on every day is the fact that in the pager applet, I can see the outlines of the windows on that desktop, and if the app is big enough, it's icon. This is invaluable feedback to me. I can tell at a glance where things are if I should forget. I typically never alter my desktops use, but it's nice to be able to see this. Cinnamon fails completely in this regard. It's pager is nothing but a dark square to identify which desktop I'm on. It gives no feed back other than this and may as well be just a number, which the screen shot of the new classic mode appears to do.
If either Gnome classic or Cinnamon could do this one small thing, I'm ready to switch. Until then, It's still Mate for me. That and I really like the way I have compiz set up with Mate.
Why don't you go to extensions.gnome.org and see if there is something suitable?
Same here. Xfce is mature, and everything just works. I don't have time to beta-test in my everyday work.
It's still impossible to do very essential things in GNOME Classic, such as moving the panels around or fully configuring them. So, in many ways GNOME 3 hasn't reached feature parity with GNOME 2 or Xfce.
That said, it's really nice to see GNOME listening to users. An especially important part of GNOME 3.8, in my view, is that more options were added to the settings rather than removing them. This shows that the team really is trying to stabilize the core before adding more features, which is really the right way to go about things. I think in a few years GNOME 3 will be a great desktop, suitable for various work styles.
You know there is 'gnote' which is a non-mono version of Tomboy, right?
I did know about gnote, but its only advantage would be not using Mono, in every other way its a disadvantage. Gnote is not standard; lags being tomboy development...and those things are more important to me than keeping Mono dependencies around. Hell I used to to love banshee before they tried to turn it from a music application to a Multimedia(sic) application, I've moved to Clementine since http://www.clementine-player.org/ its wonderful. The reality is Bijiben(Gnome Notes) looks to have none of the disadvantages, and perhaps a few advantages over tomboy [removing Mono is a bonus].
So, GNOME 3 is fundamentally flawed in the following ways:
ZERO thought given to usability or human interface issues (Really, seriously. GNOME2 ruled at this, GNOME3 has thrown it all out the window)
Unstable (It crashes on my every other week, requiring a restart of X
Non intuitive compared to every other desktop OS. Windows 7 is far, far superior to GNOME. And I'm a long time Linux user.
Too many completely useless/half baked ideas which do nothing to aide productivity.
The people who design GNOME suffer from the following problems:
They all use Apple Macs, and have a massive hard on for apple.
They all use iPads, and have another massive hard on for apple.
Most importantly, they don't *use* GNOME. They use OS X.
GNOME3 seems to be some kind of confused desktop targeting touch screens and not much else. Blind freddy can see GNOME3 is not designed for desktop computers.
So now the dimwits behind GNOME want to put in something that looks like GNOME2 but is actually GNOME3.
Listen, Miguel, and whoever-the-fuck-else is responsible for DESTROYING linux on the desktop, STOP. Just fucking stop it.
Drop GNOME3. EOL it.
Go back to before you forked GNOME3 and continue improving GNOME2.
And while you are at it, fuck off your shitty apple and lenovo laptops.
Buy a Dell Latitude. Install Linux. Hack on it. Stop being apple faggots and EAT YOUR OWN DOGFOOD EVERY DAY.
Also, FUCK YOU SLASHDOT CAPTCHAS.
Yes a good pager is the most important part of a real desktop. You can get something vaguely like that with shell extensions, but you really feel like fighting gnome shell rather than using it, it's so hard to configure it feels like a desktop from the 90s, I'm not even joking, with gnome 2 you could easily create panels, move them around to your liking. gnome shell is so hard to configure, with this weird website that you are almost forced to use to add extensions, see which ones are installed, or to configure them. To change _anything_ you have to find an extension, even to change the date format, and I actually couldn't find one that did what I want, is that so weird to want a date that include the month ? And is that so hard to let the user enter a date format ?
I'm still using the real classic mode of gnome 3, but with my next upgrade I'll finally leave gnome (been using it since before 1.0), maybe mate, maybe xfce, maybe enlightenment. But something with a good pager.
I use lots of desktops sorted in 3 columns, so that I can organize my windows spacially, that way I always remember were I put the window I want, and can switch to it in 1 very short click, there's no way I could do that with gnome shell (and I tried a lot of extensions a few months ago).
Why should he have to go hunt for something that was a standard feature since about 1995?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
That's not quite fair. Cinnamon and Gnome forked off in two different directions with different UI philosophies. It's perfectly valid to praise one over the other, as they are two different projects now.
I'm glad Gnome has wised up and brought 'classic mode' back. I know that there's an expectation that you have to keep changing things in order to have a sense of progress, but there's a problem when you break traditional desktop metaphors that have really stood the test of time at this point. If you want progress, keep adding customization, so anyone can optimize their desktop to maximize their own workflow. I wanna make my environment look like Windows? Sure. Mac? OK. Unity? Fine.
That's one of the things I love about Android - all those crazy custom launchers that let you tailor your setup to your own preference.
Unity and Gnome 3 (before this release anyway) took away features and customization in the name of 'simplicity'.
Did you ever consider that it's not just one corrupt moderator, it's a bunch of regular slashdot users who infrequently get mod points who think you are totally full of shit? Stop posting as an AC, and then no one is impersonating you. Stop posting annoying off topic irrelevant bullshit, and people won't mod you down. Contribute positively and get modded up - what a novel concept!
Yes it's probably one person posting the similar drivel to you. On everything. You have the power to stop this - create an account, and no one else can impersonate you. I'm seriously sick of reading your posts about someone impersonating you, and their posts of shit - if you refuse to create an account you're only perpetuating this problem.
... wait, what?
What you mean you've never gone out and download and installed a utility that was not part of the standard OS? There is no difference. Who cares if it is standard or not if you're able to modify the behavior to what you want? The end result should be that you're productive. Stop worrying about whether it's part of the OS or not. It's like complaining that you didn't get the most awesome car stereo in your new car and you had to go out and get an aftermarket.
The chance seem to be very small, but without that Wheezy will look like a old duck with his Gnome 3.4 when it will be released.
I hope that the Debian team will be cleaver enough to understand the advantage of providing a good classic desktop experience for people that will upgrade from Squeeze to Wheezy (I have tried Gnome 3.x and Unity and found them unproductive).
What an idea! Of course I have already done that and didn't find anything. The search function didn't return anything, and I wasn't going to go through 37 pages manually. So I gave up. You talk as if you have some knowledge that I don't; perhaps you could enlighten me.
You're like an Ubuntu user that shuns Debian.
It's perfectly OK to take an invention that was created for one purpose (GNOME 3/GNOME SHELL) and use that creation for something better(GNOME 3/Cinnamon--GNOME SHELL--Cinnamon) while shunning the original purpose. All at the same time giving all due respect to the original technology**.
Take Viagra for example. Viagra(Sildenafil) had little effect on angina, but induced erections. The original purpose was shunned but the new purpose was applauded.
Unlike Pfizer, who had the smarts to run with the new use for Sildenafil, The GNOME 3 developers don't appear to taking advantage of a Cinnamon, an *arguably* better use of GNOME 3/GNOME SHELL.
** For my point I'll assume that GTK /GNOME 3/GNOME SHELL is a good technology to build upon.
Huh, GNOME3 Classic looks a lot like XFCE. Good to see them catching up to a real desktop environment.
More like "regression mode," am I right?
Xfce is only mature in age. It's missing virtually all of the features everyone expects in a manager. Icon placement only in grids? No real way to resize those grids without a text editor? No desktop sorting? I could add to this paragraph all day.
Do yourselves a favor, don't even waste your time on xfce.
The problem is that the pager is the most important part of a desktop interface. You seem to like car analogies, so it's like a car with no brakes installed by default. Besides, even with the extensions, it still doesn't reach the level that almost all linux window manager have enjoyed since the 90s. I used to use fvwm long time ago, and it had a good pager. All the wm I tried had a good pager (ok, I haven't tried many recently).
Last time I tried gnome shell, you still to go all the way to the left to make the pager appear on the other side of the screen ! wtf, do any of the devs even use virtual desktops ?
And as I said in the other post, you have to install an extension to change _anything_. I'm sorry but getting rid of the preferences dialog and replacing it with extensions that you have to hunt down, (and many don't even work when I tried them) is NOT a good user interface.
And the bonus, gnome shell doesn't use gtk widgets ! So you have different sets of widgets for you wm and for your apps. And it's not like they are better, for example, instead of opening sub-menu on the side, the content of the sub-menu insert itself in the menu ! I fail to see a single reason that would make the devs open sub-menu this way, other maybe than it looks cool, and nobody is doing it. Or maybe it's better for a touchscreen, I don't know, I'm NOT using a touchscreen.
Actually I use Linux specifically because there is very few things I have to go out and download and modify to get it to do the things I want. Unlike the Windows and Mac environments where the "Just works" motto is limited to it's very narrow view of things included with the OS. You still have to spend the next week downloading crap to fill all the normal use items.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
XFCE would be enhanced a lot if Compiz would work with it. Ubuntu 10.04 is much nicer looking than Xubuntu 12.04.
After completely hating Gnome 3, I tried cinnamon but it was a bit too unstable. Kept crashing and plus had install the entire gnome 3 stack. Xfce seems like a perfectly good choice for any body who wants a clean and classic desktop interface
Switched to X-windows; and love it!
I still use fvwm and it still has a great pager. :-)
Some people got that setup to work, but it hasn't been very stable for me (crashes), so I prefer xfwin. Compiz is nice and all, but I prefer stability above all.
Been using LInux since 97-98, and using Gnome pretty much most of the time (OK, did use WindowMaker and Enlightenment at first).
And now I'm using KDE (Kubuntu), because I just can't stand Unity, and Mint at work.
I just can't stand scrolling through pages of apps trying to find the infrequently used ones. I've given it a fair shot several times, and it's made me a convert.....to KDE.
Can I hear from someone the reason(s) as to why they like Unity better than the old Gnome?
..........FULL STOP.
If Gnome 3.8 still has application popup windows that are "pinned" below the app's window bar, then it still reeks.
This started at Gnome 3.0, and [as far as I can tell from a quick perusal of the source code] they removed the code [from metacity, mutter, gnome-whatever] that corresponded to the config option to allow these windows to float.
For an example, play gnomines. When you complete a game, the popup comes up and obscures the top part of the board. You can't see your time [or a portion of the board]. This can't be overridden.
As a far worse example, do an "open file" [ctrl-O] in Firefox. See how much information is obscured (tabs, toolbar, url, etc.).
To remove working code that provided a useful option to force "A Brave New Paradigm" is just asinine.
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there
i have xfce running perfectly with compiz on my machine for years. sadly compiz development stopped and i xfwin is not nearly as nice as compiz.
Can I have my vertical panels in this new "classic" mode? This is the single item that eventually had me removing gnome and installing kde. With the low but wide screens on todays computers it's silly to remove even more workspace by having top and bottom panels. Have them vertically on the left or right sides! Plenty of unused space out there in the suburbs. I need my many lines of source code or document text. Don't steel my height!
It just works, except that you have to fiddle with text files to turn caps lock into another ctrl, and the keyboard switcher doesn't quite work as well, and there's no obvious way to indicate that you've been working for an hour and need to take a break (OK, in Gnome 3 there isn't either, but the software was easy to find, because it's just a fork of the Gnome 2 software).
All in all, I've tried Xfce, and I keep switching back to Gnome 3. Xfce isn't as good as Gnome 2 was, and isn't as good as Gnome 3 with enough extensions. I would still prefer Gnome 2 with some of the fancy effects from Gnome 3, but I'll take Gnome 3 with extensions over Xfce.
You may now commence burning the heretic.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
I tried it for a while, but what killed it for me was the big icon that appears every time I change desktops with the keyboard. So I am now going to lose a second of my life every time I switch desktops before I can fully read what is on them? Wow, thanks GNOME team, you're really thinking of what I need for my daily life. I'm switching desktops constantly, and every time I do it I feel that you are getting in my way. Now someone is going to tell me there is a GNOME3-hacking tool to turn it off. Why should I need a hacking tool to get it into a basically usable state? Please tell me when GNOME 3 is ready for use by people like me. Or should I wait for GNOME 4?
For me, the entire point of using XFCE is that it doesn't depend on compiz or 3D acceleration (the open source 2D driver is just fine with me). And I'd greatly prefer if they kept it that way. If you want the "new shiny", XFCE is definitely not for you.
What you mean you've never gone out and download and installed a utility that was not part of the standard OS? There is no difference. [...] It's like complaining that you didn't get the most awesome car stereo in your new car and you had to go out and get an aftermarket.
Yes, yes there is. The difference is that the old pager had this important feature, and the new pager does not. You would rightly complain if the old model of your luxury car had a CD player and Sirius/XM, and the new version has a tape deck and AM only.
Stop worrying about whether it's part of the OS or not.
Guess what? We're not talking about the OS, we're talking about the GUI.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sadly, there's far more to GNOME3 failures than just the menu/panel. Even Cinnamon doesn't restore a good part of what worked well in GNOME2.. But oh well, there's Mate and, not as good, XFCE.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
No. The existing Gnome 2 userbase on existing hardware was not really the intended audience for Gnome 3. It was possible a bad naming decision in taking the product in a direction likely to alienate existing customers rather than release a new product name.
You're right there, they should have called it Gnumb. Or something like Gnumb Gnuts would be even more descriptive, and delineate their intended user base fairly precisely.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
That said, it's really nice to see GNOME listening to users.
It's nice, but too late, imho. GNOME has demonstrated that they're willing to act against their users' wishes for more than a year before they start listening to them. If they've done that once, they'll do it again.
I should say straight away that I will not be using classic mode because quite frankly, I like Gnome Shell as it is. I get on with it really well and running a pair of screens with it suits my needs brilliantly. We are all very aware however that many people have not taken to the new interface and putting something in place that helps those people to continue to use Gnome in a way they prefer is surely a good thing.
If they've done that once, they'll do it again.
Once? They've been removing useful features for a long time. You can't turn on focus-follows-mouse anymore without a google search to guide you through it. Expandable folders (tree view) in Nautilus is the latest victim. It's bizarre and frustrating.
Enjoying Bodhi Linux; e17 is very nice. Glad to hear about GNOME 3.8 and "classic mode", but I have no great urge to try it out. Perhaps someday.
Ubuntu should call the new "classic" mode, "Sanity". I have regular desktop computers as well as devices with touch screens. These new touch screen interfaces are fine if you have a touch screen device, but are definitly inferior on a traditional computer. That's why Linux Mint is rated the most popular linux distrobution download on distrowatch.com at this time. It's Ubuntu in "classic" mode.
There would have been no controvery with Windows 8 if they would have included a "classic" mode with their new version. That way you could use the mode most usefull with you device.
The panel in Cinnamon is not as good as in GNOME2 and they don't have as many nice applets as GNOME2, but it is OK. Looks very nice, though.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
I'm amazed by the amount of damage "touch" have done to UI design. Everything now has to be touch! My MP3 player (iAudio10, which is otherwise cool) does not have physical buttons for forward/backward anymore, so I have to wake the sucker before switching the song if I choose to.
And that touch interface in Tesla is just stupid.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Things are changing because hardware is changing.
shhh... let them stay there. they are happy. :-)
I find that the KDE4 series runs fine on any computer made in the last 6-8 years anyway and it looks a hell of a lot better
Sorry Z, Idiot mods strike again. You was funny & on topic to what you replied to. OP was offtopic. Keep up the laughs.
"Contribute positively and get modded up - what a novel concept! "
Not exactly true. If you are contrary to any "dogma" of free software, you are modded down even if your comment is the most insightful from the entire topic.