Giving GNOME 3 a GNOME 2 Look

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Giving GNOME 3 a GNOME 2 Look

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday July 9, 2013 @10:40PM from the fighting-change-by-any-means-necessary dept.

nanday writes "GNOME Shell Extensions have done more than any other set of features to make GNOME 3 usable. Nearly 270 in number, they provide a degree of customization that was missing in the first GNOME 3 releases. In fact, if you choose, you can use the extensions to go far beyond Classic GNOME and re-create almost exactly the look and feel of GNOME 2 while taking advantage of the latest GNOME 3 code."

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As someone who uses GNOME 3... by MrBandersnatch · 2013-07-09 22:42 · Score: 3, Interesting

I dont understand the problems that people have with it. I spent an hours learning it, I kept an open mind and ended up really liking it.
That said - 90% of what I do requires a shell so maybe Im missing something....
1. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-09 22:51 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I personally must say the same, it gave me a lot less problems than gnome2. All in all, it just worked. I didn't feel the need to configure much, if anything (made middle mouse click be minimize windows).
2. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by ObsessiveMathsFreak · 2013-07-09 22:57 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Well personally I ran screaming in horror after the first two hours of flailing around trying to regain something approaching my old workflow. To each his own I suppose.
  
  --
  May the Maths Be with you!
3. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-09 23:00 · Score: 0
  
  Exactly. Grouping by apps is incompatible with my workflow. End of story.
4. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Arancaytar · 2013-07-09 23:18 · Score: 1
  
  regain something approaching my old workflow
  I know, it took me ages to get back the spacebar heating feature. :P
  (But yeah, random UI redesigns can be annoying as hell. Personally, I kind of like the gnome-shell desktop - and at least it's better than freaking Unity - but on the other hand I'm not over gnome-terminal losing transparency. Currently I'm holding on to the old version as long as possible.)
5. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-09 23:48 · Score: 0
  
  The big thing for me when GNOME 3 was forced on me all floppy was the lack of reconfigurability. I had various launchers on a hidden short panel on one side of the screen, CPU|RAM|Video thermal monitor along with CPU|RAM|NET usage graphs, weather, various other pieces WHERE EVER THE HELL I wanted them. And if I wanted a Win7-like menu, I had that too, along with gnome-do.
  Fast forward to floppy dick. The menu is here. No you can not put stuff on it. Fuck you you like it like this. I don't think you should even be able to change the background in case someone sees your machine in a coffee shop and doesn't know that it is GNOME 3 at a glance, but we'll let that slide.
6. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by miknix · 2013-07-10 00:05 · Score: 2
  
  For starters, the quality of the extensions is lower than Gnome 2 applets - specially the system monitoring extension. When a single extension crashes in Gnome 3, the whole panel goes MIA, unlike Gnome 2.
7. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by lvxferre · 2013-07-10 00:24 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  The hate against GNOME 3 has mixed origins. Some are natural, as "they changed now it sucks" reactions; the fact GNOME 2 was/is great also doesn't help at all. Some are because the software is new and nowhere mature. But some are genuine complaints from the users for GNOME 3 not actually improving their experience, but getting in the way to do common tasks - the devs confused "simple" with "simplistic" and are completely deaf for users' requests (some as simple as putting back in 3.7 a background configuration already present in 3.6.
  As for me, I just moved to MATE when the whole thing happened and I'm quite happy with it.
  
  --
  Nerdy news for your nerdy needs? http://www.soylentnews.org Soylent News is people!
8. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Savage-Rabbit · 2013-07-10 00:28 · Score: 0
  
  I dont understand the problems that people have with it. I spent an hours learning it, I kept an open mind and ended up really liking it.
  That said - 90% of what I do requires a shell so maybe Im missing something....
  No, there is nothing you are missing I don't get the upheaval over Gnome 3 either. Some people just can't stand anything changing and there is a certain small subset that group that likes to kill time by searching for crap to get angry over and make a lot of noise about it. The rest of the Gnome 2 traditionalists have simply realised that there is a growing collection of (how many is it now?) Gnome 2 forks out there and they are only a yum/apt-get away. Mate for example is now at version 1.6 and there is a Linux Mint LiveDVD that comes preinstalled with it.
  
  --
  Only to idiots, are orders laws.
  -- Henning von Tresckow
9. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by wiredlogic · 2013-07-10 00:42 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  These are the people who think that Win95 was the apex of UI design. Leave them to their retro revelry.
  
  --
  I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
10. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 00:43 · Score: 0
  
  As someone who speaks Chinese mandarin....
  I don't understand the problems that people have with it. I spent years leaning it, I kept an open mind and ended up really liking it.
  The problem is that when you try to FORCE people to spend hours relearning something that worked, they feel bad, they feel angry(because they have work to do that they can't because someone else want to tell them what to do), they feel betrayed. When people feel bad they can't learn or they don't want to.
  I use Ubuntu Unity every single day. It works, now, after lots of problems and bugs that were not in Gnome(just changing my desktop, crash, searching something, crash). People wonder "Why I have to stand this?" and the only answer is "because a designer thought so in his Ivory tower without thinking in the real consequences for their users".
11. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by jbolden · 2013-07-10 00:44 · Score: 2
  
  /. has become ultra conservative when it comes to interface changes. Any substantial change of a piece of software is going to involve some things getting worse in exchange for more things getting better. Which means complex existing workflows likely will have to change. They don't like that even though existing workflows usually stifle innovation.
12. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by jbolden · 2013-07-10 00:45 · Score: 2
  
  In all fairness the Gnome 2 userbase was not the desired userbase for Gnome 3. So being "deaf" was part of the design. Gnome wanted to shift its target market.
13. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by RabidReindeer · 2013-07-10 01:10 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  No, there is nothing you are missing I don't get the upheaval over Gnome 3 either. Some people just can't stand anything changing and there is a certain small subset that group that likes to kill time by searching for crap to get angry over and make a lot of noise about it. The rest of the Gnome 2 traditionalists have simply realised that there is a growing collection of (how many is it now?) Gnome 2 forks out there and they are only a yum/apt-get away. Mate for example is now at version 1.6 and there is a Linux Mint LiveDVD that comes preinstalled with it.
  I'm not someone who froths at the mouth and gnaws my desk every time something changes. Even the perpetual shuffle on Windows only annoys me (OK, so what is the Nitwit Neighborhood called in this release?).
  But Gnome3 took away critical desktop assets that I used every day and all day. THAT is what the upheaval is about. It didn't change them, it removed them and left nothing comparable in its place. And that is what had me screaming in rage.
  I switched to Cinnamon, which replaces some, though not all of what I lost, and I don't mind the fact that it looks like Gnome3 at all.
14. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Ignacio · 2013-07-10 01:27 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  So then they shouldn't have called Gnome 3 "Gnome". Just like Microsoft shouldn't have called Windows 8 "Windows".
15. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by BrokenHalo · 2013-07-10 01:42 · Score: 1
  
  made middle mouse click be minimize windows
  
  OK, but anyone who has been around *nix for a while, or has the remotest claim to nerd cred should be aware that middle-click is supposed to paste.
16. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 01:51 · Score: 0
  
  So please tell me what got better with Gnome 3? And please, restrict yourself to things which could not have been done with a Gnome 2 style interface.
17. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by greenfruitsalad · 2013-07-10 01:53 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  What about the fact that, by default, widgets are so thick, you can barely see any content? When I tried Gnome 3, Gnome 3 was pretty much all I could see. Nothing else would fit on the screen. In Gnome2 and KDE3, vertical resolution of 768 points was still perfectly usable. Now, unless you have >= 1080, you're suffering.
  Do people with gnu/linux not use their computers to consume/create content? I do. I'm not interested in flicking through dynamic workspaces just to prove I don't need to minimise windows.
  Therefore, in my opinion - anybody using Gnome 3 and liking it, is insane.
  (Yes, my middle name is 'insensitive clod'.)
18. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by jbolden · 2013-07-10 01:57 · Score: 1
  
  I agree with you on Gnome 3. When you want to shift user bases you should rename the product. The problem is the developers see "Gnome" as not being the desktop but rather the GNU Object Model which has been updated. The users of the GNU Object Model are the developers not the users of the desktop.
  Microsoft wants the Windows 7 community to migrate to Windows 8. On the other hand I think there would be a lot less friction if they had called it "Metro OS the successor to Windows" and had made it clear Windows 7 was the last version of Windows in the traditional sense.
19. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Nerdfest · 2013-07-10 02:00 · Score: 2
  
  What finally did it for me was the "you shouldn't even be allowed to have widgets or themes" attitude of the Gnome devs. I'd tolerated Gnome shell despite its flaws up until then. With that kind of vision, we're eventually going to be very much at odds eventually, as I think Linux is all about options, and I like configuring my desktop to look and work the way *I* want. It's the same as iOS. If you think you'll be always be happy with someone elses' design, then by all means, stick with it, otherwise, get out as soon as you can.
  I moved to KDE and wish I'd done so earlier. It's fantastic, and doesn't get the attention it deserves from the Linux community.
20. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by ta_gueule · 2013-07-10 02:02 · Score: 1
  
  Because you think menus and overlapping windows come from Win95? Win95 is nothing special. it just uses the same interface all other desktop computers with a mouse and a keyboard use.
21. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by jbolden · 2013-07-10 02:08 · Score: 1
  
  Well for one thing what the article is about, the fact that the desktop is extensible with Javascript. We now have something for the GUI that can play a similar roleto shell scripts for the command line.
  Support for touch
  Integrated notification system
22. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 02:09 · Score: 0
  
  the fact GNOME 2 was/is great also doesn't help at all.
  Gnome 2 wasn't great. But it was sufficient.
23. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 02:12 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Some people just can't stand anything changing
  Again, for the 100th time, I must patiently explain that it's not the change itself that's the problem.
  The problem is when the change takes away features and functionality, or hides them.
  For example, Windows underwent a significant amount of UI design change between 3.1 and WinXP, and almost all of it was an improvement.
  But we now have a new generation of UI designers who are operating on the theory that if you hide or remove features and functionality, it will make the interface better. We've seen the dismal results of their work: Canonical Unity, GNOME 3, and Windows 8 -- all resoundingly criticized for the hiding and/or removal of features, and for abandoning the crucial principle of discoverability.
24. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 02:12 · Score: 0
  
  I dont understand the problems that people have with it. I spent an hours learning it, I kept an open mind and ended up really liking it.
  Do you also like the crashes, or perhaps your GNOME 3 doesn't crash on you? Have you ever seen the sad computer and the words "something has gone wrong"? Many people get a lot of this. Quite often just by activating an extension or clicking a panel icon.
  For me, there are two big problems with GNOME 3: the first is technical, the second political. The technical problem concerns the stability of the shell, which is, unfortunately, a never-ending story, due to to the close integration of the extensions with the shell/panel -- errors in extensions too often crash the shell. I'm really glad I've switched to Cinnamon, since with their panel applets, which use a stable API, I see that a lot less often. One would think two years after release is enough to stabilize the environment, but no. A new version still crashes old extensions, new extensions that catch up with the new version introduce new bugs, and their bugs still crash the whole shell session. A few times it even crashed my X11 session altogether.
  The political problem consists of the decision to alienate the existing user base in order to satisfy a non-existent user base, that is, users of tablets and smartphones. The default GNOME 3 UI doesn't make much sense on a desktop PC, period. For people who'd built their workflows around GNOME 2 and had learnt it by heart, the defaults of the new UI are pulling rugs from under their feet. This of course can be alleviated by using extensions that re-create the old experience, but then the "something has gone wrong" story begins.
  I appreciate and support a lot of (most? all?) changes under the hood that took place in GNOME 3, but the UI is a disaster. That's why you see MATE and Cinnamon gaining traction.
25. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by TWX · 2013-07-10 02:14 · Score: 1
  
  Heh. I'm no developer nor have I ever been and I loaded Linux for the first time in many years over the weekend for a new box. When Gnome loaded, my first though was, "What the hell is this?"
  
  My second thought was, "Maybe KDE still looks a little like HP's CDE and will actually make sense". When I have a chance I may give it a shot.
  
  --
  Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
26. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by TWX · 2013-07-10 02:21 · Score: 1
  
  Windows 95 did something important, it created both a go-to button for the bulk of tasks for the novice user, it created an intuitive (albeit clunky underneath) method to handle files as a component of the user interface, and it showed a list of active applications on-screen with the taskbar.
  
  Initially Apple left off an easy way to manage open applications. I've seen lots of people confused over where their Clarisworks was because it was running but hidden and they didn't know how to switch to it. I've seen people confused in Windows 3.x because their running programs looked more like files on the desktop, and their files weren't on the desktop, and god-help-them if someone minimized Program Manager.
  
  Unfortunately when it comes to the mainstream, those are really the only two that have significant market penetration.
  
  --
  Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
27. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by smi.james.th · 2013-07-10 02:33 · Score: 1
  
  I was about to say, what about Cinnamon? I've never run into a shortcoming of Cinnamon, though I'll admit I'm not as much of a power-user as some.
  
  --
  One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
28. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Shark · 2013-07-10 02:52 · Score: 2
  
  I may be naive, but I think adapting the workflow to the interface is backward. The interface is there to allow you to work, it should adapt itself to *your* workflow. With Gnome 2, if you wanted a pannel on the right side of the screen, you put a pannel on the right side of the screen. If you wanted a taskbar on the left side, you put a taskbar on the left. If you wanted the notification area in a specific corner, you put it there.
  People cling to Gnome 2 because it at least granted them the freedom to adjust the interface to their workflow and the ability to do so was built into the interface. You had various components and while the default layout was alright, it was only that, a default layout, you could lay them out however you pleased. Now it's all integrated for the sake of integration with no real benefit except perhaps if your workflow happened to meet the dev's vision.
  
  --
  Mind the frickin' laser...
29. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Dcnjoe60 · 2013-07-10 02:56 · Score: 2
  
  What about the fact that, by default, widgets are so thick, you can barely see any content? When I tried Gnome 3, Gnome 3 was pretty much all I could see. Nothing else would fit on the screen. In Gnome2 and KDE3, vertical resolution of 768 points was still perfectly usable. Now, unless you have >= 1080, you're suffering.
  Do people with gnu/linux not use their computers to consume/create content? I do. I'm not interested in flicking through dynamic workspaces just to prove I don't need to minimise windows.
  Therefore, in my opinion - anybody using Gnome 3 and liking it, is insane.
  (Yes, my middle name is 'insensitive clod'.)
  The original Gnome 3 theme did have a large title bar and extra padding, but that was resolved long ago. Besides, there are a myriad of themes with different sized title bars and widgets to choose from.
  As for dynamic workspaces, you can turn those off and use fixed ones, if you like and you can even add back the maximize/minimize buttons. In reality, Gnome 3 is pretty flexible. It's a shame it was released when it was because of outside pressure. If it had matured a little longer so more of the pieces were in place, it probably would have been much better received. KDE4 had the same issue, it's early release wasn't meant for every day use and they lost a lot of users, too.
30. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Dcnjoe60 · 2013-07-10 02:58 · Score: 2
  
  Well personally I ran screaming in horror after the first two hours of flailing around trying to regain something approaching my old workflow. To each his own I suppose.
  That's strange, because apt-get install xfce or its equivalent usually only takes about 10 minutes unless you have a really slow connection.
31. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Dcnjoe60 · 2013-07-10 03:04 · Score: 1
  
  What finally did it for me was the "you shouldn't even be allowed to have widgets or themes" attitude of the Gnome devs. I'd tolerated Gnome shell despite its flaws up until then. With that kind of vision, we're eventually going to be very much at odds eventually, as I think Linux is all about options, and I like configuring my desktop to look and work the way *I* want. It's the same as iOS. If you think you'll be always be happy with someone elses' design, then by all means, stick with it, otherwise, get out as soon as you can.
  I moved to KDE and wish I'd done so earlier. It's fantastic, and doesn't get the attention it deserves from the Linux community.
  I've heard that complaint about the gnome devs, but have yet to find actual evidence of it. It seems that if they really thought that way, they wouldn't have made gnome-shell extensible so that one could change widget and themes. The fact that they didn't build the initial tool to make those changes, while frustrating, is understandable as changing themes was not as high a priority as getting the rest of it working.
  As for KDE, yes, it is very good and extensible, too. However, if you had switched earlier, before it stabalized, you would be complaining about it, too, just like the many kde users were when KDE4 came out.
  What hurt Gnome 3 the most is the same thing that hurt KDE 4. Distros switched right away to the new versions of both, even though they weren't ready for average users. They should have stuck with Gnome 2 (and KDE 3) for another release or two, but allowed the new versions to be installed. That way, once the initial version 1.0 kinks got worked out, the transition for most users would have been much smoother. Then again, the Gnome and KDE devs don't have much say over what the distros do.
32. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Dcnjoe60 · 2013-07-10 03:10 · Score: 1
  
  So then they shouldn't have called Gnome 3 "Gnome". Just like Microsoft shouldn't have called Windows 8 "Windows".
  Not really. After all Gnome 2 is open source. If the the target base for Gnome 3 was different than Gnome 2, there was nothing stopping somebody from picking up the Gnome 2 base and continuing it. Which is what the Mate desktop basically is. The same thing happened with KDE 3 and there is Trinity. However, Trinity has a very small user base compared to the original KDE 3 base and only time will tell if Mate is successful in keeping the Gnome 2 interface alive or not.
  Gnome 3 is the third iteration of the Gnome Desktop Environment, there is no reason for it not to include the 3.
33. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by ta_gueule · 2013-07-10 03:11 · Score: 1
  
  Before that there was RiscOS, AmigaOS, AmiDOCK, Directory Opus, CDE, ...
34. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 03:20 · Score: 0
  
  So do you know a way to get rid of this annoying "feature" that dialogs stick to the title bar of the parent window (and often hide something I want to see, and there's no way to move them out of the way)?
35. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by jbolden · 2013-07-10 03:22 · Score: 1
  
  The ability to modify where things appear like that is an example of the sorts of changes I was talking about. It isn't integrated for the sake of integrated, it is integrated because it is much easier to genuinely engage in design when you can lock things down. Your car would be much more complex if it optionally let you reverse the brake and acceleration pedal or drive from the right front seat. What you get from locking things down is a far better default design.
  As for how configurable something should be over how designed it is a trade. Gnome has always been on the side of design in theory. Linux has always been on the side of configurability.
  Gnome I think is going for
  a) strong defaults
  b) an expectation the defaults are in place
  c) the ability to alter defaults but those alterations become responsible with working with everyone else
  which is very similar to Apple / OSX approach.
36. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by armanox · 2013-07-10 03:28 · Score: 1
  
  If you really want CDE it's open source now....
  
  --
  I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
37. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Lisias · 2013-07-10 03:41 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I dont understand the problems that people have with it.[...]
  Ergo, you don't understand the way people uses computers. :-)
  I *create* things on my computer. Each "task" is done using a Code Editor (for code), an Text Processor (for requirements), a bunch of Browsers (for references, searches when in doubt and task and bug tracking) and sometimes a graphical editor (for, imagine that, graphics processing).
  Some tasks need a subset of all above. Some others, need them all. And having a workspace based on applications is the very dumbest idea of all times - producing content is a multi-hole, multi disciplinar, task.
  Gnome 3 tried to force down end-user, consumer solutions into professional's throat. Bad idea - not even Microsoft succeed into this (see Windows 8.1).
  My solution to the problem? I just switched for Mac OS X. I found it was easier to work there than to wait 1 or 2 years until Gnome realize the huge mistake they did.
  (And NO, I WILL NOT USE KDE - I don't like Windows-like environments, or I would use Windows at the first place!).
  
  --
  Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
38. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by bill_mcgonigle · 2013-07-10 03:51 · Score: 1
  
  Gnome wanted to shift its target market.
  That's a good insight. I wish the governors of the major linux desktop distros would have realized this much earlier (or even today in some cases) and either not gone along with GNOME 3 or relegated it to a niche spin (which it does deserve as an interesting alternative technology).
  
  --
  My God, it's Full of Source!
  OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
39. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 03:57 · Score: 0
  
  Exactly. How soon views are tainted by nostalgia. During its heyday, Gnome 2 was constantly being criticized for the devs removing features and configuration options. It really is sad commentary on Gnome 3 that it is so bad that the dumbed-down Gnome 2 is now viewed as something good in comparison.
40. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 03:58 · Score: 0
  
  gnome-shell is, in my opinion, the best thing to happen to the desktop since WIMP.
  One hit of the Windows^H^H^H^H^H^H meta key, and you have a spotlight-like launcher to load your apps.
  Got a problem? Alt+F2 and type r to reload.
  Want to hack around with stuff? It's all HTML/CSS and Javascript. Alt+F2 and type 'lg' to get the inspector up.
  I don't know what people complain about. Gnome 3 / Gnome Shell is very, very usable with a tiny amount of learning. And it's clutter free.
41. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by bill_mcgonigle · 2013-07-10 03:59 · Score: 1
  
  /. has become ultra conservative when it comes to interface changes.
  Interestingly, that conservatism also leaks over into 'vendor' loyalty. Rightly, GNOME 3 should never have been integrated into the major desktop linux distros. The idea that "we like what upstream has done with v2, and now they're going to v3, so we need to go to v3" is a degree of loyalty that ought to be proven, not granted.
  It's probably a hard lesson to learn, but perhaps a necessary step for the ecosystem. Given the decision again, I wonder how many might have switched to LXDE, XFCE, or KDE as their default GUI.
  I hope the rigor that was missed on GNOME 3 is applied to the Wayland/et. al. stack progression (and others making very large changes). That's a bit conservative too, but good progressivism in any field of endeavor ought to have a merit filter and not merely embrace change for the sake of change.
  
  --
  My God, it's Full of Source!
  OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
42. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Lunix+Nutcase · 2013-07-10 04:01 · Score: 2
  
  Some people have work to do and use their computers as tools to get shit done. Not all of us have time to continually waste re-learning the newest fad desktop paradigm pushed by UX designers who need to continually justify the existence of their jobs.
43. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 04:18 · Score: 1
  
  Well for one thing what the article is about, the fact that the desktop is extensible with Javascript. We now have something for the GUI that can play a similar roleto shell scripts for the command line.
  I said: "And please, restrict yourself to things which could not have been done with a Gnome 2 style interface."
  Sawfish could be extended using a Lisp dialect. So now it's JavaScript. That's another language, but not another concept. Being able to customize with JavaScript is completely orthogonal to the UI design.
  
  Support for touch
  I said: "And please, restrict yourself to things which could not have been done with a Gnome 2 style interface."
  Support for touch needs drivers and APIs. It doesn't need a complete change to the UI.
  
  Integrated notification system
  I said: "And please, restrict yourself to things which could not have been done with a Gnome 2 style interface."
  An integrated notification system (if you see that as an advantage) is completely orthogonal to the UI, except that you have to provide some UI component which displays those notifications. But you certainly could do that on a Gnome 2 style interface.
  So, I'm still waiting for improvements which could not have been done with a Gnome 2 style interface.
  Captcha: disagree. How apt. :-)
44. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by HiThere · 2013-07-10 04:55 · Score: 1
  
  1) KDE4's issues over KDE3 were fewer and smaller than those of Gnome3, and they still drove me to Gnome2.
  2) KDE4 is still not as good as KDE3 was, but I'm now using KDE4 to avoid Gnome3.
  3) Given the problems I have with both of them, I'd prefer to be using xfce, but my wife doesn't like it as well. (I'd really prefer KDE3.)
  4) I don't really like fidding with my machine. I have other things I want to be doing. And Gnome3 gratuitously breaks adaptations between versions, so I would need to WANT to be constantly fiddling with it to find it at all usable.
  Perhaps there are others with other work flows that feel differently. (Actually that's pretty obviously true.) But to me Gnome3 is mainly about trashing Gnome2, to the point where I have several times suspected intentional sabotage by the designers.
  
  --
  
  I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
45. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by HiThere · 2013-07-10 05:04 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry, but I've tried Gnome3 repeatedly. (Really don't like KDE4 either, and I kept hoping they'd make it usable.) They didn't. They actually kept making it worse.
  I'd use xfce, but my wife doesn't like it. I'd prefer to use KDE3. Gnome2 was a good alternative. Now I've got KDE4, which is sufficient, if not good. (KDE3 was good leaning towards excellent.)
  I originally assumed that there were underlying technological problems that caused the change, but apparently the designers just decided they didn't like what people were doing.
  
  --
  
  I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
46. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by jma05 · 2013-07-10 05:45 · Score: 2
  
  Sometime ago, I was reading the mailing list post where the devs discuss removing the minimize button. The lead removes it, tests it on two, just two devs, whom he admits are atypical users. They are not happy about the change, but say they can live with it. So he removes it. Huh?
  I thought that the Gnome foundation was big on HCI... and this is what passes for testing radical changes to on one of the most established UI conventions of the universal WIMP interface for the most popular Linux Desktop at the time? I am all for trying out new Window Managers and interaction metaphors, but you just don't mess with a mainstream UI without a lot of testing and feedback, especially for Gnome, which was not meant to be an adventurous desktop, but rather something you used without thinking too much about it.
  I ended up with Cinnamon as well.
47. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by UltraZelda64 · 2013-07-10 05:58 · Score: 1
  
  http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2013/07/08/fedora-19-review-schrodingers-cat/2/
  Based on the pictures of GNOME 3 on that page of that Fedora 19 review, it looks like GNOME 3's GUI is still fat. It looks pretty much exactly the same as it looked a long time ago... ugly and with tons of wasted screen space. I still see that "title bar and extra padding" you mentioned that's supposedly been fixed.
  GNOME 3 is a disaster. Hell, KDE4 was too for that matter, but I'm pretty sure after this much time of it being officially released, it was well on its path to becoming a very decent environment and showing promising results. They both fucked up. Only it seems the GNOME project fucked up worse, and they're still struggling to get people to use their desktop. No surprise; it seems they're still dumbing it down, as I noticed in the latest Fedora GNOME 3 *hides* the Log Out option by default... until you install another window manager or desktop environment and reboot. And as usual, no way of "correcting" this behavior without messing with registry values. What the fuck?
  The problem is these fucking idiots in charge who want to be 100% in control of everything, never taking any outside input or criticism, and telling everyone who doesn't like the direction they're going to fuck off. It's ironic that, since inception, they said the GNOME 2 desktop was going away and that the "fallback mode" was only intended to be used if 3D hardware/drivers are not available. They continuously said that they were not going to provide a "desktop" environment; either use GNOME 3 as we want to force it down your throat or get the hell out of here. Hell, when it was announced that GNOME 3 fallback mode was being deprecated, they stood by their words: they were not going to bring a traditional environment back. It wasn't until at least *weeks* later, and then they announce GNOME Classic mode. WTF?
  Too little, too late. After Unity, MATE, Cinnamon, Consort and who knows what else spawned using GTK+ (typically using "traditional" GUI elements), the GNOME project tries to "win back" users. Just for the way they act alone (read: ASSHOLES) they don't even deserve any users. If they would get someone besides the hard-headed, artistic, creative, marketing type idiot running their project, then maybe it wouldn't be getting run into the ground.
48. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by geminidomino · 2013-07-10 06:18 · Score: 1
  
  Gnome 3 is the third iteration of the Gnome Desktop Environment, there is no reason for it not to include the 3.
  The statement was never that the "3" should not have been included. The "Gnome" is the misleading bit, since it's apparently intended for an entirely new "market."
49. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by spitzak · 2013-07-10 07:18 · Score: 1
  
  No, Windows 95 really did have some innovations that were not in the X desktops at that time. Don't discount them just because they seem obvious now or that Microsoft really did develop them.
  1. The "taskbar" contained an item for a window whether or not the window was open. All previous systems (including earlier windows) had "icons" that were only there for "closed" windows (ie a window was either "visible" or "iconized"). The taskbar realizes that users don't keep track of whether they last left a window iconized, and that windows can be buried and hidden.
  2. They removed divider lines between window borders and contents. This made the graphics much thinner and cleaner looking. You should look at contemporary designs back then, nobody else figured out this graphics improvement.
  3. As stated, making "everthing you can do" be in a tree with a single root (the "start" button) actually helped users a LOT by making it possible to search for what they wanted to do without having to wonder if they missed it.
50. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Black+Parrot · 2013-07-10 07:54 · Score: 1
  
  GNOME 3 is a disaster. Hell, KDE4 was too for that matter
  And Windows 8.
  I think our planet is passing through a cloud of gas or region of space that makes developers want to crank up the stupid in user interfaces.
  
  --
  Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
51. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Black+Parrot · 2013-07-10 07:55 · Score: 1
  
  Well personally I ran screaming in horror after the first two hours of flailing around trying to regain something approaching my old workflow.
  So you're one of those old fashioned types who thinks computers are supposed to be useful for something?
  
  --
  Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
52. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Black+Parrot · 2013-07-10 08:01 · Score: 1
  
  Well for one thing what the article is about, the fact that the desktop is extensible with Javascript. We now have something for the GUI that can play a similar roleto shell scripts for the command line.
  That was in GNOME 1's default WM, Sawfish.
  One reason I dread system upgrades is that every change to GNOME makes it harder to get my old hypercustomized desktop back.
  
  --
  Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
53. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 08:07 · Score: 0
  
  I keep hearing this from KDE users... "GNOME 3 is a bigger disaster than KDE 3 was".
  Bullshit. You are just desperate to rewrite history.
  I'm no fan of the GNOME 3 shell - the design is broken.
  However... it's no KDE 3. That KDE release was a complete technical, design and release failure.
  Right across the board. It failed on every level and was an embarrassment to Free software. It revealed the utter incompetence of those in charge of the KDE project and the complete lack of technical skills of those coding it.
  GNOME 3 on the other hand was a massive improvement across the entire software stack. Where it went wrong was the design of the gnome shell,
  In no way was it comparable mess to KDE. Not even close.
54. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by jbolden · 2013-07-10 08:14 · Score: 1
  
  On both KDE 4 and GNOME 3 the distributions have done a bad job of communicating with GUI designers on a rollout strategy. At the same time GUI designers have done a bad job being unambiguous enough in their communications to communicate effectively. Both projects suffered horribly for these mistakes and they won't likely be repeated but it would have been a lot better for everyone if they hadn't.
  The big issue with GNOME is that RedHat understood the strategy and Ubuntu understood the strategy. But Ubuntu in particular didn't do a good job of managing it, mainly because as the migration to GNOME 3 was happening they were in a pissing contest with the GNOME devs and GNOME foundation.
55. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by crutchy · 2013-07-10 09:57 · Score: 0
  
  anyone who has been around *nix for a while, or has the remotest claim to nerd cred should be aware that middle-click is supposed to paste
  hahahahaha you made a funny... right?
56. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by crutchy · 2013-07-10 09:59 · Score: 0
  
  I don't really like fidding with my machine. I have other things I want to be doing.
  use windows or mac... your quote is one of their favourite catch cries over linux (even though in reality windows probably requires more maintenance than linux and mac probably about the same)
57. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by jbolden · 2013-07-10 14:36 · Score: 1
  
  For the window manager yes. For the GUI no.
58. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by jbolden · 2013-07-10 14:38 · Score: 1
  
  Sawfish could be extended using a Lisp dialect. So now it's JavaScript.
  
  That's the WM not the GUI.
  
  Support for touch needs drivers and APIs. It doesn't need a complete change to the UI.
  
  I suggest you think about that for a moment. How does a non-touch application respond to pinch, to overscroll. Buttons need to be larger. GUI refresh times need to be much much shorter. Yes it does need an entirely new UI.
59. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by pwizard2 · 2013-07-10 14:44 · Score: 1
  
  KDE 4.0 was more of a prototype; it was never meant for production systems. You can't blame the KDE4 team because distro maintainers decided to replace KDE3 before KDE4 was really ready.
  
  --
  "It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
60. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Billly+Gates · 2013-07-10 15:12 · Score: 1
  
  Why has it become ultra conservative?
  If you had a time machine and went back to the summer of 2003 and said "Hey we all still will be using Windows XP and even prefering it! Also many here will hate change and demand 3 year old GUIs too!"
  You would be laughed at!
  But lets look what happened?
  In the good old days Windows and Linux just worked. You could customize Windows for many apps with this new 1990s thing called a task bar. You could organize your start menu with frequently used documents. In Linux you could customize it to your heart contents. Ubuntu 6.06 was gorgous! Its fonts were AA back then before patent lawsuits. You could turn on COmpiviz and make water effects apps catching on fire when you closed them, cpu monitors on the top Gnone task bar!
  You could multitask easily on the screen and life was good. Good old days in computing when things were so much better. May those days rest in peace :-( ... only bad thing is we had crappy cell phones then. So now we must only use cell phone single tasking simplistic craplets to replace what we supperiorly had before. Fuck that!
  Yes a galaxy 4 beat my cyr... whatever the fuck I ran 10 years ago in greenscreen glory with its .mid ringtones but at what cost? That my desktop now is unusuable iwth an ugly orange full screen WIndows 8.1 news applet loads with no recourse besides a doorway amesia inducing OS? Fuck that. I will keep my Windows 7 and CentOS 6 for the next 10 years. I wont change!
  Not because I am an old man but because we know better. Maybe Windows 9 and Gnome 4 will change my opinion? But I like to move forward and man this is so backwards. Even Windows 3.0 let me multitask easier and had prettier graphics. Here I have a supercomputer GPU and it emulates EGA graphics with no aero WTF
  Workflows or not my users hate the cloud as things that could be resolved within 6 hours take 1 week now as they have to call Indian help desk which calls us who then calls the cloud provider where they call two other departments to fix the problem. Not hey email bill our exchange admin to fix this asap! Then after lunch it is solved.
  I feel sorry for them and makes me want to quit I.T. Everything is getting worse
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
61. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by jbolden · 2013-07-10 16:47 · Score: 1
  
  I agree. Apple's handling of their switch from GCC to LLVM is a good example where they kept both for a while is a good example of how distributions could have handled this better.
  Some distributions btw didn't switch.For example Knoppix went from KDE 3 to LXDE. On the other hand distributions like Fedora, Arch, Mandriva forks or Gentoo did the right thing in following the "latest and greatest". Their users expect that. Ubuntu was really the tricky case and they sort of did their own thing with Unity.
  As far as Wayland... that's going to be very dicey. Wayland has an X11 built in so there is no good reason not to switch to Wayland. The big issue is going to be going with Wayland only compiled applications. I suspect for the Linux world that's going to happen mainly on applications where performance matters. But Gnome given their focus on touch (where latency really really matters) are going to have to be among those. So it wouldn't shock me if Gnome 4 or Gnome 5 is Wayland only.
62. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 18:41 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, a lack of common sense, that's what you're missing.
63. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 20:42 · Score: 0
  
  You can blame the KDE people for giving a release name to a non-release.
64. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-11 01:51 · Score: 0
  
  If you really prefer KDE3 then why not install Trinity Desktop Environment, it is the fork of KDE3 from when official KDE3 development stopped.
65. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by HiThere · 2013-07-11 06:52 · Score: 1
  
  Some people have reported good success with Trinity. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them. I have never even succeeded in getting it to install. (Usually this was because the servers were down, or perhaps just "inaccessible" whenever I tried to access the debs. This made apt-get quite a slow process...one that often failed because it was unable to access the repository.) After about a month, perhaps a bit less, I gave up and removed the repositories.
  
  --
  
  I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
66. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-11 06:59 · Score: 0
  
  Pure rewriting of history. The KDE team were pushing it as a release version.. it's only later after it became clear what a fucking disaster it was that they, and their stupid super-fans, started claiming that it was the distros fault.
  Yet more evidence of how bankrupt the KDE project was and is.
67. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-11 10:03 · Score: 0
  
  Agreed.... gnome 3 went through some pains, but it's still better than the Unity
68. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by jbolden · 2013-07-11 13:10 · Score: 1
  
  Alex what they could have done was not had GNOME 3 as an option or had them as exclusive options.
69. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by bill_mcgonigle · 2013-07-12 03:46 · Score: 1
  
  On the other hand distributions like Fedora, Arch, Mandriva forks or Gentoo did the right thing in following the "latest and greatest"
  I think the trick here, for the governance of the distros, is when the latest isn't the greatest. "Follow upstream" is an easy approach, but some sort of criteria ought to be thought about for when doing so is going to cause damage.
  My recent Fedora upgrade pain was around the MariaDB/mysql swap-out. Improper dependencies aside, that's the kind of change that was handled properly.
  
  --
  My God, it's Full of Source!
  OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
70. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by lsatenstein · 2013-07-12 05:36 · Score: 1
  
  Some people just can't stand anything changing
  Again, for the 100th time, I must patiently explain that it's not the change itself that's the problem.
  The problem is when the change takes away features and functionality, or hides them.
  For example, Windows underwent a significant amount of UI design change between 3.1 and WinXP, and almost all of it was an improvement.
  But we now have a new generation of UI designers who are operating on the theory that if you hide or remove features and functionality, it will make the interface better. We've seen the dismal results of their work: Canonical Unity, GNOME 3, and Windows 8 -- all resoundingly criticized for the hiding and/or removal of features, and for abandoning the crucial principle of discoverability.
  ===
  its back to the command line for us. (I switched to KDE). During Fedora 19 alphas and betas cinnamon was not available.
  Time to flip between cinnamon and KDE. Gnome 3 is too flashy and not providing enough functionality. Even Gnome with Fedora 18 was much better than Gnome3 with Fedora 19. (In my opinion)
  
  --
  Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
71. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Raenex · 2013-07-12 11:05 · Score: 1
  
  At the same time GUI designers have done a bad job being unambiguous enough in their communications to communicate effectively. Both projects suffered horribly for these mistakes and they won't likely be repeated but it would have been a lot better for everyone if they hadn't.
  The GUI designers didn't give a shit, and they won't give a shit in the future. As a freeloading user, I can't say I fully blame them, unless they are paid to care. Sure, it would have been nice if they cared about backwards compatibility or user concerns, but that's not as fun as designing new stuff, now is it?
72. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by jbolden · 2013-07-12 12:05 · Score: 1
  
  GUI designers do give a shit. No one likes that kind of ferocious backlash. It isn't fun to work on something hard and get that kind of bad press.
73. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Raenex · 2013-07-12 15:32 · Score: 1
  
  There was plenty of bad press early on in the process. They showed no willingness to either listen to users or work on meaningful backwards compatibility. There was also the bad press surrounding KDE3 to 4, and also the original Gnome to Gnome 2 transition, so it's not like they couldn't have seen this coming.
  I've also seen no contrition on their part. Perhaps you can point to some?
  As I said, if they weren't getting paid, then I can't blame them. Doing careful work, paying careful attention to user feedback, and maintaining backwards compatibility, is all hard work, and not nearly as quick or fun as cowboying up a new design without regards to either.
74. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by jbolden · 2013-07-12 22:20 · Score: 1
  
  I've also seen no contrition on their part. Perhaps you can point to some?
  
  Yes. There was a big discussion around Gnome 3.4 days on the "Is GNOME still relevant".
  a) Canonical didn't come crawling back, much the opposite.
  b) The backlash didn't stop
  c) Mate and Cinnamon were created and Mint started to take share from Ubuntu
  They aren't happy. Contrition is probably the wrong word though. They didn't sign up to maintain GNOME 2. They aren't there to build a 90s style desktop. They mostly agree they handled the community interaction badly. But they don't agree that the goal is a bad one. They continue to want GNOME first and foremost to be a mobile OS. They understand that means losing their existing customer base. They want 20% of the global user community. That is they want Maemo as a do over, not GNOME 2.
75. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Raenex · 2013-07-13 02:00 · Score: 1
  
  So basically they are upset they ended up losing out, but really don't give a crap about the existing Gnome 2 userbase they pissed off. I fail to see how this supports your earlier statements.
  By the way, this statement in particular:
  
  They didn't sign up to maintain GNOME 2. They aren't there to build a 90s style desktop.
  is particularly telling, and supports what I said.
76. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by jbolden · 2013-07-13 02:23 · Score: 1
  
  So basically they are upset they ended up losing out, but really don't give a crap about the existing Gnome 2 userbase they pissed off. I fail to see how this supports your earlier statements.
  
  My earlier statement is the were unhappy with the bad press, they were unhappy they "ended up losing out". Dropping the existing GNOME 2 userbase had to happen, they had no choice. On the other hand they could have dropped them in a way that was less destructive to Gnome. And they are unhappy about that.
  You were claiming they didn't want to listen and that was true and it has changed. That's real contrition. That doesn't mean they are willing to listen to users who want a 90s a style desktop. But they are much more willing to listen to users about how best to construct a modern desktop.
77. Re:As someone who uses GNOME 3... by Raenex · 2013-07-13 03:28 · Score: 1
  
  Dropping the existing GNOME 2 userbase had to happen, they had no choice.
  No, they didn't, and if they weren't cowboys having fun with new whiz-bang ideas they wouldn't have adopted this idea. That's why they don't give a shit, and abused the Gnome 2 userbase as they did, and any claims that they really care is so much hot air.
  Let me give you one some simple examples of how they could have approached things. First, let me say I'm running Gnome 3 on my desktop right now, and I get by with a few tweaks.
  When I switched to Gnome 3, I lost all my custom settings, like my background, my theme, and my caps-as-ctl setting. All of these could have been carried forward if they cared. That's what it entails to make an effort at the un-fun stuff.
  Another example is I used to have the standard system load widget in the system tray or whatever the Gnome name for it is. When I switched it was lost, and I could find no replacement. I googled around and found a blog post saying how great the new API was for the Gnome 3 system tray (or whatever the proper name is), and you could do everything Gnome 2 could and more.
  Great, so why didn't they have a wrapper to support backwards compatibility? Because they didn't care. They went with the "clean slate" model because it was fun and easy, and left everybody else to pick up the pieces.
a couple years late by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-09 22:43 · Score: 0

everyone who was a gnome2 user switched to xfce or something similar.
1. Re:a couple years late by rvw · 2013-07-09 22:54 · Score: 0
  
  everyone who was a gnome2 user switched to xfce or something similar.
  Except for me. I use Ubuntu at work as my daily desktop. I used 11.04 as long as possible because I didn't like Unity at all, but in October 2012 I had to move on. I reinstalled my system because the upgrade went wrong for some reason and wanted to use 12.04LTS only. Some apps don't have a tray icon anymore. I still don't like the way the app launcher works. It's not a big issue for me but I can understand that many people find it non intuitive. The most irritating is the disappearing menu - I want it to be there all the time. I'm going to try Gnome 3 and see how that works out. Maybe it's better, but Unity is workable for me. Compiz is garbage however, crashes many times.
2. Re:a couple years late by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-09 22:57 · Score: 0
  
  or just still using gnome2 (either via MATE or using a slow moving distro). From these folks point of view GNOME3 is a whole different product rather than an upgrade.
  Suppose you like abiword. you wouldn't 'upgrade' to libreoffice and then spend a day installing plugins to try to make it behave like abiword.
3. Re:a couple years late by kthreadd · 2013-07-09 23:07 · Score: 1
  
  Or something completely different: fvwm2
  Stable as stone.
4. Re:a couple years late by SuricouRaven · 2013-07-09 23:47 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I used to use ubuntu. Took one look at Unity and switched to xubuntu.
5. Re:a couple years late by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 00:31 · Score: 0
  
  Trayvon Martin was a Gnome 2 user.
  One time, on a dark and stormy night, he took one look at Gnome 3 and cried "Someone please just shoot me."
6. Re:a couple years late by Mashdar · 2013-07-10 01:08 · Score: 2
  
  I used 12.04 for a long time without Unity by installing the gnome-desktop package, which IIRC was Gnome 3.
  I've recently switched to Mint 14 on MATE (modified Gnome 2) and have not had any regrets.
  I did have to bind ctrl+alt+t to open a terminal, though :)
7. Re:a couple years late by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 02:16 · Score: 1
  
  I used to use ubuntu. Took one look at Unity and switched to xubuntu.
  Similar to me, except that I took the opportunity to rediscover KDE and found that it was a very polished and pleasant desktop.
  I'm actually glad that GNOME self-destructed, forcing me to learn that a better desktop existed.
8. Re:a couple years late by oodaloop · 2013-07-10 03:04 · Score: 1
  
  Same, but with Lubuntu instead.
  
  --
  Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
9. Re:a couple years late by doti · 2013-07-10 03:10 · Score: 1
  
  Why switch?
  Haven't you heard of MATE?
  
  --
  factor 966971: 966971
10. Re:a couple years late by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 04:20 · Score: 0
  
  Coincidentally, that's how OJ reacted to Unity. The rest is history.
gnome-shell only bad for geeks by deaf.seven · 2013-07-09 23:00 · Score: 2

I've installed Ubuntu with gnome-shell for 3 computer illiterate friends.
Once I've explained them that they should always work with the super key (on most keyboards windows key) and if they want to start something just type it into the startmenu (I also installed gnome-do on F4, because it's a little faster and I like it better), then they didn't have any problems with it at all.
(One of that friend actually tried out unity too and even liked it!)
I remember when I first upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 (I think it was that one where gnome2 was removed and unity & gnome-shell were available), I was really disappointed and I really regretted having upgraded.
But I gave it a shot and I started to like it. I often like to use it on my laptop when I'm traveling. (On my desktop I use the i3 tiling window manager, strongly recommendable)
The point is: I believe it's mostly the geeks that have used static panels with static start menus for the past 10+ years that have the most problems with gnome-shell.
1. Re:gnome-shell only bad for geeks by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-09 23:07 · Score: 0
  
  More or less. I see comments here about preserving their workflow, which doesn't work - the thing with these new desktops (GNOME Shell, Unity) is that they do require you to adopt new workflows, and that's a problem for a lot of the people who do things like posting Slashdot comments.
  Personally I really like GNOME Shell, although I'm using Unity at the moment due to various issues non-Ubuntu distros are having with my brand new laptop and Ubuntu's version of GNOME 3 being just wrong enough to be annoying. And actually, Unity's okay, although I still find the menu handling concepts extremely dubious and find that the search interface isn't anywhere near as fluid or convenient as that in GNOME Shell.
  What I really want, actually, is for Unity and Shell to get together and share their best bits, because they both have awesome concepts going on.
2. Re:gnome-shell only bad for geeks by loufoque · 2013-07-09 23:24 · Score: 0
  
  Why you think that displaying the mediocrity of your friends on slashdot legitimates GNOME 3 is beyond me.
3. Re:gnome-shell only bad for geeks by gfxguy · 2013-07-09 23:30 · Score: 2
  
  Well, that was it for me - Unity completely violated my work-flow, multiple documents open on a very large monitor, with focus-follows-mouse. It didn't work for me on MacOS, and it didn't work for me in Unity. Then I got a new laptop and installed 12.10 on it... I don't like how small laptop screens have gotten (4x3 ratios actually give more pixels and more useful vertical space); in this case, I only want one window at a time because of the screen size, and having the launcher on the side (and no app-bar, or whatever you want to call it) saves crucial vertical space. So I got accustomed to it on the laptop... which helped me get accustomed to it on the desktop. I still hate the Mac UI, and I still have problems with Unity configurations (I just don't feel like spending so much time tweaking and still not getting things just right), but I find it usable, at least. I have a feeling I'll be spending a lot of time tweaking the UI today because now it's in my head. Thanks, slashdot.
  
  --
  Stupid sexy Flanders.
4. Re:gnome-shell only bad for geeks by MrWindmill · 2013-07-09 23:42 · Score: 0
  
  I used Ubuntu from 7.04 right up to 11.04 when they introduced Unity. I personally found it disrupting my workflow too much, so I tried Gnome 3 for a few months, and then XFCE. That was when I heard about Linux Mint and tried the MATE edition. Loved it, but missed the pretty Compiz animations from the Gnome 2 days. I've finally settled on Cinnamon as my favourite DE currently.
  I always loved the Gnome 2 look and feel, and I found it much easier to customise Cinnamon (than Gnome 3) to look like Gnome 2. As a DE, it's still not as mature as Gnome and is missing a few minor features, but it seems to be getting there. I'd say it's worth a try for anyone looking for a modern version of a Gnome2-ish look.
5. Re:gnome-shell only bad for geeks by gl4ss · 2013-07-10 00:15 · Score: 2
  
  Why you think that displaying the mediocrity of your friends on slashdot legitimates GNOME 3 is beyond me.
  it's a form of "it's just not for you".
  fyi, his friends would have been just as happy if not happier with icewm. it's not like they had any choice. it's a mystery how his friends know what magic to type into the start menu - which gets us to the why a gui was a wonderful addition to pc's, you didn't have to magically know what apps you have for a task.
  
  --
  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
6. Re:gnome-shell only bad for geeks by loufoque · 2013-07-10 00:28 · Score: 0
  
  My point is that what computer illiterate people are content with is fairly irrelevant with regards to the quality of what they use.
  I was also trying to troll a bit. I dislike how in every slashdot threads geeks feel obliged to talk about the handle the technology that their friends, wife or family might be using.
7. Re:gnome-shell only bad for geeks by ta_gueule · 2013-07-10 02:00 · Score: 1
  
  Nope. My gf hates it, my mother hates it too. Nothing is discoverable. People like to be told what they can do with the computer. Typing things on the keyboard or reading documentation is for geeks.
8. Re:gnome-shell only bad for geeks by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 02:07 · Score: 0
  
  I'm a professional *nix admin, and I absolutely LOVE Gnome 3. The people whining are just a vocal minority. Most people who are moderately displeased will go use a different DE. The loud minority that REALLY hate it, use a different DE, then bitch about it. Most people just use whatever their distro came with, which is usually Ubuntu or Mint currently. Fedora seems to be the big distro using Gnome 3 at the moment, and that distro is meant for developers and bleeding edge users wanting to see and test the newest developments in linux.
9. Re:gnome-shell only bad for geeks by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 02:14 · Score: 0
  
  Ah, so you are saying that gnome-shell is only bad for Linux users. Because face it, apart from servers (where the GUI is a non-issue anyway) the vast majority of Linux users consists of geeks.
10. Re:gnome-shell only bad for geeks by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 02:42 · Score: 0
  
  No. It's not "geeks", it's "users of GNOME 2". That is, the existing user-base of GNOME. Which can be proved by examples of my family and friends that I personally had migrated to GNOME 2 a long time ago -- no geeks among them -- who shared the critical opinions about GNOME 3 _usability_ (on the other hand, there was a lot of "Oooo.... Candy" about its looks).
why bother? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-09 23:02 · Score: 5, Informative

I know this will invite a flame or three, but the proper response here is Mate.
1. Re:why bother? by HiThere · 2013-07-10 05:55 · Score: 1
  
  IIUC, Mate is only a short-term solution because the underlying applications are no longer being developed. Cinnamon is the better long-term solution.
  Unfortunately, when I've tried either Mate or Cinnamon they've been too unresponsive to continue using. I'm not entirely sure why, but they are much less responsive than Gnome2 was, and are even less responsive than KDE4. Still, either is far better than Gnome3.
  My real hope is that xfce will develop a bit. Or possibly LXDE. (I'm not really after Lightweight, but I don't have a real problem with it, either, as long as I can supplement.)
  Unfortunately, one real requirement is that electricsheep run. Currently that appears to limit me to KDE4. I presume that this will eventually be addressed by its developers. (Yes, it's a silly requirement. My wife really likes the way it looks. So it's a requirement.)
  
  --
  
  I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
2. Re:why bother? by Duncan+J+Murray · 2013-07-13 21:09 · Score: 1
  
  Absolutely. I'm still on Gnome 2, but my plan is to move to MATE. Combined with something like Kupfer - there is little that combines it's productivity and speed.
  D
Mate and Trinity desktops by FudRucker · 2013-07-09 23:10 · Score: 1

Mate is really popular, and Trinity is a forked build of KDE-3.x both desktops i liked a lot back when Gnome-2.x and KDE-3.x were being included in Linux distros, i have Mate on a Debian Wheezy desktop, and it works great, have not tried Trinity lately so i dont know the status of it but it seemed to be along the same lines as the KDE-3.x build,. seems like those two third party desktop environments would be more popular, and even built as portable as possible so a Linux user can untar in ~/ and fix up an ~/.xinitrc file to launch it and BAM! you got your cool retro desktop

--
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
1. Re:Mate and Trinity desktops by armanox · 2013-07-10 03:38 · Score: 1
  
  TDE ran fantastic when I used it last on an older laptop (P3 1.2GHz, 1GB RAM, Fedora 16). I think the team needs some more manpower, since it's slow to support newer operating systems (F17 is the last supported FC, for example), and needs a lot of documentation (I'd build from source if they had some instructions, but it's a mess).
  
  --
  I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
2. Re:Mate and Trinity desktops by fnj · 2013-07-10 04:52 · Score: 1
  
  Why do you suppose that the Trinity team needs to "support" newer distro versions? The job of the DE team is to develop and maintain the DE code, period. It is the job of the distro to package it and put it in their repo. I would rag on the distros for ignoring Trinity and supporting failed acid-trip experiments like Gnome 3.
3. Re:Mate and Trinity desktops by armanox · 2013-07-10 05:33 · Score: 1
  
  As of right now the project is very geared towards Ubuntu. I just posted on Fedora Projects G+ page about supporting it, but I feel like they're going to say there isn't enough manpower on the TDE team to keep up with newer backend requirements (systemd, firewalld, etc).
  
  --
  I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Lubuntu Fan by misfit815 · 2013-07-09 23:23 · Score: 3, Insightful

Gnome 3 is why I switched to Lubuntu (LXDE) and I've been very happy with it ever since. But if you have to jump through so many hoops to make your software behave like you want it to behave, then something's fundamentally flawed.

--
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
Too little, too late by mfearby · 2013-07-09 23:30 · Score: 1

Why should I put in hours and hours trying to make bad software usable? I used Linux for 5 years until 8 months ago when I finally gave up on Linux because GNOME 2.30 was consigned to the dustbin and I got sick of the alternatives. Since then I've bought a Mac and never been happier. Sure, the Finder is utterly pathetic, and I pine for a taskbar to replace the dock, but apart from those two abominations, every other aspect of the Mac experience is without equal. So having a crappy file manager and no task bar is a price worth paying. But since GNOME shell ruined more than it improved, the Mac is by far the lesser of all the evils currently on offer. Sorry, Linux, but your fascination with throwing the baby out with the desktop environment bath water every few years is doing more harm than good; it's alienating users more than it's winning new converts!
PS: yes, I also wish my home and end keys actually did something useful on the Mac; thank goodness for the Keyfixer Firefox addon.
1. Re:Too little, too late by RDW · 2013-07-09 23:55 · Score: 1
  
  Why should I put in hours and hours trying to make bad software usable? I used Linux for 5 years until 8 months ago when I finally gave up on Linux because GNOME 2.30 was consigned to the dustbin and I got sick of the alternatives.
  8 months ago you could have spend 5 minutes installing MATE, which is really just Gnome 2 (rescued from the dustbin, cleaned up, and now nicely polished). It's not really 'Linux' that's the problem, just the attitude of the Gnome developers (who, to be fair, do seem to be coming to their senses lately).
2. Re:Too little, too late by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 00:49 · Score: 0
  
  Gnome developers have the same attitude that Apple UI developers (and the Windows 8 team of UI developers). Apple get away with it because of the RDF, but both Apple and MS have lock-in on the product, so both can manage to push people to their "vision".
  Gnome don't have the lock-in to push people to their "vision".
  Therefore their antics are far more noted than Microsoft's, never mind Apple's.
3. Re:Too little, too late by gl4ss · 2013-07-10 01:10 · Score: 1
  
  so.. because a window manager/"desktop environmen" which provides pretty much just a taskbar and a file manager you went to a system that has steaming pile of poo for both? (dock is a taskbar. it's just very shitty at being a taskbar, but fundamentally that's what it is. my personal favorite is the tiny led lights for showing if the app is on or not).
  
  --
  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
4. Re:Too little, too late by jbolden · 2013-07-10 02:21 · Score: 1
  
  I like Gnome 3 and think they did the right thing in terms of the shift. That being said, Gnome developers were incredibly arrogant in 2011. To pick a fight with Canonical, the system for the majority of their users base, was insane. To do it at the same time they were bringing out a major update was incredibly destructive. It is hard to imagine how they could have handled this release worse.
5. Re:Too little, too late by fnj · 2013-07-10 05:45 · Score: 1
  
  You make an interesting case. There is also a case to be made that the free Cygwin on Windows 7 gives you a pretty darn good environment. Cygwin has grown to be pretty remarkable, given that it now actually gives you /dev including sda, sr0, null, zero, etc; /proc including /proc/sys and /proc/registry; true hardlinks and symbolic links on NTFS; mapping NT users to *nix UIDs; a single / root with all your drives mounted on it; a really beautiful dynamically resizable bash terminal window; an ssh demon; and they have fixed the rough edges, like with ^C working in emacs for example. The biggest shortcoming is that they cannot implement sudo, but you can "run as administrator" a bash window .
  IMHO, and this is not meant as a lecture, you SEEM to have given up on linux without really exploring it. Sure, GNOME went full-on acid-trip batshit insane with version 3, and a lot of people think KDE took a fundamentally wrong turn with version 4, but for full DE's you still have MATE (actively maintained GNOME 2 clone) Trinity (actively maintained KDE 3 clone, for some definition of "actively"), Xfce, LXDE, Razor-Qt and the lesser known Étoilé and EDE. There is Enlightenment, a "semi-DE". And you can just use WMs without a DE: awesome, Blackbox, Openbox, Fluxbox, IceWM and the lesser known Ratpoison, wmii, dwm, xmonad, WindowLab, and Ion. I don't claim this list is exhaustive either.
  It's pretty hard for me to believe you wouldn't find one of those more agreeable to you than the Mac with its busted ass file manager and lack of a taskbar.
6. Re:Too little, too late by HiThere · 2013-07-10 06:23 · Score: 1
  
  There is a reason that most of the Desktop Environments are popular. GUI *is* important for many use-cases. And many of those that you mention aren't good choices. xfce and LXDE, however, ARE good choices. (WRT trinity, the times that I've tried to use it, it hasn't worked. Others, however, report reasonable to good success. So YMMV.)
  Desktop software is a complex ecosystem, and small groups can't keep it working. So I have my doubts about the long-term viability of MATE. Cinnamon, however, seems a worthy choice, though not as good as Gnome2 was. Note that xfce is being rebased on the Qt toolkit. This is because much of the Gnome2 underpinnings are unmaintained. (For that matter, IIUC, Razor-Qt is being merged into xfce, though I don't know that this means that the projects are being merged rather than just sharing a common code-base for their underpinnings. Perhaps MATE could also use that code-base, and thus survive. I admit to worrying about the long-term viability of Qt, as it's quasi-proprietary, but KDE has an agreement with the company [as an inheritor from Troll-tech] that should require the availability of the code...but doesn't specify what design changes will be acceptable. Ouch. Gnome2 is still available in that sense.)
  
  --
  
  I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
7. Re:Too little, too late by fnj · 2013-07-10 08:13 · Score: 1
  
  I am sure you realize that which choices are "good" ones is very subjective. I happen to agree with you that Xfce and LXDE are strong candidates, but Enlightenment and others have strong fans. Your point about the extremely modest resources available to many of the projects is well taken. I was very enthusiastic to hear that Xfce is being ported to Qt, if sad that GTK2 is fading as a viable option.
  I am not sure what the angst about Qt is; I've heard a lot of it, and it has never been well defined. Qt is not quasi-proprietary as far as I can tell. Yes, there is an option for commercial licensing, but so what? It's only one of several options. Qt was GPL'ed as far back as 2000 with version 2.2, with a further option for LGPL added in 2009 with version 4.5. Having both GPL and LGPL options seems to me to cover all bases without having to resort to the commercial licensing option. The Qt Project is under open governance. As far as I am concerned, any legitimate foundation for angst has dissipated. Could it conceivably be closed up in the future? Maybe; I don't think it would be easy, and the open source is out there and could be forked if necessary.
8. Re:Too little, too late by fnj · 2013-07-10 08:16 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry; Xfce -> LXDE of course.
9. Re:Too little, too late by mfearby · 2013-07-10 13:47 · Score: 1
  
  I've also grown tired of the need to find a new distro every 18 months to two years when the one I happen to have been using for a while decides to embrace batshit crazy as its new philosophy. I've used most of the major distros in my time except Red Hat/Fedora. My last distro was Debian after Ubuntu ruined everything with Unity, but even Debian with GNOME 2.3x wasn't doing it for me any more. My new PC hardware also seemed to have some stability issues so I just decided to jump ship. Another consideration was a decision to write software for Mac/iOS to make money. Nobody makes money writing software for Linux (not easily, anyway), and Apple has a loyal customer base used to not being afraid to spend money on good/useful software.
  I have to say that Time Machine is great, and transferring a user account/profile from one Mac OS install to another is dead simple. Microsoft could learn a thing or two about how Apple does this (the User State Migration Tool for desktop admins is utter rubbish by comparison). Switching to Mac was made easier knowing that it's fundamentally UNIX underneath, so I have the best of both worlds. A rich ecosystem on the desktop where batshit crazy isn't foisted on its users willy nilly and a foundation that's rock solid. What more could I ask for? And most of my favourite OSS software is available on Mac, anyway, like Open Office and The GIMP. No brainer, really.
Simple solution by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-09 23:32 · Score: 0

We convince some really big company with a major influence on the computer industry -- Microsoft, perhaps -- to design a new interface. And not just an interface for desktops and laptops, mind you, but one that can work on phones as well. Think of how great that would be, to have a single user interface across all your devices!
I tremble at the thought of how wonderful that would be...
Mate Cinnamon and Gnome3+Extensions by tuppe666 · 2013-07-09 23:36 · Score: 4, Informative

I know this will invite a flame or three, but the proper response here is Mate.
Mate http://mate-desktop.org/about/
"MATE is a fork of GNOME 2.
It provides an intuitive and attractive desktop to Linux users using traditional metaphors."
Cinnamon (although same as Gnome 3 with extensions) http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/
"Traditional layout, advanced features, easy to use, powerful, flexible."
Can you not see the difference. The real question is why use Mate.
1. Re:Mate Cinnamon and Gnome3+Extensions by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 00:05 · Score: 1
  
  "Traditional layout, advanced features, easy to use, powerful, flexible."
  You forgot slower and buggier than Mate. Would you like to try again?
2. Re:Mate Cinnamon and Gnome3+Extensions by Duncan+J+Murray · 2013-07-13 21:08 · Score: 1
  
  I don't agree - I've been using cinnamon on one of my laptops, and it's just not a replacement for gnome 2. It may be a replacement for those who used gnome 2 on linux mint, but for those who preferred the stock gnome 2 paradigm, MATE is a much better replacement.
  Personally I continue to use gnome 2 on ubuntu 10.04 as my main 'get things done' laptop. We have a couple other laptops currently running cinnamon and unity, and were previously running gnome 3, gnome fallback etc... I think I need to give KDE a whirl. But nothing beats gnome 2 for speed and efficiency yet.
  My plan is to upgrade to MATE - I think this will be the future of many desktops. But they will need to move up to GTK 3 (if they haven't done already).
  D
yeah by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-09 23:38 · Score: 0

draw a mustache on aunty and call her uncle.
they would have thought all this earlier.
The architecture is flawed by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-09 23:41 · Score: 0

The usability of GNOME Shell on normal computers (the ones with 24" screens, not the ones you put in your pocket) maybe can be fixed with extensions. The problem however is that GNOME Shell architecture is fundamentally flawed. The gnome-shell process is doing so many things in one single process: in addition to the task of a window manager it is doing things as disparate as enumerating the apps you have installed, showing your network state or the instant messaging state, etc... A bug in any of those components can lead to a lockup of the whole session (because gnome-shell manages composition). Result: at least once per week my session hangs and I have to go through dirty tricks to resurrect it. How it was possible that such an architecture was adopted is beyond my imagination. This is completely unacceptable and is the reason why I'm going to migrate to something more stable as soon as I can.
While we are at it by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-09 23:42 · Score: 0

I am looking forward to plugins to make MATE look like KDE4, KDE4 to look like TWM, TWM to look like GNOME3. Freedom is about choosing a window manager and making it look like another one.
1. Re:While we are at it by Anne+Thwacks · 2013-07-10 00:22 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  The software you are loking for is called FVWM95.
  
  --
  Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
2. Re:While we are at it by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 03:39 · Score: 0
  
  You want to learn about the difference between a desktop environment and a window manager.
  Specifically ask yourself why there are Gnome applications, but no Fvwm applications.
  And what it means for people who don't like Gnome vs. people who don't like Fvwm.
Apple stuck in 90's by tuppe666 · 2013-07-09 23:48 · Score: 2

Since then I've bought a Mac and never been happier.

Ironically I have used Mac regular, and back 8 years ago would recommend them (when the top end where reasonable value and their software shined), today they look and run like overpriced dinosaurs, with gimmicks like cylinder cases with no real innovation. Now I use Gnome or XFCE and both are better, and its lightening fast. In short the MAC is overpriced brand trash.
I'm not even alone Mac sales are being crushed dropping 22% and 2% over last two quarters, yet Linux usage continues to rise.
Your trolling. The topic is about Gnome Shell (Default) vs Desktop Metaphor (Note I don't add traditional before it) and not about Apple who have lets be honest have abandoned their Desktop.
1. Re:Apple stuck in 90's by jbolden · 2013-07-10 00:50 · Score: 1
  
  Well we have more of your made up statistics. The comparison for a season company is YOY which is mainly flat. That would be like talking about how clothing stores sales are crushed in the 1st quarter because they aren't doing anything like their christmas volumes.
  As for abandoning the desktop: Macbook Pro Retina, New iMac form factor, Mac Pro were all this year.
2. Re:Apple stuck in 90's by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 01:23 · Score: 0
  
  Apple has not to abandon the desktop because there are million of users in the world loving OS X (and developers too) and Mavericks proves (if it is necessary) Apple has one of the best desktop available and with Cocoa the have also best development environments.
  I code from years on any platform and nothing is better then Cocoa + objective-C in productivity terms (if you know them enough and not the bare minimum to put some crap on the app store).
  On the opposite Microsoft already DID it. Desktop is dead on Microsoft because they killed it.
  And regarding Linux I love it and I would love to develop for it (probably using Qt) if someone would only spend 1 $ for Linux software.
  So stop your non-sense sentences on OS X which, in the long run, is becoming the only true desktop environment where developers can invest on and get true money back
3. Re:Apple stuck in 90's by HiThere · 2013-07-10 06:08 · Score: 1
  
  I gave up on the Mac when they included that line that read (approximately) "We have the right to add, modify, change, copy, or remove any file on your computer" to a security update.
  Prior to that I had used and recommended Apple for 2 decades. (Well, some of the time I used MSWind, due to work constraints, but I *never* recommended it.) Since then I no longer use or recommend Apple. I've still got an old machine, but it needs to be disconnected from the internet, because I can't accept the security updates. (I think that was around OS 10.4, but I'd need to go into another room and plug in the computer to find out for sure.) At least MS made no bones about being a fascist company out for the last drop of your blood. Apple pretended to be a nice company...well, except for the lock-in that they worked so vigorously to maintain.
  
  --
  
  I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Just works by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-09 23:56 · Score: 0

Using gnome 3 in the first few hours got me headache (I just haven't found anything), but then I've realized that they created a really useful desktop environment.
Gnome 1 rocks by water-and-sewer · 2013-07-10 00:02 · Score: 4, Interesting

Just for fun last week I reinstalled one of the first distros that really got me cooking on Linux: SUSE 8.0, running KDE3.0 and Gnome 1. And you know what, I think Gnome 1 is the version that worked for me - sawfish windowmanager,hugely tweakable, some cool themes, and so on. Yes, the apps were in an earlier and less-useful state, but as a desktop, it was pretty cool.
I had a fun time going down nostalgia lane with apps like Balsa and Spruce and even the early versions of Nautilus file manager (long before they went nuts on the "spatial" metaphor etc.) and even early version of the Pan newsreader.
Maybe it's nostalgia, but that was a pretty good desktop. Gnome 2 never really floated my boat. And Gnome 3 can wither and die, as far as I'm concerned. It makes me so unproductive it drives me to turn off the computer and go read a book or something.

--
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
1. Re:Gnome 1 rocks by bug1 · 2013-07-10 01:27 · Score: 1
  
  Ive been tempted to try this, i remember early gnome as being really responsive... so how is it on new hardware as far as latency goes (app startup etc) ?
2. Re:Gnome 1 rocks by water-and-sewer · 2013-07-10 01:55 · Score: 2
  
  I installed it in a Virtual Machine, since my modern hardware would be unrecognizable to a distro from 2001. But it's freaking FAST. Imagine all those fat libraries that used to be thin, from the era when your distro came on a set of CDs instead of online repositories, and you accessed the 'net over a telephone line.
  To be clear, I like the modern apps better - things like clementine and kontact and I guess even evolution. But as a desktop, Gnome1 was tweakable and useable and interesting and geeky (and gasp .. unrefined) in ways that I find useful. And sawfish as a window manager was really interesting and hugely configurable. Gnome2 may have been more refined but it was also less tweakable. And to this geek anyway, the reason I run Linux is so I can tweak to my liking. Any distro (ahem Gnome3) that reduces my options in order to guide me to some developer's personal vision of computing nirvana makes me say "no frikkin' way." If I wanted untweakability, I'd use OSX.
  
  --
  If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
3. Re:Gnome 1 rocks by jbolden · 2013-07-10 02:25 · Score: 1
  
  Why aren't you a KDE user?
4. Re:Gnome 1 rocks by Black+Parrot · 2013-07-10 08:10 · Score: 1
  
  I'm on GNOME 2 (Ubuntu 10.x), but I still use Sawfish and Balsa, and I used Galeon until a few years ago when Firefox's plugins finally caught it up (and passed it) in terms of desirable features.
  I've upgraded Ubuntu to 12.x LTS on two laptops. One one I installed Mate and got things more or less working like I've had for a decade or more, though I'm not 100% happy with it. On the other the upgrade hosed itself, and I'm going to have to do a complete reinstall. For these reasons I haven't upgraded my main desktop machines at home and work, much as I'd like to get access to Steam.
  
  --
  Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Gnome3 was/is a disaster by EPDowd · 2013-07-10 00:03 · Score: 1

Why waste time trying to make gnome3 look different. I gained nothing when I shifted to gnome3 and lost a lot. I shifted to mint w/cinnamon and see no reason to go back. I found that everything I did in gnome3 took more steps...ie more clicks, more resizing, more drilling down, and on top of it all one additional click that does nothing more then get you off that stupid, useless page that is your faux desktop. For me and the way I use my computers this is not a step forward, but two steps back. If gnome3 was on a smart phone, or a tablet, and I ran one application at a time, always full screen, it would be pretty, and get the job done. But I run this on a desktop computer with fair horse power, lots of memory, and with a BIG monitor, just so that I can have several things going on at once and see them all without a lot of dragging, drilling down, resizing, and general piddling around every time I sit down. I can do everything I need to with Gnome3, it is just more work. Not sure what the gnome folks were thinking. I've heard it said that they were enamored with OS-X, don't know. However at work I have a very nice brand new iMac with Lion on it, and it is much easier to use and has a very different orientation then gnome3.

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73 49 111 01001001
1. Re:Gnome3 was/is a disaster by Lisias · 2013-07-10 03:50 · Score: 1
  
  Not sure what the gnome folks were thinking. I've heard it said that they were enamored with OS-X, don't know. However at work I have a very nice brand new iMac with Lion on it, and it is much easier to use and has a very different orientation then gnome3.
  No, they're were enamored with iPad - and thought that they can make *everybody* will like the idea of using Desktops as glorified Pads.
  I switched to Mac OS X one week after Gnome 3 was released. At that time, no other usable and equivalent option was available. Since it was some of an investment (Mini Macs are not that expensive, but they aren't cheap nevertheless), it works fine and runs everything I need, I can't find a reason to switch back, no matter what.
  Switching platforms was a pain in the arse, but it hurt less than trying to adapt myself to Gnome 3.
  But since switching platforms is a pain in the arse, I don't see a reason to switch back to Linux/Gnome 3/Whatever - unless it would give me so much more than I have today. (I already brought the damned Mac Mini!)
  
  --
  Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
2. Re:Gnome3 was/is a disaster by Lisias · 2013-07-10 05:01 · Score: 1
  
  A little correction to myself:I switched to Mac OS X one week after OpenSUSE 12.0 with Gnome 3 was released.
  I was an OpenSUSE use for years and years. Switching to another disto would be almost a pain as to switching to any other distro without YAST, so I took the jump.
  
  --
  Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
3. Re:Gnome3 was/is a disaster by fnj · 2013-07-10 05:50 · Score: 1
  
  I switched to Mac OS X one week after Gnome 3 was released. At that time, no other usable and equivalent option was available.
  I do not think I believe this, though I recognize it is a completely subjective topic.
  See extensive list. Most of the listed options were available then.
The proper way by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 00:03 · Score: 0

sudo yum groupremove "GNOME Desktop"
sudo yum groupinstall "XFCE Desktop"
or
sudo yum groupinstall "MATE Desktop"
GNOME 2 is better for most users by mo0n_sniper · 2013-07-10 00:19 · Score: 2

So the greatest accomplishment of GNOME 3 is to be able to look and feel like GNOME2. Doesn't sound like an improvement to me.
1. Re:GNOME 2 is better for most users by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 00:52 · Score: 0
  
  It's to appease all the spergs that get angry if their workflow changes by so much as a pixel.
Look doesn't matter ... by dbIII · 2013-07-10 00:21 · Score: 1

The look doesn't matter, breaking the old applications before they were replaced does.
End Users by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 00:22 · Score: 0

I'm sure end users would love a guide that makes their software useable in X number of easy steps instead of out of the box. I'll stick with Cinimmon or XFCE thank you very much.
Gnome Shell is small part of Gnome 3 by tuppe666 · 2013-07-10 00:40 · Score: 1

So the greatest accomplishment of GNOME 3 is to be able to look and feel like GNOME2.
Doesn't sound like an improvement to me.
Yet is does show how *flexible* Gnome 3 is. It also allows those who prefer a Gnome 2 look can have one without installing a replacement, and the pursuit of better interface can continue without punishing users in the transitional period.
1. Re:Gnome Shell is small part of Gnome 3 by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 00:51 · Score: 1
  
  Nobody prefers a Gnome 2 look. They want movable panels and applets, a cascading start menu, and a taskbar that works with multiple monitors. Extensions cannot do any of these things - the extension API simply doesn't support it. Most of the extensions offered in this article conflict with each other and will crash gnome-shell if you attempt to use them at the same time.
2. Re:Gnome Shell is small part of Gnome 3 by Lisias · 2013-07-10 03:43 · Score: 1
  
  Please mod parent up. God knows I would do it, but I already commented in this post. :-)
  
  --
  Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Cinnamon still missing window previews in pager by caseih · 2013-07-10 00:41 · Score: 2

Cinnamon and Gnome 3 still are missing one vital feature from Gnome 2 and Mate. That is the key feature of showing window previews in the pager. This is a powerful feature that helps make virtual desktops a bit more easy to use. Seeing a bunch of boxes with numbers in them is far less useful. This sort of thing has been available in old X11 pagers for about 20 years or more. Why can Cinnamon not do it too? I rely on this feature to mind me what apps are running where.
1. Re:Cinnamon still missing window previews in pager by IANAAC · 2013-07-10 01:02 · Score: 2
  
  Cinnamon and Gnome 3 still are missing one vital feature from Gnome 2 and Mate. That is the key feature of showing window previews in the pager. This is a powerful feature that helps make virtual desktops a bit more easy to use.
  Maybe I'm misunderstanding... I get this feature with Gnome3/Gnome Shell, although I installed an extension to get a better version of it, called Workspace Navigator. It actually provides a better overview than Gnome2 did for me. If I forget what's where, I just hit the super key and can see what's running on each virtual desktop.
  Truthfully, I like the idea of having extensions. I only install the functionality I need. I also like that I don't have to deal with Compiz in Gnome Shell. While it was fine with earlier versions of Ubuntu, the version of Compiz that ships with Ubuntu (at least with 12.04) is really garbage.
2. Re:Cinnamon still missing window previews in pager by caseih · 2013-07-10 08:11 · Score: 1
  
  No that's not what I'm talking about. Workspace Manager does not appear to be related to this at all, if I'm reading its description right. I'm talking about the pager itself. It's the little display that's always on the screen in the tray or menu bar. It's like what Cinnamon has, but instead of just boxes with numbers around to represent the desktops, it has little thumbnails of the running apps, including the app's icon if the window is big enough. Either way this little bit of feedback is essential for my use of virtual desktops. Not only to remind me of where I am, but to remind me what I have on the other workspaces. I like this feedback even though I use certain desktops for certain tasks consistently.
  This is a feature that's been with X11 desktops for more than 20 years. It's the one feature that keeps me on Mate to be honest. Otherwise cinnamon would probably work fine for me.
  As for compiz, I have it configured exactly to my liking and I really like it. Would really miss the configuration I've got set up if I had to switch to cinnamon.
Xfce by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 00:53 · Score: 0

You can do all this, and run xmms with - if you like to - debian skin, and it looks as if it's always been far ahead of its time now.
Get the broom ! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 01:07 · Score: 0

It seems not so far away that we were at RedHat 7.3 Gnome 1.4's and the likes.At the time the systems did what they did : allow us to run applications and have a good set of tools like file management ( GMC ) that was easy to use and flexible etc etc. Though i admit it was a bit of a pain because of the rpm package management and it's shortcomings we did have the tools we needed to perform our tasks. The graphical interface was fine for what it had to do and we were all happy.Then came Gnome 2 and Nautilus.Growing pains ? Man was this ever a pain.First off we lost a lot of functionality. For example Nautilus didn't sport a dual pane interface. You just could not see two directories in the same window. WOW .So i write the developers list and ( kindly without cussing , though i felt an irresistible need to do so ) told them this was a much needed and used feature. It was the days where it would show one folder / window which was a true pain in the a&&. The only ( terrible ) answer i got is from a developer saying " What's dual pane for ? " BANG .. A developer that didn't even know what use a dual pane file manager had. I was stunned.He obviously had no idea what we had been doing , how we worked and the needs of his users one dang bit.Totally clueless.
This introduction to actual Gnome disasters and growing pains is just one of countless times where the users , the way they work , what they need , have been totally ignored by the developers. At the time Gnome Foundation had users in it's board but were slowly ousted by corporates and their interests. The changes were rather brutal in our relationship with development, The users didn't count anymore .So GNOME took what the corporates thought it was good for their wallet and totally ignored it's user base. Ever since GNOME is piling up disasters. Putting corporate interests in front of user's interests and needs have had catastrophic results ever since.
First off , I have to admit things did improve on many fronts , but not so much on the base as on the frills.
File manager is a fm is a fm .. Desktop icons is desktop icons , menus are menus. There's just so many ways to make a button on the toolbar to get to the program menus. Where i draw the line is loosing on the basic functionality for the sake of redoing code. As long as the functionality is there , and it fills the needs of the users , why recode ? The need is just not there. It's time lost to redo over and over again just for the sake of the novelty side. It's a waste of time.
If there's a toolkit available and we worked it for years and it fills it's use , why loose time scrapping the work and recode ? Just to keep the wheel turning ? Just to give a chance to someone to loose time and money reinventing it again and again ?
In the long run it makes no sense. A media player is a media player , and frankly how is the latest player going to improve on the sound of your flawed mp3 recordings ? Nothing . This is just examples so you get the gist of my thoughts. If the features are just rewrites for the sake of cosmetics then it's working against what the users need i.e. : Improvements on the base functions and improvements on the results provided by the applications.
We saw that over and over in the choices that have been made for GNOME .The last installment is a catastrophic desktop that is best suited for cell phones than for computers.We use Linux on computers because we need the computing and number crunching abilities , we need servers , databases etc. THAT is where we need the improvements. The kernel is a fantastic piece of work and the hardware support is terrific. The improvements made to it are a big positive.
To have an interface that can do a touchscreen on a laptop is not all that practical .. Those of us who have laptops with touch screens know how bad it gets with finger oily smudges on the screen and how leaving the keyboard to touch the screen is a lo
Apple is failing on the Deskop by tuppe666 · 2013-07-10 01:39 · Score: 1

Well we have more of your made up statistics.
I use Apples Earning Releases for my statistics. You should be able to see them in Firefox.
Q1 2013 Unaudited Summary Data http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q1fy13datasum.pdf
Q2 2013 Unaudited Summary Data http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q2fy13datasum2.pdf
Year on Year Change for Units was down 22% and 2% as previously stated.
No apology necessary.
1. Re:Apple is failing on the Deskop by jbolden · 2013-07-10 02:16 · Score: 1
  
  I didn't say they were false, I said there were highly misleading and not the way anyone does comparisons in a company with an annual sales cycle.
I don't hate Gnome 3, but I don't use it either by intermodal · 2013-07-10 01:58 · Score: 1

I tried, I genuinely did. It suffered from what most Linux desktops do. Mediocrity. There was nothing about it that I actually liked.
It always feels to me as if the teams finish what they want for themselves and then just stop trying.

--
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
1. Re:I don't hate Gnome 3, but I don't use it either by ak3ldama · 2013-07-10 04:40 · Score: 1
  
  I don't hate it, and I do use it. I wish it had: themes, applets/panel apps, and a normal alt- tab behavior. OUT OF THE BOX. I hope you like the colors, and do not miss a neat weather app to tell you the temp outside, and I hope you like using your mouse a lot. Anyways, I just deal with it - I like to be able to install Fedora and mess with as little extra as I can get away with. I am not jumping through hoops to enable what used to be normal Gnome functionality. I can use my machine without those three things but it doesn't mean I like it. The black (top panel) and white/grey (app title bar) contrast in particular is the thing I definitely do not like. It is a sad state of affairs when looking at a Windows 7 box hurts my eyes less than my Linux box with a nicer IPS monitor.
  
  --
  "but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
Workflow, not look by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 02:15 · Score: 0

Gnome 3 is broken because it does not allow you to have a fixed number of fixed virtual desktops. I have 10 virtual desktops in KDE, and each has some purpose - photos and editing, terminal windows, browsing, etc - and I put windows on each desktop for that purpose. With Gnome 3, all you can do is watch virtual desktops come and go, you can't fix them. It's a confusing mess, and I should not have to alter a decade's worth of workflow that I have fine-tuned. So I switched to KDE, and have never looked back.
Middle-click other than in a text input by tepples · 2013-07-10 02:20 · Score: 1

What should "pasting" into a window's title bar do? Middle-click into a text input pastes the PRIMARY selection, but a title bar is not editable text.
1. Re:Middle-click other than in a text input by spitzak · 2013-07-10 06:54 · Score: 1
  
  Most window managers have middle-click *lower* the window. I don't know why he thought this conflicted with pasting.
Better Alternatives Exist by trickstyhobbit · 2013-07-10 02:27 · Score: 2

This issue is moot. Cinnamon, MATE and XFCE all offer the ability to regain your old functionality and work-flow . Maybe there are needs I don't understand, but all three of these alternatives have worked really well for me, particularly XFCE.
Apple is fucking its customers again by tuppe666 · 2013-07-10 02:50 · Score: 1

I didn't say they were false, I said there were highly misleading and not the way anyone does comparisons in a company with an annual sales cycle.
No you called me a serial lair...and I re-quote "we have more of your made up statistics" because the the truth does not reflect the image you want to portray...and then lie about your actions. In reality we notice Apple is making more revenue from less units...which sounds like Apples usual sacrificing market share for profits. Good for them...sucks for its customers, who already pay too much for their mid-range products, better buy a Lenovo...everyone else is.
Seriously though think about your behaviour.
1. Re:Apple is fucking its customers again by jbolden · 2013-07-10 03:06 · Score: 1
  
  You are a serial liar. "Mac sales are being crushed". That is sort of terminology is not used for a product on an annual cycle.
  Mac Units:
  2Q2013 3952k
  2Q2012 4017k
  1Q2013 4061k
  1Q2013 4017k
  Their sales on Macs are flat. There is no "more revenue from less units" nonsense. If you are reading Apple reports they quote year over year statistics and they do so for a very good reason, their products have 20% deviations between different quarters every year. That means nothing other than their products are cyclical. Pretending that's not the case and talking about quarter over quarter numbers is lying.
2. Re:Apple is fucking its customers again by jbolden · 2013-07-10 03:11 · Score: 1
  
  type and repeated:
  2Q2013 3952k
  2Q2012 4017k
  2Q2011 3760k
And it only took you how long? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 02:50 · Score: 0

Making it possible for users to keep their old workflows is supposed to be the STARTING POINT, not where you wind up years later.
Please, stop "innovating".
Your an Idiot by tuppe666 · 2013-07-10 03:19 · Score: 1

You are a serial liar. "Mac sales are being crushed". That is sort of terminology is not used for a product on an annual cycle.
Mac Units:
2Q2013 3952k
2Q2012 4017k
1Q2013 4061k
1Q2013 4017k
Their sales on Macs are flat. There is no "more revenue from less units" nonsense. If you are reading Apple reports they quote year over year statistics and they do so for a very good reason, their products have 20% deviations between different quarters every year. That means nothing other than their products are cyclical. Pretending that's not the case and talking about quarter over quarter numbers is lying.
No looks again
Q1 2013 Unaudited Summary Data http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q1fy13datasum.pdf [apple.com]
Q2 2013 Unaudited Summary Data http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q2fy13datasum2.pdf [apple.com]
Mac Units
5198 Q12012----seriously is this figure for last year so hard to pick out!
4061 Q12013
Hence a drop year on year of about a quarter of its sales of 22%
4017 Q22012
3952 Q2 2013
Hence a drop year on year of a more manageable 2%
You clearly an idiot(or simply lying) you can't even read a Data Sheet...never reply to anything I write again...you are now embarrassing yourself. Maybe you should go to adult learning class or something.
1. Re:Your an Idiot by fnj · 2013-07-10 05:00 · Score: 1
  
  Jeeze guys. It's nice to be passionate, but ...
  Interesting discussion though.
Metro = KDE4 = Unity = Gnome 3 = fail by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-10 03:24 · Score: 0

There is no longer Gnome for me after the 2 release.
Gnome 3, Unity, and KDE 4 deserves to die just like Metrocrap 8, kudos to Mate, and XFCE.
Evolution is not a matter of hampering users in order to more effectively deliver ads or visual effects!
1. Re:Metro = KDE4 = Unity = Gnome 3 = fail by HiThere · 2013-07-10 06:43 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry, but you misunderstand evolution.
  Evolution is lots of different (essentially random) changes. Most of them die off, because they were worse than what preceeded them. Some have niche uses. Only very rarely is one of them globally better. (For very rarely, estimate one out of millions.)
  Evolution doesn't mean improvment for any particular purpose. That's progress. (And even there, others may rationally disagree that it's a general improvement. Bigger bombs are an improvement, but not everyone considers them better.)
  P.S.: Both MATE and xfce depend on the Gnome2 underpinnings continuing to work. This is so dubious that xfce is, IIUC, currently rebasing itself around Qt, even at the cost of converting to C++.) So what are MATE's long term prospects? Probably to recommend that you shift to Cinnamon, unless they engage in a truely heroic coding effort and replicate most of the Gnome2 development team. This is a lot more dificult than just renaming a bunch of libraries and converting a few GUI files. (But at least maybe they could drop mono.)
  
  --
  
  I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Why not just use gnome3 classic mode? by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · 2013-07-10 03:30 · Score: 3, Informative

It will be default in RHEL 7, so it will be supported going forward. Gnome extensions seem to break with every other release.

--
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Before OS X, before Mac OS 9, there was System 2.1 by tepples · 2013-07-10 05:40 · Score: 1

Windows 95 [...] created an intuitive (albeit clunky underneath) method to handle files as a component of the user interface
"Created" might not be the best word for Windows 95's role in popularizing the sort of file browser that had shipped with Apple computers since the fourth quarter of 1985 when Mac OS 2.1 introduced HFS.
TFA doesn't tell the whole truth by mar.kolya · 2013-07-10 05:41 · Score: 2

TFA doesn't tell the whole truth. You cannot get Gnome 2 Look and Feel with Gnome 3. You just cannot. You cannot have workplaces in a grid, you cannot move and place your applets way you want, you cannot even have sensible task bar - one that is from applets doesn't even have context menus on buttons to allow one to move application to different workplace. It's like you spend couple of days tuning Gnome 3 and still get 'something' that is very far from what you've already had in Gnome 2 for many years. But that's only for starters. Then one can remember that with Gnome 2 often comes compiz with lot's of features and lots of eye candy. And that all begs a question - what exactly the purpose of the Gnome rewrite? It seems like their main goal was to copy all bad features from macos. And it was would have been perfectly fine if they didn't so badly break Gnome 2 with all their library changes. It's like one of the most popular DEs just seized to exist overnight. You upgrade you Ubuntu/Fedora/etc and... your desktop is no more. And you were so much used to it. I'm not against innovation in any way... But would it be better to perform experiments in the labs, not in schools/factories? Ubuntu with their Unity is much better in that sense - they did not take your choice away. But Gnome 3 did - and that's main problem.
Application menu in classic Mac OS by tepples · 2013-07-10 05:45 · Score: 1

Initially Apple left off an easy way to manage open applications.
From System 7 (2Q 1991) through Mac OS 9.x, the application's icon at the top-right corner of the screen was a menu listing open applications. Or was that in some way too hard for users to discover? In any case, it was easier to discover than the hot corners in Windows 8 that hide an invisible Start button at the bottom left and the charms bar at top right.
Re:Before OS X, before Mac OS 9, there was System by spitzak · 2013-07-10 07:13 · Score: 1

Apple's scheme involved metadata embedded in the file (in the resource fork) that said what program to run when you double-clicked.
This works but has the strange effect that sometimes you cannot predict what program will open, or if the file will open at all. A common example (for me) is that I *always* have to use open-as on pdf and other files to get the nice fast "preview" program to run, rather than launching Adobe's reader.
Microsoft's version just used the filename to go to a central database that said "this filename pattern runs this program when double-clicked". The advantage here is that the program that opened was predictable, that you could install a new better program for a type of file and it would automatically be used. And it appeared to be a lot easier for users to understand and change. A disadvantage was that a "worse" program could also claim all the files, but you could blame the worse program installer rather than the underlying system.
Despite using it all the time I have no idea what is happening with Linux. The "desktop" files have "mime types run this" which implies that "mime data" is stored somewhere but it isn't. There is another database that turns filenames into mime types. The end result is obviosly no better than Microsoft's (because it uses filenames) but hard (actually impossible) for the user to change. Believe me I have tried many many times to get my own file extension to launch my own program, I just cannot figure out a way to do this and have to use "open with" always. Almost novice users could do this on earlier versions of Windows (I think Microsoft broke this recently, perhaps they hired Linux developers?).
Gnome3 is only part of my problem by Michael+Meissner · 2013-07-10 09:32 · Score: 2

Right now, I have 3 systems. An aging dual core Dell D620 laptop with Intel graphics, a new dual core Lenovo E430 laptop with i3 chip and Intel graphics meant to replace the Dell, and a HP Pavilion p7-1233w Fusion A8-5500 Quad-Core 3.2GHz with builtin Radeon graphics that replaced 2 other desktops that went belly up.
The Dell is stuck at Fedora 14. Anything newer brings in gnome3 and the system crashes when a 3D operation is done. I've tried Fedora 15 and 17, and could not get it configured to avoid the crashes in the Intel graphics system. I configured to use the fallback system, but something isn't right, and it still crashes. So I've kept it locked at Fedora 14.
I could run Gnome3 on the HP, and I hated it. I don't want windows bouncing around, I want to have 8 workspaces that I get to with keyboard shotcuts, I want focus to automatically turned on as I move the mouse over the window without clicking, I want to have static panels with drawers that I can specify where each thing goes. I eventually turned on the fallback gnome mode, and it allowed me to configure many of the things I use all of the time in Gnome2, but there are still lots of things I can't figure out how to do with the time I spent looking at the documentation. I played with Mate under Fedora 17, and I wasn't happy with it. While gnome fallback mode is a pale imatation of gnome2, eventually I will want the stuff I've been accustomed to having in my desktop for the past 10 years or so. I have the commands and shortcuts burned into my finger tips.
I've been trying off and on to get Fedora 18 installed on the Lenovo, and every so often the screen gets garbage on it, and the system hangs. Because of gnome3, this time I went with XFCE, and while it doesn't have everything I had in gnome2, it had enough that I could tolerate it for the time being. I have tried all of the BIOS configuration options, tried it with/without the Intel video driver, but I'm giving up on Fedora. Instead, I plan on installing Centos 6.4 (essentially RHEL 6) using the basic video driver. I had this working at one point, but decided to give Fedora one more try. Before buying the laptop, I did check around and did not find people with the kinds of problems I've been having with it. I really, really hope I don't have to load my Windows 7 OS that came with the laptop and run Linux as a virtual machine.
Gnome 3 is really "Fresh Gnome 1.0" by ctype_007 · 2013-07-10 16:43 · Score: 1

The real question is why use Mate.
toolbars/panels, applets (integrated with package manager, i.e. without need to go to site, download, unpack) , a menu usable by mouse (i.e. without touch screen) and screen without areas automatically switching to task manager or what name of it and all of this over stable enough codebase
This is a new idea by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-11 09:31 · Score: 0

Use shit to polish another piece of shit. Interesting approach but bound to be an epic fail.
Or... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-12 04:24 · Score: 0

Or you could use XFCE. Just saying.