What do you think of Gnome3?

Mr_ED-horsey · 2011-09-29 18:42:52

RichAustin wrote:

1) Docky - there is a Gnome Dock extension but to be honest it's rubbish. I also found the "Go to Activities / Find the program you want / launch it" method was a total no go for me. So I initially tried Gnome-Do which was ok but not perfect. Then I thought "What about a left hand dock like on Unity?" and tried Docky. It works brilliantly for me. I set it up with all the app's I use all the time and I honestly find it faster and more efficient than I ever did on Gnome2 / KDE etc. My main system is a widescreen laptop so I set Docky on the left side and always visible. Brilliant.

That's funny. I was talking to one of my linux nerd friends the other day and I mentioned that if Gnome3 would have a Unity style dock on the actual desktop (I agree, the current extension isn't very good) it would be almost perfect

I never even thought of using Docky, which is weird because I used it all the time as my bottom panel when I was running Gnome2...

RichAustin · 2011-09-30 13:32:42

Mr_ED-horsey wrote:

RichAustin wrote:
1) Docky - there is a Gnome Dock extension but to be honest it's rubbish. I also found the "Go to Activities / Find the program you want / launch it" method was a total no go for me. So I initially tried Gnome-Do which was ok but not perfect. Then I thought "What about a left hand dock like on Unity?" and tried Docky. It works brilliantly for me. I set it up with all the app's I use all the time and I honestly find it faster and more efficient than I ever did on Gnome2 / KDE etc. My main system is a widescreen laptop so I set Docky on the left side and always visible. Brilliant.
That's funny. I was talking to one of my linux nerd friends the other day and I mentioned that if Gnome3 would have a Unity style dock on the actual desktop (I agree, the current extension isn't very good) it would be almost perfect
I never even thought of using Docky, which is weird because I used it all the time as my bottom panel when I was running Gnome2...

Docky is for me the thing that makes Gnome3 really work. AWN works okay but it isn't as good as Docky when used as a sidebar. I just setup all my regular app's and it is totally perfect for me. Not, I suppose, to everybody's taste, but it works for me and that's all Linux is about I think.

veek · 2011-10-27 14:25:54

I love Gnome3, but it seems I'm in the minority which scares me a bit as I hope the Gnome3 devs don't become disheartened from the negative feedback. This is the same sort of response KDE received during the KDE4 transition, which I didn't have a problem with either. I like being able to easily manage lots of windows, and like any WM or DE that lets me do that.

On the minimalist side my favorite tiling window manager was ion3 (RIP)--which was brilliant: had the most flexible tiling layouts I've seen, and was really, really fast. I also love the window management techniques provided by Compiz, and other compositing window managers. It seem a lot of people fall on one side or another.

I like the bold new directions these projects are going, otherwise we'd end up with a bunch of environments that are basically XFCE (which is already good at what it does).

...Just my opinions, of course.

Parmazae · 2011-10-27 15:03:03

Mr_ED-horsey wrote:

I had been a long time Gnome user and seriously gave Gnome 3 a shot on my desktop for about 3 or 4 months. I liked it. It worked. I had no crashes whatsoever on my machine so it's in way better shape than KDE 4 was when it was first released. I adjusted to the new way of doing things pretty quickley and with the installation of several extensions it became usable for day to day use, but for aesthetic reasons I switched to Xfce on my desktop. I prefer simplicity on my desktop and have never been a huge fan of eye candy. I always disabled desktop effects in Gnome 2 (I even put Windows 7 in classic mode). I tried fallback mode for a while, but it just seemed like a crippled/impotent version of gnome 2. I might try it again after the 3.4 release just to see how far it's come, but right now I'm pretty happy with Xfce.

I'm going to echo mostly everything Mr_ED-horsey said with the exception of giving Gnome another shot.

As a very long time Gnome user, I of course tried Gnome 3. I used it for a while and didn't have any problems or crashes with it. I just didn't like it. I didn't like the way things were laid out, at all.

I decided to give Xfce a try and was pleased to discover it could be configured, with very little effort, to mimic a Gnome 2 desktop. As I dug deeper into Xfce I found it is an ideal desktop for me and I have no interest in going back to Gnome, regardless of what they change .

HeSaid · 2011-10-27 18:37:03

My wife and I both love Gnome 3 on our laptops. The simplicity, the polish and the reliability meet our needs completely. We do not shut them down, only close the lids over night or when going out. Just recently, I upgraded my wife's machine with the new kernel. It had an up time of 14 days when I shut it down. Mine, on the other hand, is frequently rebooted because I like to tinker and tweak.

We were KDE users for many years. It, too, is highly polished and configurable, but when we tried Gnome with a few extensions, we switched. We use gmail and google calendar and documents. Having each of those sites a single-click away with epiphany's web applications is so very convenient. Thank you Gnome devs and thanks to wonder for his packaging!
--
Neal

giowck · 2011-10-27 19:16:06

I think gnome shell is a good start. As for now it is not perfect and there are a lot of TODO features, but overall it feels right.

In particular I like the new way of switching between windows, just shoot your mouse to the left corner, without clicking, this is great.
Also the new virtual desktop on demand thing is a good feature. Then the new messaging system and legacy trayicon support.

Things I don't like:
- no default shutdown (but not that problem, since there is an extension)
- gnome-terminal doesn't remember last used window sizes

I like it more than Unity:
- Unity doesn't show legacy tray icons (like truecrypt), gnome shell solves this in an elegant way by hiding them, without affecting their accessibility
- Switching windows in unity is slow
- False positives in show behaviour of the launcher (e.g. Firefox back button, every time the launcher comes up, grr!!)

Last edited by giowck (2011-10-27 19:16:17)

jondkent · 2011-10-27 20:15:02

gnome3, hmmm. Well I used it and it should have suited me as I like a clean desktop. But the issues (which have been covered here and elsewhere) just drove me nuts and I moved away to Xfce (but hated that, dunno why people move from gnome to xfce) and then back to Openbox (love it)

My other half though, really like it. She find it easy to used and can modifying it to suit her. She doesn't want to be able to configure every last detail and this is, I think, the point of Gnome3. Lock it down enough so you can't break it and make it easy for anyone to use. On this, I think they have achieved their goal.

my 2c

jaclar · 2011-10-27 21:27:01

I'm actually pretty excited with Gnome3. One thing which probably most people are not realizing is that the gnome people are actively preparing Gnome3 for touch screen devices. I have an lenovo tablet pc and I couldn't find any DE which works equally well in the laptop and tablet mode. This might be a pretty specific corner case, but for me its excellent.
Also I can't understand why people are complaining that it is impossible to configure. Yes most of the stuff is hidden but with gnome-tweak-tools and gsettings you have pretty much control about everything. From my point of view a pretty nice balance between usability and leaving the experienced user tinker with its system.
One thing I can't get used to is the alt-tab switcher. I mostly work with a lot of terminals so the application centric switching doesn't make too much sense for me...

Mr_ED-horsey · 2011-10-27 23:07:07

Parmazae wrote:

Mr_ED-horsey wrote:
I had been a long time Gnome user and seriously gave Gnome 3 a shot on my desktop for about 3 or 4 months. I liked it. It worked. I had no crashes whatsoever on my machine so it's in way better shape than KDE 4 was when it was first released. I adjusted to the new way of doing things pretty quickley and with the installation of several extensions it became usable for day to day use, but for aesthetic reasons I switched to Xfce on my desktop. I prefer simplicity on my desktop and have never been a huge fan of eye candy. I always disabled desktop effects in Gnome 2 (I even put Windows 7 in classic mode). I tried fallback mode for a while, but it just seemed like a crippled/impotent version of gnome 2. I might try it again after the 3.4 release just to see how far it's come, but right now I'm pretty happy with Xfce.
I'm going to echo mostly everything Mr_ED-horsey said with the exception of giving Gnome another shot.

Well... I've since switched back to Gnome and then to Mate

toketin · 2011-10-29 12:18:07

I'm using stable gnome-shell in my notebook, but in my home pc with an nvidia 6200 and only 1 gb of ram now i'm using Mate desktop, gnome-shell is much heavy for my system and gnome-fallback is not configurable like gnome2 where you can also use metacity's composite while in fallback mode you have to use compiz to have a composite

Last edited by toketin (2011-10-29 12:19:12)

graysky · 2011-10-29 14:10:41

They just need to fix the memory leaks around gnome-shell, mutter, clutter, etc. And it would be a better package. It has allowed me to use and appreciate xfce4 as many others reported too.

R3V0LV3R · 2011-10-31 23:22:02

bernarcher wrote:

Oh, well. We already had a giant Gnome 3 discussion here. Almost everything has been said there.
Please read (or at least skim) those posts (note: we have a search feature in the forum ) before posting here. If this thread will only repeat already known facts or become flaming it will be TGNed and most probably closed very soon now.
And, yes, please do not necro post in the old thread unless you have something very, very significant to add which hasn't been discussed before.

fsckd wrote:

If this turns into another "I don't like Gnome 3" pile-on, this topic will go nowhere.
That said, I think it looks good and has some promise. Personally I would never use it, so my opinion doesn't count for much.

Seriously ladies, get over it. You're not overseeing a kindergarten class here. If someone wants to say it sucks, what's the harm in that?

P.S. - Gnome 3 (Shell) blows. It turned me into a KDE fan from day 1.

Last edited by R3V0LV3R (2011-10-31 23:29:46)

Jodell · 2011-11-01 00:46:05

I actually like Gnome 3. I think they were spot on in terms of window management and dynamic workspaces. I can't use anything else now because I find them inefficient.

ngoonee · 2011-11-01 00:54:16

R3V0LV3R wrote:

bernarcher wrote:
Oh, well. We already had a giant Gnome 3 discussion here. Almost everything has been said there.
Please read (or at least skim) those posts (note: we have a search feature in the forum ) before posting here. If this thread will only repeat already known facts or become flaming it will be TGNed and most probably closed very soon now.
And, yes, please do not necro post in the old thread unless you have something very, very significant to add which hasn't been discussed before.
fsckd wrote:
If this turns into another "I don't like Gnome 3" pile-on, this topic will go nowhere.
That said, I think it looks good and has some promise. Personally I would never use it, so my opinion doesn't count for much.
Seriously ladies, get over it. You're not overseeing a kindergarten class here. If someone wants to say it sucks, what's the harm in that?
P.S. - Gnome 3 (Shell) blows. It turned me into a KDE fan from day 1.

Please refer to points 3, 6, and 22 here. These forums aren't chat boards, and they're not to be treated as such. If the mods treat particular threads/posts as if they're overseeing a kindergarten, its most likely because that's the level of maturity in those particular threads/posts.

axel668 · 2011-11-01 16:33:43

Gnome3 is really a good, innovative desktop environment. Gnome2 has become obsolete by the recent improvements in XFCE and LXDE, so I can understand that the Gnome team wants to move forward, and in the coming tablet era Gnome3 will surely be a big player among desktop environments.

On my 12" Netbook it wastes too much screen estate, so I'm going to stick with Openbox, but people with touch devices or big widescreen displays should definitely give Gnome3 a try, especially compared to Unity it will be a huge improvement.

felipe · 2014-05-22 23:11:29

Is a very good desktop environments for those who are tired of the shitty w95 ui. But if you want the w95 ui install lxde/kde don't try to convert gnome 3 using extensions to look like w95, the result will not be satisfactory.

cris9288 · 2014-05-23 01:13:21

I ended up liking Gnome 3 a lot. I gave it a shot while on Ubuntu after the first release, but I wasn't that into it. After spending a long time using i3 I decided to give it a shot. I thought I would have a hard time based on my previous experience, but I actually adjusted very quickly. This is in part because I was able to customize GNOME to act a lot like i3 does. I can't tile my windows, but after a few minutes of work almost all of the keybindings that I was used to in i3 are set in GNOME. I use the keyboard to switch between windows and workspaces, open a terminal, close windows, move windows around, etc. And much like dmenu, I can press a key, type in a few letters and launch an app. These are my basic requirements for a decent desktop. Now if only the Gnome devs would fix the memory leak issues and reduce the amount of pixels wasted by the default adwaita theme, It would be perfect.

ewaller · 2014-05-23 01:44:29

I am going to close this thread. I don't usually worry about resurrecting non-support threads from the dead. But coupled with a slap at other operating systems, I think we are done.

Arch Linux

#26 2011-09-29 18:42:52

Re: What do you think of Gnome3?

#27 2011-09-30 13:32:42

Re: What do you think of Gnome3?

#28 2011-10-27 14:25:54

Re: What do you think of Gnome3?

#29 2011-10-27 15:03:03

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#30 2011-10-27 18:37:03

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#31 2011-10-27 19:16:06

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#32 2011-10-27 20:15:02

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#33 2011-10-27 21:27:01

Re: What do you think of Gnome3?

#34 2011-10-27 23:07:07

Re: What do you think of Gnome3?

#35 2011-10-29 12:18:07

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#36 2011-10-29 14:10:41

Re: What do you think of Gnome3?

#37 2011-10-31 23:22:02

Re: What do you think of Gnome3?

#38 2011-11-01 00:46:05

Re: What do you think of Gnome3?

#39 2011-11-01 00:54:16

Re: What do you think of Gnome3?

#40 2011-11-01 16:33:43

Re: What do you think of Gnome3?

#41 2014-05-22 23:11:29

Re: What do you think of Gnome3?

#42 2014-05-23 01:13:21

Re: What do you think of Gnome3?

#43 2014-05-23 01:44:29

Re: What do you think of Gnome3?

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