[GNOME 3] First Impressions?

karoshi · 2011-04-10 17:48:10

One thing annoys me most:

To enter Overview you have to press SuperKey and then release it, so you can use shortcuts like Super&$KEY without entering Overview. Thats good.

Once you are in Overview things work different, pressing SuperKey makes you immediately leave overview, no matter what. So you cant use a shortcut like Super&Down for next desktop in overview. Thats bad.

bananaoomarang · 2011-04-10 18:04:21

Another thing which is kind of annoying me (most annoying is still slow start-up and needing to manually start Nautilus for a 'desktop') is that when the shell 'zooms out' so I can see my windows, clicking on 'Applications' spurs an annoying delay of around 3 - 5 seconds, after this the icons seem to be cached but that 3 - 5 seconds is VERY annoying and seems clunky. Search is much quicker (less icons and names to load I guess) but clicking on 'applications' should be a quick as clicking on a good old fashioned menu IMO.

EDIT: Oh and BTW, single clicking works now, so aside from nautilus trying to use wine to open PNGs we're all good. Had to use gconf though....

Last edited by bananaoomarang (2011-04-10 18:07:59)

Sloshy · 2011-04-10 18:18:35

karoshi wrote:

Once you are in Overview things work different, pressing SuperKey makes you immediately leave overview, no matter what. So you cant use a shortcut like Super&Down for next desktop in overview. Thats bad.

Ctrl+Alt+Up/Down does that, and works without being in the overview as well.

wonder · 2011-04-10 18:20:15

@bananaoomarang that is a wine bug for very years. delete from ~/.local/share/applications all the wine stuff and add in ~/.bashrc

export WINEDLLOVERRIDES='winemenubuilder.exe=d'

NekySerbia · 2011-04-10 18:24:37

Went back to Compiz, made it act like gnome-shell's with activities and dock (expo + scale plugins, avant window navigator), won the day.

Last edited by NekySerbia (2011-04-10 18:25:28)

bananaoomarang · 2011-04-10 18:37:48

wonder wrote:

@bananaoomarang that is a wine bug for very years. delete from ~/.local/share/applications all the wine stuff and add in ~/.bashrc
export WINEDLLOVERRIDES='winemenubuilder.exe=d'

Thanks!

smakked · 2011-04-10 21:27:12

First impressions didnt like it, but rather then ditch it altogether i am giving it a bit of time. It is starting to grow on me and is very snappy here.

The Unabeefer · 2011-04-10 21:53:13

Sloshy wrote:

The Unabeefer wrote:
- If we only have the ONE current app available listed in the panel up top (by the Activities button), why can't the drop-down when you click show ALL the other open apps you can switch to??? Instead of just a "Quit (app name)" in the bubble... make it useful. Otherwise, it's just redundant wasted space. I KNOW I am looking at Firefox right now; the huge psychotically massive titlebar says it as well... and I can quit that with the X in the top right, not a bubble. No need for the redundancy if it's not useful for app switching via mouse.
It's supposed to become a sort of "Application-as-a-whole" menu. Like, if you have an Empathy window open but you don't have the main window on the same workspace, you could click the button and get the menu bar options for the main window. Not for individual chat windows, but for things that apply to every single window. If this doesn't follow through, it might become what you say. Also, there's a difference between "close" and "quit"; clicking the X on the window corner doesn't "quit" the application, but "closes" the window. If you select "Quit" from the menu, it closes every application window related to that application. I hope that makes sense

Well, that certainly makes me feel better about that!!

I've shrunken my titlebars a bit, also changed the colours to a dark grey instead of blue highlight... Basically, I copied the whole Adwaita directory to a new theme called AdwaitaGrey and have been doing my changes on that instead. I'd say it's a good idea in case anything over-writes the original directory with defaults. Won't have to keep making the change over and over again.

Still very excited about what's to come in Gnome 3!

disastrophe · 2011-04-11 01:19:32

I kind of like it but it won't be replacing KDE for me any time soon. I don't like how a lot of basic configuration has been convoluted such as simply adding startup programs. It seems to work pretty well with my Intel G33 Express onboard video. The animations are snappy and smooth, although there is about 1 - 2 sec. of latency the first time you click Application view after you login - after that it seems super responsive. The compositing is pretty nice too. It also seems pretty stable here, especially for an initial release of something so radically different. It could use some themes and widgets and more gtk3 apps but that will all come in time. I think it is coming off a little better than KDE's transition to 4.x.
I could see it becoming a tad boring to use once the novelty wears off but I'll keep mine maintained and watch it evolve anyway.

cngn · 2011-04-11 07:27:03

zodmaner wrote:

* As many people have said, if you use mouse, Gnome 3 requires you to click at least 2 clicks to starts a new application and more if you want to start application that you haven't pin on the dock. This gets old fast.

don't say that you are actually clicking the 'Activities'? it has a hot corner, so it's one click actually, it works the same way as having a hidden docky... gnome3 also has the 'gnome do' functionality for launching apps, that's a big improvement

killajoe · 2011-04-11 07:55:48

http://img219.imageshack.us/i/gnome3.png/

http://img696.imageshack.us/i/gnoe3desk.png/

If you install gnome-shell-extensions you goet a dock in both shell modes.

I DO REALY LIKE GNOME3!

Changing colour and Themes must be easier.... gnome-tweak-tool must be extended!

alphazo · 2011-04-11 08:26:44

Migration from Gnome2 from Gnome3 went well. Although I lost my Gnome keyring that had all my WiFi keys. Bluetooth applet works better now as I can connect and use my remote A2DP transmitter.
Overall, I think it is a new way of interacting with your desktop. It might speed up my day to day work although I need to do more testing. It's nice step forward on usability but a significant step backward on customization.
Here are the small issues I have been facing to:

Right click doesn't allow any customization of either top bar or dash.
Unable to add applets to the top bar (or any bar).
Missing applet to disable power saving mode (presentation mode)
Missing old clock with multiple timezones/cities support (that was a great one, I'm lost now)
No GUI to add or tweak applications in the dash. I need to specify specific command lines options to some of my applications (--incongito mode for Chromium and virtual machine name for VirtualBox). The only way to do it is to edit .desktop in order to do that (not good for newcomers).
Unable to remove accessibility icon. I got a comment on the forum saying that this won't be possible. Come on, this is Open Source and could be recompiled without the accessibility icon.
I used to have a little lock on my WiFi icon indicating when I was connected over VPN.
Lost my previous Gnome2 keyring that contained my different WiFi keys
Extension pack from AUR was required in order to bring shutdown menu from both desktop and GDM. Although I had to manually remove two extensions : old-fashion alt-tab and permanent right dash bar.
There is no GUI to specify applications to start on login.
Empathy is not started automatically so you need to do that yourself. If you don't want to see Empathy window each time you boot you can start it with the "--start-hidden" command line option.
Empathy should not show up in my task list (alt-tab) but rather on the top-right menu
There is no screensaver.
Unable to resize the dash (kind of big to my taste)
No monitor icon on the top bar in order to switch configuration/resolution.
Found an reported a bug on the task scrolling mechanism (righ-click + left-click) https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647186

zodmaner · 2011-04-11 14:33:50

cngn wrote:

zodmaner wrote:
* As many people have said, if you use mouse, Gnome 3 requires you to click at least 2 clicks to starts a new application and more if you want to start application that you haven't pin on the dock. This gets old fast.
don't say that you are actually clicking the 'Activities'? it has a hot corner, so it's one click actually, it works the same way as having a hidden docky... gnome3 also has the 'gnome do' functionality for launching apps, that's a big improvement

Yes, I was wrong about that.

Now that I've solved the problem with external monitor and given Gnome 3 some more time, I think I kinda like it. Sure there are still a lot of rough edges to iron out and the lack of configuration is still suffocating, but I kinda of like the direction of where they're taking it.

The funny thing is, after understanding how Gnome 3 works, I've found that its work-flow is similar to the current one that I had with my heavy-customized Openbox setup. So after I understand that it's easy to adjust myself to how Gnome 3 works.

So yeah, now I'm cautiously optimistic about the future of Gnome 3. Sorry for jumping the gun earlier and rant about it without trying it out properly.

Last edited by zodmaner (2011-04-11 14:40:18)

zodmaner · 2011-04-11 14:36:40

alphazo wrote:

[*]There is no GUI to specify applications to start on login.[/*]

Yes there is: gnome-session-properties.

eldragon · 2011-04-11 14:38:10

zodmaner wrote:

Now that I've solved the problem with external monitor and given Gnome 3 some more time, I think I kinda like it. Sure there are still a lot of rough edges to iron out and the lack of configuration is still suffocating, but I kinda of like the direction of where they're taking it.

im really interested in how you solved this.

right now im using standalone compiz because i cant stand how dualscreen is being handled among other things.

Sloshy · 2011-04-11 14:55:55

alphazo wrote:

Right click doesn't allow any customization of either top bar or dash.
Unable to add applets to the top bar (or any bar).
Missing applet to disable power saving mode (presentation mode)
Missing old clock with multiple timezones/cities support (that was a great one, I'm lost now)
No GUI to add or tweak applications in the dash. I need to specify specific command lines options to some of my applications (--incongito mode for Chromium and virtual machine name for VirtualBox). The only way to do it is to edit .desktop in order to do that (not good for newcomers).

Customization of the top bar, especially using "applets", is not planned in the near future. Specifically, the designers tried really hard to make it so you wouldn't need any applets . I don't remember the exact quote, but someone in the mailing list for Shell said something like, "If you need an applet to effectively use your system, then we've failed". The feature you ask for could be added to one of the system indicators at the top, or in the system settings application, and doesn't need a user-placed "applet" to function. I do miss the old clock, though I'm sure someone will write an extension with that feature added. You can use "alacarte" from the repos to edit .desktop files, but the version in there uses GTK2 and I'm not sure if a GTK3 version will be made.

centos · 2011-04-11 18:24:27

Anyone experiencing self-deleting your setting after restart? From time to time I restart Arch and when I log in, my GNOME setting are gone. Fav. apps in dash, clock settings, keyboard layout. It kinda pisses me off

Kirurgs · 2011-04-11 19:11:11

Hi!

Final G3 is quite a dissapointment for me! I'll try to explain a bit why with some background.

Firstly, I choose Linux in our company where 95% of desktops run Windows, because:
1. it worked faster than windows (no antivirus, no firewall, no stupid other annoying stuff)
2. no restrictions on autorun, shares, no stupid control of everything installed, it won't reboot your computer in the middle of meeting, no crap about forced reboot for updates, etc. etc.
3. our disk encryption stuff is quite crappy, when smth goes bad, win users are in deep crap because they don't get data back
4. I believe in OSS
5. I could organize my work like I wanted and that was very efficient
6. I could get overview of my system with a look at the panel
7. all the good stuff I forgot about now

So the biggest pain is 5. and 6. points. So to start with smaller issues, I hate non-informational DE, so hate it!
See, in G2 there was "Connection information" in NM applet, it gave almost all information about connection. In G3 - almost nothing and I had to click deep through till I get IP (frustrated). In Power Manger applet I used to see nice graph about power consumption, ticks pec sec, nice and informational information about my battery (des, capacity, full load, current load, manufacturer, etc.) in G3 there is NOTHING. In G2 there were those nice "System monitor" applet and "Netspeed" applet, which shows exactly what's going on in the system, when it started to behave not like I wanted, I just looked up and got ALL I NEED to say about health of my system. In G3 - NOTHING. And the list goes not, not much I suppose, but still.
This was exactly things which I liked best in Gnome2 not in KDE or windows, because I couldn't got so nice and informational applets, the state of my computer, even Mac has network speed and system usage applet in panel!!!

Next thing is how I organize work. Workspaces now are crap. In G2 I created 7 or so static workspaces, gave them meaningful names (common stuff, project 1, project 2, project 3 part 1, project 3 part 2, my stuff, etc.) and put stuff in every workspace as I intended to because if work on a lot of projects / different stuff. So I definitely knew what stuff goes to where and organized it that way. With the click of the button I got to right WS and used exactly that stuff nothing more, I was focused on that concrete workspace and tasks for it! Now Workspaces are on-demand feature, which prohibits any meaningful sorting of applications by usage pattern, I can't image people adding apps to workspaces and then just next apps to next workspace, how they mange them then?
Alt tab is crap as well, when I launch too many applications, it becomes absolute bloated - there are all apps. The good thing about it is that it shows what applications are in current desktop and which aren't. How can I set up firefox to open new session (like adding -P --no-remote) to standard shortcut? Something is not designed good. That dock on left side is unusable when there are more than 20 apps opened. Expose is good, really good. But it's slow when a lot of apps are opened

I'm no web surfer person, I used to WORK (yes, work) efficiently in Gnome2, I have really a lot of apps open (about 50), I need some sort of managing them. Now that became very tricky and inefficient. Accessing workspaces now is slow, they can't be created as I wish, alt tab is designed for 10 opened windows, there is so little information about everything in G3, no customization of any sort anywhere.

Efficiency was best feature why I used gnome not other DE, now that fades away. Gnome is not designed to work, but to surf web, so pity, they forgot about people who actually work in DE in favor of people who surf web and check photos online

I'm not against innovation, I'm for thought - through design ideas, cool useful features etc. This was the desing which kinda was OK for me (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYOe9INyy88). Decent WS management, somehow I felt it will kinda be good.

I hope this will change, feature will get added or I could find any workarounds how to work efficiently, until then it seems all efficiency is gone

Kirurgs

Last edited by Kirurgs (2011-04-11 19:26:00)

Vamp898 · 2011-04-11 19:24:36

ajschwartz wrote:

Oh! I forgot!
Does anyone if there's a way to re-enable autocomplete on ALT+F2 (run)?

ALT+F1

JazzplayerL9 · 2011-04-11 19:41:23

My thoughts so far...

As choosing a desktop in Arch is a completely voluntary thing, I decided to give G3 a try. So far, there have been a few hiccups along the way but otherwise I have managed to make it a useable home for my work. Most of my applications I need to use on a day-to-day basis work such as evolution, firefox, pidgin, and LibreOffice. Banshee was having a bit of a nightmare time loading until the latest update in testing...works just fine. Overall, I see how the Gnome team are moving and I like the ideas they have. They're providing an all-in-one desktop experience for this day and age...everything interconnected and trying to bring the desktop alive with communications and being able to simply "throw" windows over into other spaces for later.

I can't say I don't like anything about the DE, it's a work in progress...if you're using it, you know that already. At the immediate, the only thing I'm really lacking is a soundless notification for IM's from pidgin. Since Empathy is having issues with google talk and facebook chat, I haven't been able to use it and don't know whether it is working well with the gnome shell. Pidgin gives a notification upon initial IM but after that, the icon blinks in the auto-hidden bar without any more popups. I've gone 20 minutes before realizing I had a response. I'm sure that's an easy enough fix but I haven't looked into it yet. Oh...I did manage to slow everything down to a grind trying to copy a large file in nautilus...and my volume up/down shortcut keys aren't working with the new volume controls in G3. I can still get to a terminal...I can still visit websites...and I have hotkeys set up for everything I need to do. Still home...just looks and works a little different. Occasionally needs some duct tape...

Sloshy · 2011-04-11 19:56:25

Kirurgs wrote:

See, in G2 there was "Connection information" in NM applet, it gave almost all information about connection. In G3 - almost nothing and I had to click deep through till I get IP (frustrated).

Network Indicator -> Network Settings. Your IP is on the right side

Kirurgs wrote:

Workspaces now are crap. Alt tab is crap as well

Talk with the GNOME Shell developers on IRC, try reading the design documents, make a suggestion on the mailing list... etc. They need all the suggestions and problems they can get so GNOME 3 can be better

Kirurgs wrote:

Efficiency was best feature why I used gnome not other DE, now that fades away. Gnome is not designed to work, but to surf web, so pity, they forgot about people who actually work in DE in favor of people who surf web and check photos online

I understand your problems, but I don't believe that GNOME 3 was solely designed for "surfing the web". GNOME 3 not fitting your old workflow isn't a good reason to say that they "forgot about people who actually work". They did a lot of usability testing and optimized for new users, but they still haven't forgotten power users. As I said above, talk with them and see if their design can improve in a later release

zodmaner · 2011-04-11 20:00:07

I like the new Alt-tab behaviour, especially the fact that you can Alt-tab between applications or windows of application.

Kernald · 2011-04-11 21:40:29

JazzplayerL9 wrote:

I can't say I don't like anything about the DE, it's a work in progress...if you're using it, you know that already. At the immediate, the only thing I'm really lacking is a soundless notification for IM's from pidgin. Since Empathy is having issues with google talk and facebook chat, I haven't been able to use it and don't know whether it is working well with the gnome shell. Pidgin gives a notification upon initial IM but after that, the icon blinks in the auto-hidden bar without any more popups. I've gone 20 minutes before realizing I had a response. I'm sure that's an easy enough fix but I haven't looked into it yet. Oh...I did manage to slow everything down to a grind trying to copy a large file in nautilus...and my volume up/down shortcut keys aren't working with the new volume controls in G3. I can still get to a terminal...I can still visit websites...and I have hotkeys set up for everything I need to do. Still home...just looks and works a little different. Occasionally needs some duct tape...

Notifications are really good with Empathy integration. Maybe give it a try with two Bonjour sessions, one in Empathy, the other in Pidgin
For the volume shortcut, mine are working fine. Maybe you've got an application (Banshee ?) intercepting them ?

dinkydarko · 2011-04-11 23:43:13

I've been using it for a few days now: my gripes:

1. I'm dual monitor, smaller older one on the left, main wide screen on the right. If the 'hot corner' worked for me (its in the center and take a few seconds to find, making it useless) then it might nearly be as quick to start apps as gnome 2, its for me its much slower. 2 clicks instead of 1 isnt never going to be faster. I know i can use the other corner, but then i have to move back over to the middle of the screen to get my cursor to the apps. again, slower than before.
2. i dont like having to type of find my app. my keyboard is often covered in stuff and i'm used to using the mouse more.
3. The i dont understand the thinking of telling you the app name in focus beside Activities. Seems pointless and ugly.
4. Same as everyone else, I like my desktop and grudge having to start nautilus to see it.
5. i want to customize. customize is one of the reason i love linux (arch especially).
6. the title bars and fugly.

Good bits:

1. Its slick and fast.
2. i dont feel i need compiz anymore.
3. um.. i like black?

I do see it as a big step forwards, but maybe we didnt need all the small steps backwards too (which seem like design decisions).

Only_Slightly_Bent · 2011-04-11 23:45:27

I really like Gnome 3 a lot. I like the notifications system and really like how most of it works especially the shell screen. The only thing I really dislike at the moment is the keyboard controls for managing windows are rather shite... but understandably so, there are tools for that and if I can get pytyle to work it will all be gravy. I see myself sticking with it for a while at least.

Arch Linux

#51 2011-04-10 17:48:10

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#52 2011-04-10 18:04:21

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#53 2011-04-10 18:18:35

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#54 2011-04-10 18:20:15

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#55 2011-04-10 18:24:37

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#56 2011-04-10 18:37:48

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#57 2011-04-10 21:27:12

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#58 2011-04-10 21:53:13

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#59 2011-04-11 01:19:32

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#60 2011-04-11 07:27:03

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#61 2011-04-11 07:55:48

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#62 2011-04-11 08:26:44

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#63 2011-04-11 14:33:50

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#64 2011-04-11 14:36:40

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#65 2011-04-11 14:38:10

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#66 2011-04-11 14:55:55

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#67 2011-04-11 18:24:27

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#68 2011-04-11 19:11:11

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#69 2011-04-11 19:24:36

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#70 2011-04-11 19:41:23

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#71 2011-04-11 19:56:25

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#72 2011-04-11 20:00:07

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#73 2011-04-11 21:40:29

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#74 2011-04-11 23:43:13

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

#75 2011-04-11 23:45:27

Re: [GNOME 3] First Impressions?

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