GNOME 3 To Support a "Classic" Mode, of Sorts 197
An anonymous reader writes "LWN.net is reporting that GNOME developer Matthias Clasen has announced that, with the upcoming demise of 'fallback mode,' the project will support a set of official GNOME Shell extensions to provide a more "classic" experience. 'And while we certainly hope that many users will find the new ways comfortable and refreshing after a short learning phase, we should not fault people who prefer the old way. After all, these features were a selling point of GNOME 2 for ten years!'"
Good decission (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good decission (Score:4, Interesting)
Not good enough.
The fallback mode wasn't configurable enough.
They should just capitulate on this and bring in the people from the Mate project and let users have a complete choice. Go ahead and update Mate to the GNOME3 libraries and let there be two desktop environments within GNOME. Users will choose the mode that is more appropriate for their use.
Also, stop using GTK+ or fork it to be called something else. For god's sake, the problems I have with newer GiMP and older GNOME just piss me off.
Re:Good decission (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway there is no reason for "classic" extensions to be so limited. GNOME Shell is like Firefox in that new functionality can be strapped onto it and appear seamless. Any extension could potentially change the look and feel of the shell in quite radical ways. That's all Mint are doing after all with MGSE.
Re:Good decission (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the problem with extensions: too many changes between Gnome releases means that many extensions break from version to version necessitating extension writers having to maintain multiple versions to support multiple distros. Add the fact that the Gnome devs rarely communicate these changes until maybe right before, or just after a new release, and are notoriously indifferent to the breakage they cause, has led to developers turning away from writing extensions altogether. And let's not get into how they routinely fuck with people trying to create themes for Gnome3.
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Interesting trolling effort, but why would you pretend this is a bad thing?
It gives distros a way to differentiate themselves (as Mint has done), keeps overhead to a minimum, allows power users almost unlimited customisation.
In many ways, it's the best of both worlds. Configurable and simple.
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That's the whole point of this effort: blessing a specific set of extensions means that special effort will be taken to make sure they don't break from release to release.
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The fallback mode was just an if-all-else-fails mode. It wasn't meant to replace GNOME 2 or even be a place you'd want to work unless your graphics driver was hosed.
Fallback mode is the only realistic option for remote desktop environments.
It is also the only way I can tolerate Gnome 3; the default shell is shiny but completely unusable. However, even in fallback mode the window manager is hosed and the control panel has been dumbed down to the point where you have to twiddle dconf for even the most basic settings like “focus follows mouse”.
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Indeed, it certainly wasn't good enough to replace Gnome2. Whether your graphics drivers were hosed or not. Gnome3 is, itself, a hosing of the system.
I doubt that I'll go back to a team that has proven to be so unreliable a supplier. That would require that nearly EVERYONE else to be equally unreliable. Better at the moment are KDE, LXDE, and xfce...possibly others I haven't examined. I'm not considering specialty things like blackbox to be competitors. I haven't evaluated Mate or Cinnamon, because wh
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Oh, it *runs*. That's not the point. They all run. It's just incomparably WORSE than ... well, than MSWindows95A. It's up in the "Bob" class for usability. (Not for the same reasons. If MS-Bob were running on today's hardware it might be *better* than Gnome3.)
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What problems are these?
Gimp is GTK 2 still, and Gnome is GTK 3. There are no problems that I can see here. The library versions coexist without problems.
I do agree that the GTK+ 3 development process has some tremendous problems and I'm not quite sure I like the way things are going. But we'll see how it settles out. I've always liked the GTK+ apis, and the fact that it's straight C and so easily wrappable by different languages. Qt seems to be better placed right now, in terms of platform portability
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Actually they don't, which is the real problem. As an exercise try compiling stuff that relies on a new GTK on an old distro or old stuff on a distro with a new GTK. You'll see what we are all complaining about and why casual users can't have their old apps in the new environment and vice versa.
The gnome project managed to bring DLL hell into *nix despite the normal behaviour of just about everything else of library versions coexisting without problems.
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This is odd, since on my Fedora 17 box I have both GTK+2 and GTK+3 installed just fine. I am running a mix of GTK+2 and GTK+3 apps. I also have the -devel packages for both installed.
I think you're conflating GTK with Gnome here. Gnome 3 purposely broke things by using the same library names for key gnome components. For example, Nautilus is still Nautilus, so I can't install Nautilus 2 and Nautilus 3 because they both use /usr/share/nautilus, for example. That's the issue.
There is no DLL hell here. S
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
MATE! (Score:2, Funny)
http://mate-desktop.org/ [mate-desktop.org]
Gnome should have learned how to play chess. They are out of moves.
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Lets see what classic will mean :)
Is it a reaction to Cinnamon or Mate (Linux Mint), which offers an alternative to G3. ?
Hell must be freezing over (Score:4, Insightful)
GNOME is paying attention to what their users say and are listening to what the users want?
Hell must be freezing over!
Re:Hell must be freezing over (Score:5, Interesting)
No, this is an attempt to undermine the work of the Linux Mint guys. See, current Gnome devs are control freaks obsessed with preventing anything they think damages their "brand". Theming and users configuring their desktops to their preferences is an anathema to them, and they are rightly concerned that the Mint guys are making a better, more useful Gnome3 than they are. It wouldn't surprise me if upcoming changes in Gnome3 and GTK3 just happen to bollocks Cinnamon, muffin and other Mint components.
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The "Linux Mint" guys haven't done much work. Most of the JavaScript extensions that make up Cinnamon aren't primarily developed by anyone associated with Linux Mint and Mate is basically Gnome 2 with a few minor patches.
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Yeah! Wait.... what?
Closing the barn door after the horse is gone (Score:5, Insightful)
Too little, too late. The project has already run off too many power users and influential people within the FOSS community. The top-down, change for the sake of change dictate has led many to question the project's leadership.
News Flash: They were faulting people who preferred the traditional way. Those who wanted a minimal and unobtrusive workspace were told to stop being stodgy luddites and get with the Metro/OSX times.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Gimp and a bunch of other projects seem to be headed the same way
Hint: There's a lot of developers that do work on both projects. Now some of them have migrated to Libreoffice. Expect more UI carnage to come.
Re:Closing the barn door after the horse is gone (Score:5, Funny)
Gimp and a bunch of other projects seem to be headed the same way
Hint: There's a lot of developers that do work on both projects. Now some of them have migrated to Libreoffice. Expect more UI carnage to come.
Please no ... not the fucking ribbon
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Damned ribbon... It's not a ribbon. It's a tabbed toolbar interface.
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Damned ribbon... It's not a ribbon. It's a tabbed toolbar interface.
That's exactly what GP said, isn't it? Ribbon.
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Do they work for Microsoft?
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There must be users who appreciate^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H need those, and that is disturbing indeed.
CC.
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Why do you find disturbing that people can use computers without devoting their lives to learning them?
Wait I know the answer, it's because it disrupts the livelihood of the priests guarding the arcane knowledge.
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what is it with ripping out a decade of refined workflow for massive amounts of white space and fewer exposed configuration options?
I'm glad I'm not the only person suddenly at a loss as to how to use the GIMP. All options missing is not the same as easy to use, especially if you often want to change the options, like brush sizes.
This trend for dumbed down interfaces has become disturbing.
Yep and combine that with unity, wayland, systemd and a few other misselany, and desktop Linux will resemble nothing fr
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Because God knows GIMP is so easy to use these days...
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Sucks for comparing images, cut and paste etc.
My point is the single window mode isn't necessarily the best way yo do things in all cases even if that's how photoshop does it. Back in the day photoshop didn't even have undo and the fanboys said it wasn't needed, because "real pros saved before every operation".
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Considering how long there've been rumors about a single-window mode and my never seeing it, I was waiting for somebody to smack me in the face with it. You are apparently that person. Thanks :)
Can I ask... (Score:2)
Re:Can I ask... (Score:5, Interesting)
XFCE. I switched from Gnome this year and haven't regreted it. It's snappy and simply does what it is supposed to do.
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I installed Mint 14 and I think the Cinnamon desktop is amazing. It's like what Gnome could have been if the devs didn't want to kill it. I still have a soft spot for KDE after using it for years, but Cinnamon is my new favorite Linux setup.
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What do you mean "could have been" it's simply a fork on gnome with some patches.. It's literally "what is used to be".
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Unity? *ducks* :)
xfce/mate seem popular but give KDE a try - it has matured from the abomination that was 4.0
e17 will be released in a matter of weeks (just in time for the Mayan apocalypse!). I tried enlightenment a few months ago and it seemed fast and bloat free. My distro's snapshot seemed rather buggy though - get something up to date.
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I like XFCE - but - well, this is a little embarrassing. See, I don't have much use for eye candy. 80% or more of eye candy is just waste, IMO. But, XFCE is just a little to plain. Barren. Stark. Ehhhh - I really love Enlightenment, but no one is actively developing it. So, it's Mate for me. I turn it down to minimal settings, and it has enough eye candy left over to keep me happy.
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Enlightenment just released a fourth alpha of e17 two days ago, with a full release apparently scheduled for before the end of the year. That timeline may be optimistic, but it's certainly being actively developed.
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For some definition of "actively". E17 has been in development since the year 2000. I mean WTF?!
I'm not criticizing the team. I mean I think it's only a couple of guys and they do great work.
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GNOME 3 has been compared with OSX, but it didn't copy the functional aspects that made OSX good- it only copied the cosmetic aspects, which made the desktop broken. It's got something that looks like a menu bar on the top, but it doesn't actually function as a menu bar- it just takes up space. It's got something that looks like a dock, but it can only be brought up through a full-screen launcher. It doesn't even have a persistent taskbar of any kind: You have to perfor
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As the marketroids would say, Metro and OSX both "boldly threw off the old paradigm of desktop computing to embrace a synergistic experience 2.0".
Windows did make major changes to their UI because the old one was, well, old. People who use computers as more than consumer appliances weren't having problems, but that was not convincing enough for the marketroids and design majors.
GNOME did take the everybody else is doing it mentality.
People were told to get with the times and replace their simple menu of use
Re:Closing the barn door after the horse is gone (Score:5, Insightful)
The industry has "matured." "New isn't better" any longer. Now we just want to use what we have, not "experience" it.
Re:Closing the barn door after the horse is gone (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, then now after the GNOME 3 and Windows 8 disasters, Max OS X offers the most "classic" desktop experience of all.
On Max OS X You can still right-click on things, you still have a launcher, a trash icon, etc. You can display live system statistics in the launcher, you can have as many freaking windows as you like tiled however you want them, and CHOICE of whether you want an old-school launcher or the "overview/LaunchControl" style. You can move the taskbar around etc...
Need I go on?
How did this happen? How did APPLE of all people remain faithful to the classic desktop while the Linux and MS devs are ditching it.
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Have you seen the new GDM lock screen? What is that, if not a blatant rip-off of the lock screen of 'that which was formerly known as Metro'? Back to Cinnamon + LightDM for me. I never much liked GDM and this stupid lock screen is enough to send me running to LightDM.
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"way back" being the key phrase here. Would the GNOME devs have used that screen if Windows hadn't featured it? I know corelation doesn't imply causation, but this does stink of a me-too thing. Now that I think of it, GDM's lock screen is even less funtional than Windows 8's.
Pfft (Score:5, Insightful)
"we should not fault people who prefer the old way"
Oooh, how generously big-hearted and inclusive of them!
Re:Pfft (Score:4, Informative)
"we should not fault people who prefer the old way"
Oooh, how generously big-hearted and inclusive of them!
Yes, it does come across as... diplomatically condescending. Especially in context:-
And while we certainly hope that many users will find the new ways comfortable and refreshing after a short learning phase, we should not fault people who prefer the old way.
Yep, it's just that the users who preferred the old interface have been too old and stuck in their ways to bother with a "short learning phase".
Comfortable (Score:1)
This guy probably means "convenient" when he says "comfortable". It's one of those false friend things.
(Disclaimer: Native German speaker here, now living in the UK)
This isn't devs listening (Score:5, Informative)
This is just another account of how amazingly full of shit the GNOME team (Red Hat, let's just call it with it real name) continues to be. On one hand they continue NACKing the problems with their environment people have been shouting into their ears from the last two years -at least-; while now on the other they tacitally ACK them but in the same vein they do everything: arrogantly, reluctantly, thinking only about [b]control[/b].
As clearly showed in [URL="https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotting-in-threes/"]this eye-opening essay[/URL] (and the numerous links and comments that spawned in many levels deep), the GNOME team themselves have made clear both extensions and themes are detrimental to their goal of tight CONTROL over every aspect of your involvement with GNOME, whether you are a mere user, a theme or extension dev, a third app dev, or a distro dev.
So much for the argument that "Gnome shell sucks less because you can make it so by using extensions". People, they DON'T WANT THAT. They themselves say it loudly and clearly and without a trace of regret. They *won't* change what you expect them to change. Just read carefully the linked post above. They broke the extensions and themes on each release intentionally. Now they "tackle" this issue...
At this point what they are asking themselves is this:
"how do we attempt to save our project while NOT having to ackowledge the criticism, and NOT having to drop an inch of control??".
Answer: [B]We[/B] take control of the extensions, and [b]not[/b] third parties.
For them it is a good solution, they tackle many angles at once: tighten control, avoid change, pretend change, do something about public oppinion.
In the end the outcome will be decided by the sum of the personal choice each of us has to make between "do I stop, do I stand back against people that are against what this OS was always about, do I turn my back on them and take some weight on me" or "I need the short term gain of not distracting myself with ackowledging there is a problem here and reacting to it: that myself, as a user, as a contributor to this scene am not in these people plans". Do you keep pluging your ears and go "lalalalalala everything is awesome" like these people want you to do?.
You may call me delusional, I won't give a shit. I think many of the people that have been here from the beginning in the nineties, haven't (or haven't completely yet) forgot the struggles and years of effort on part of each member in this community to get to where we got a few years ago. The issue here is *money*. The issue here is *companies wanting to subvert Linux ecosystems for money*. Just take a look at what company employees the key GNOME devs are, for christ sake. To the younger, uninformed people: educate yourselves, don't take for granted what you have now, and yes, *fight* to conserve your power over it. If you are "just" a user, your power resides in your CHOICE, and in your OPPINION. If you are a dev, you also have the power of FORK, the power of NOT PLAYING THE GAME.
Re:This isn't devs listening (Score:5, Insightful)
Keeping tight control is a *good* think in user interface design strategy; it provides a more focused structure and simpler environment, which were their goals.
The mistake the Gnome developers made was calling the new desktop "Gnome 3". Had they presented it as an experimental new environment and named it "Project Harmony" or "Desktop Zen", or something like that, they would have stepped on less toes and met less resistance to the radical changes, and people would have seen it in better light.
Of course they would have had less audience, as distros wouldn't have adopted it so quickly. That trade-off was their choice, but I think "Linux is awesome! There are three good major desktops now!" was a better selling point than "They've updated Gnome, and it sucks".
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May I add, "as long as you have users that like your design and you keep listening to them to further tweak it".
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He's not talking about UI design 'control' - he's talking about project control, and the fact that by-proxy, and by nature of being the primary desktop UI, what the gnome team (heavily sponsored by 'corporate linux') does, hugely impacts the entire linux ecosystem. and this group of people has proven themselves to be heavily unresponsive to complaints from the user community which popularize their product (aka a despot like situation)
But on the design side, I think you are wrong as well. Imho, the NeXT inte
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No, I don't know that. From observing their actions I would assume that they were funded by Microsoft or Apple. I'll admit that I haven't looked at a Red Hat distro lately, so I don't know what their GUIs are like, but before they killed the "Red Hat Professional" version they would NEVER have pushed that kind of garbage.
Re:This isn't devs listening (Score:4, Insightful)
The mistake the Gnome developers made was calling the new desktop "Gnome 3". Had they presented it as an experimental new environment and named it "Project Harmony" or "Desktop Zen", or something like that, they would have stepped on less toes and met less resistance to the radical changes, and people would have seen it in better light.
The Gnome devs went out of their way to make it difficult to impossible to have Gnome 2 and Gnome 3 co-exist, due to the library naming/incompatibilities. The way they manoeuvred, users were forced to use Gnome 3. Calling it "Project Harmony" or anything else wouldn't have made any difference, because they basically nuked Gnome 2.
Desktop Dunny (Score:2)
The mistake the Gnome developers made was calling the new desktop "Gnome 3". Had they presented it as an experimental new environment and named it "Project Harmony" or "Desktop Zen", or something like that, they would have stepped on less toes and met less resistance to the radical changes, and people would have seen it in better light.
Then again, calling Gnome 3 something more honest like "Project Puke" or "Desktop Dunny" would have been too obvious to their intended victims^W audience. We moved all our home systems (2 desktops, 2 laptops) to xfce4, and are quite happy with it. We're not likely to evaluate Gnome 3 again for quite a while.
I still suspect that Microsoft or Apple might have planted some rotters in a few of the Linux desktop projects. Ubuntu's Unity and Red Hat's Gnome 3 are just too awful to have erupted without assistan
Re:This isn't devs listening (Score:5, Funny)
Your movie idea is odd, but I would still prefer watching it to using GNOME3.
Re:This isn't devs listening (Score:4, Insightful)
OMFG!!...Some of the quotes etc in the essay from the GNOME folks are utterly beyond belief. I'm serious...I had no idea their attitudes had reached that state...and all the talk about "our brand"...WFT?? They've essentially become Microsoft FFS. After reading that I don't see how anyone who cares about Linux or open source would want anything other than to totally abandon, even boycott those folks...simply amazing.
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When my opinion about how to get my own work done doesn`t matter to someone then they no longer exist for me, just like the fictious story book tales they named themselves after.
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Amen.
Any time you hear marketingspeak from a FOSS group, run.
That's why I gave up on Ubuntu too.
I don't think it's really Redhat (Score:2)
It breaks too many things currently in RHEL.
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This is just another account of how amazingly full of shit the GNOME team (Red Hat, let's just call it with it real name) continues to be.
I agree with you 100% on this. Have a look at some of the recent interactions with the Fedora (aka RedHat) team and them shoving Gnome 3 down peoples throats:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=865922 [redhat.com]
continues here:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=875433 [redhat.com]
Translation of it: Screw the End User, you'll do it OUR WAY.
MATE is better than this Classic Mode (Score:1)
Maybe GNOME folks should indeed remove the classic mode and focus on whatever their goal is rather than trying to keep an unsupported classic mode, ending up with a Jekyll and Hide type of DE.
After all, the GNOME 2 fork MATE [mate-desktop.org] already provides an almost flawless GNOME 2 experience.
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Answer is simple: no. They were all gung-ho for a new experience (yes I went there) while faulting all the old-timey users who were used to Gnome2. They were content with losing them until MATE/Cinnamon/whatever showed them there were more than a 'vocal few' who didn't like the new interface. Now they want all those users back.
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I would say this is an accurate assessment. Their response should be to attempt to merge MATE in with the over-all GNOME project.
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Maybe GNOME folks should indeed remove the classic mode and focus on whatever their goal is rather than trying to keep an unsupported classic mode, ending up with a Jekyll and Hide type of DE.
You mean like Windows 8 / Metro, or to a lesser extent, Unity? Seems everyone wants us to have a new and better "user experience". Funny how "new" and "better" don't always actually seem to go together. I don't recall reading - anywhere - about major UI productivity woes with GNOME2, Windows XP/7, Office (pre-ribbon) etc... You know, Classic Coke.
New improvements often don't improve (Score:4, Interesting)
Often, "new improvements" mean surface-level improvements that don't improve use and efficiency at all.
For example, I think Microsoft's Aero and related interfaces are neat-looking, but they don't help me achieve anything using the computer. They just make it a bit slicker.
If you turn on the classic Windows interface, you eliminate a fair amount of overhead and get back to the basics of a very functional interface.
The same seems true of Linux GUIs. I appreciate what they're doing in trying to keep up with Windows and Mac OS X and the glitzy new interfaces those have implemented.
However, how much of this actually adds to the basic interface? Does it increase efficiency of the the user? I'm not so sure.
I miss the days of installing a new Linux distro on a ten-year-old machine and finding out that it ran as fast as a new machine with Windows.
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> miss the days of installing a new Linux distro on a ten-year-old machine and finding out that it ran as fast as a new machine with Windows
When did these days go away?
1) Don't run GNOME
2) Install only what you need (if that includes X and a manager, well so be it).
Nothing has changed.
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"I miss the days of installing a new Linux distro on a ten-year-old machine and finding out that it ran as fast as a new machine with Windows."
Don't use bloated WMs. There is plenty of choice.
Summary wrong (Score:5, Informative)
As part of the planning for the DropOrFixFallbackMode feature[1], we've decided that we will compile a list of supported gnome-shell extensions. This will be a small list, focused on just bringing back some central 'classic' UX elements: classic alt tab, task bar, min/max buttons, main menu. To ensure that these extensions keep working, we will release them as a tarball, just like any other module. Giovanni already added an --enable-extensions=classic-mode configure option to the gnome-shell-extensions repository, which we will use for this work.
Also, they make it clear that this is not their preference:
Q: Why not just make gnome-shell itself more tweakable ?
A: We still believe that there should be a single, well-defined UX for GNOME 3, and extensions provide a great mechanism to allow tweaks without giving up on this vision. That being said, there are examples like the a11y menu[2] or search[3], where the shell will become more configurable in the future.
Gnome attempts to be relevant again (Score:1)
Most stupid regression EVER! (Score:4, Interesting)
Having used the new desktop for a year+ now I'm quite into it; find it productive and fast, don't need the classic one back thanks.
BUT the latest builds have by far the most moronic UI regression I have ever seen.
Pop up dialogs in windows cannot be moved/resized (*).
If I do a print-preview in (say) Firefox the 'print dialog' appears; and cannot be moved out of the way so I can see the actual print preview itself.
If I want to print images this huge printer options screen, full of whitespace, can totally obscure the image I want to print! therefore negating the point of having a print preview system in the first place since I'm still printing 'blind'.
That is a specific example, many more occur in daily use when, for instance, a dialog appears in which you need to reference or enter details from the screen behind it, which it obscures, and prevents copy/paste from operating. Etc. Ad Nauseum.
An almost daily irritation. I know it is a change made for Tablet Users.. But they are irrelevant to be honest, Gnome is a desktop OS and will remain that way, tablet users have proper tablet OS's to use.
The Idiot Gnome weiners who argued for this, and implemented it, need to be expelled from the project; only by ridding the project of such incompetence will it be able to proceed.
(I think these are Modal dialogues, but I'm not a UI expert so apologies if terminology not quite right, I alos remember that Micro$oft dropped this in their UI after Windoze 3.5.. it is a shame Gnome chose to regress back to the late 80's.
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But! But! But! Not being able to move popups makes it more like JQueryUI and therefore more AJAXY! and AJAXY == better.
Especially AJAX + Web2.0 + Cloud + Touchscreen. That is waaay cooler.
Now I'm going to the mall to buy some all over print tees and multicolored sneakers from a national chain store to show everyone how individualistic I am.
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Even Windows modal dialogs could be moved (a modal dialog is one that pops up and demands attention by not letting you interact with the rest of the system - often used for error notifications and similar).
What you're describing is the art of uselessness, like old splash screens that obscure the things you're working with - but at least they fade after a few seconds.
Looks like they finally run ot of drugs (Score:1)
Seen the light? I don't think so. (Score:5, Insightful)
FTA: "And while we certainly hope that many users will find the new ways comfortable and refreshing after a short learning phase, we should not fault people who prefer the old way."
Translation: "We've lost so many users and had so many complaints that we have to do something, but we're not willing to totally capitulate, so we'll toss them something that looks like a compromise and see if they swallow it."
FTA: "After all, these features were a selling point of GNOME 2 for ten years!"
Note the exclamation point. I'd expect that from someone who's been fighting all along to keep some of GNOME 2's legacy intact - I don't expect it, and don't trust it, from someone who was, and possibly still is, ready and willing to throw all of GNOME 2 under a bus.
I'm glad they're finally making some concessions to their users, but I'd be more convinced of their sincerity if they'd been more responsive to criticism earlier on, instead of covering their ears and digging in their heels for so long.
For the time being I'm just fine with XFCE, and regardless of GNOME 3's newfound tweakability, I don't think I'll be looking to move back to the GNOME fold any time soon.
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True enough. All the press I get out of Gnome these days gives me the feeling that these guys are the pre X11 fork project leaders.. Completely disconnected from the real world and their user base. I won't hold my breath from any meaningful reform from these guys.
Classic Experience (Score:3)
The most baffling situation... (Score:4, Insightful)
<quote>We still believe that there should be a single, well-defined UX for
GNOME 3, and extensions provide a great mechanism to allow tweaks
without giving up on this vision</quote>
I don't understand how this remotely makes sense. I'll preface this by commending the extensible of gnome shell, it allows changes that most other environments cannot offer. However, it's maddening that even the most trivial options mandate extensions to fiddle with. The two sides of the argument are pro-configurability and pro-single UX. What this solution offers is the worst of both worlds. For pro-configurability people, the configuration is not discoverable and its really hard sometimes to find what you want. On top of that, popular extensions break version to version. For pro-single UX people, extensions mean gnome can be anything. This is a single sentence that isn't internally consistent, which can be rephrased as "we don't want configurability because it can create too varied an experience, that's why we think its great that we provide a trivial mechanism that can be used to vary your experience all day long".
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Gnome3 shell extensions may be a horrible kludge, but they aren't as bad as the thing they're fixing.
Backpedaling much? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not Thankful (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not Thankful (Score:4, Insightful)
Arguably you could use some too. Not everyone hates GNOME3 with a passion. Yes it's different and not what you're used to, but that doesn't mean it's bad and wrong and that this needs to be "admitted".
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Some people hate it with a frightening absence of passion. They drink tea out of delicate porcelain cups, while stroking a white cat. Their bluish lips tighten briefly, and there is a hint of tightness in their eyes as they steeple their fingers and regard the offending desktop with disdain.
Or so I imagine. I've never tried Gnome 3. I hear it sucks.
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I've considered that obvious. I'm not sure it's a good design even for that market, but its clear that they're aiming at tablets or cell phones.
I don't care. It's a lousy desktop. I never said it was a lousy cell phone. Maybe it isn't. But I doubt I'll ever try it because I so mad about what they did to the desktop, that I don't trust them at all for any purpose. And they did it wil malice (or *gross* incompetence) aforethought.
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I may be an extreme minority here, with how often people like to bash GNOME 3 at every opportunity here on slashdot. But slashdot likes to amplify vocal minorities too, so who knows.
What I do know is I honestly, really like GNOME 3. For desktops. I held off on switching for a long time because I kept hearing how it was terrible, but I finally switched about 2 weeks ago and I love it.
This is going to sound weird, considering most people describe it as bloated, but I love how minimal it is. I love how everyth
Let the GNOME-3 devs do as they want... (Score:2)
Why I like gnome 3 (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a developer, and I have tried just about every windows manager out there. Ultimately, gnome 3 remains my choice for a few reasons.
Gnome 3 works in the most pleasing way of all the WM's without any configuration. With minimal configuration it gets a lot better. KDE is awesome after intense and sustained configuration, which also goes for a lot of the more classic WM's. But, I don't want to spend very much time configuring at all, even though I have the ability to read manuals and get what I want. That's because what I want most is to focus on my work, not on my work tools. This is coming from someone who almost obsessively learns hotkeys and configures them in any window manager, the default behavior should still be coherent and reasonable.
Gnome 3 also has the most superior window switching I've seen, and it has a very responsive flow to starting new applications. Its alt-tabbing with the way it shows you windows in other work spaces, the way it arranges windows when you hit the windows key, the hidden ribbon bar, the sensible default hotkeys (most of them inherited from gnome 2 I recognize) and the way the window manager seems to just try to get out of the way most of the time...
I want minimal, pretty, and fast. So, yes I have some seriously powerful hardware to run this on, and maybe if I were on an older machine I would want a more efficient WM, but from a user interface perspective, Gnome 3 is exactly what I want in a window manager. Task switching and window arrangement is just vastly superior to the other WM's pre-configuration.
Ah well (Score:2)
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Yeah. If I could get electricsheep to run as a screensaver under xfce or LXDE, I wouldn't have to put up with KDE4. None of those options are as good as Gnome2, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards. (Maybe I shoudl give Mate another try.....)
XFCE is very good (Score:2)
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