View Full Version : Gnome 3 Shell: My ranty review (with questions)!
hubick
26th May 2011, 02:20 AM
I have spent a couple solid days now since upgrading to Gnome 3 Shell under Fedora 15 and AHH, what were they thinking??
Like most geeks/programmers, I usually have quite a bit going on on my computers. Historically, I have used the same 6 workspaces on my work/home machines:
1) Communications: Firefox email and IM.
2) Web: Usually 2-5 Firefox windows, each one grouping a set of related tabs.
3) Development: Eclipse and usually with 3-5 compiler/db/root service terminals also.
4) Remote: SSH terminal sessions, rdesktop terminal server sessions, VM's.
5) File Management: Usually two Nautilus browsers (one source/copy and one target/paste one).
6) Personal: Home Email/Web on work machine.
So, now, where to start...
Dynamic workspaces suck! I don't think I'm alone in using workspaces to group related applications tasks (like those outlined above)?? I think like most people, it's become ingrained in me which workspace I need for whatever task I want to do - I know what desktop my Nautilus or Thunderbird or Firefox or whatever is going to be on without having to look. Everything in it's place, and /bam/, I'm efficient at getting to it. But those apps don't get all started up and running like that in an instant, when I come in to work, I might start with email and web and maybe a open an SSH session to read a log on a remote server, and then later on that day, open Eclipse or whatever. But with Gnome Shell it's now almost impossible to get the ordered workspaces I'm accustomed to! And even if I do open everything in the right order to get it setup right, if I then close my email on workspace 1 when I go home for the day, I can't reopen it on workspace 1 when I come in the next, as all my web stuff will have bumped down from workspace 2! WTF do the Gnome devs expect me to do here? What are they using their workspaces for where this isn't a huge problem? Is everything just in a big messed up jumble for them? Is this why the help documentation has instructions how to "find a lost window"? I don't lose windows!! Anyhow, it sounds like gnome-shell-frippery can lock those down again as a workaround hack, but that should be core functionality!
How is hiding the workspace switcher behind the activities overview a good idea? Workspace switching on my 30" LCD is killing me! I might have been able to handle an auto-hiding switcher if I could activate it directly with a hot-corner in the top right or something, but having to go top-left for the activities overview first, and then over to the right, is just a royal PITA. When you can see the switcher all the time (like Gnome 2), your brain can focus on scanning for what you are going to click on, while your body moves your hand and the pointer in that direction - so you can instantly click when the pointer gets down there. But with Gnome Shell, I have to move the mouse 3 feet back and forth over my 30" before the switcher un-hides and my brain can even start to scan for what I'm going to eventually click on! And Gnome 2 was one motion to the switcher on the panel, and one click to switch, where Gnome 3 is one motion upper left, one motion far right to switcher, and then a double click to switch. That's twice as many motions and twice as many clicks! If managing this stuff is the primary responsibility of Gnome, how can the devs view *doubling* the effort required for it's primary task as anything more than complete FAIL? Is there an extension to provide a workspace switcher directly on the top panel again? I'm using alt-tab as a workaround to just pick the app I want, instead of the workspace, but gah! In an ideal world, I think alt-tab should optionally only be for the apps on the current workspace anyhow, but in this case not doing that is saving me, so whatever.
Where is minimize? Do the Gnome 3 devs really keep all N windows on your screen at once? The are probably in the group of freaks who actually *like* the horrid GIMP interface! Let's say I am surfing, and download 5 files, starting 5 viewer windows... and after quickly looking at the contents, I decide I don't need to read those docs right now, but want to keep them around to read a short time later, without having to find the links to download them again. So, I minimize them, to get them out of the way of what I'm doing now. Or, at least, I used to, but now I have no minimize button?? WTF? Ok, so I can right click on the title bar now and get a menu to do it, yay, but that's really inconvenient! I can add some non-standard hack to get the buttons back, OK. I'm more wondering, in the Gnome 3 dev world view, what am I expected to do? Have a big jumble of windows peeking out from behind each other and distracting me?
The activities view sucks! I used my taskbar as an ORDERED LIST of things pending my attention! I no longer see any easy way I can see to re-order/prioritize my tasks like this. And when I minimize something, POOF!, it's like it's gone! - and because the workspace switching sucks and I'm using alt-tab to bypass it, I try never to go into the activities view, but I'm forgetting about the minimized things as a result! Even worse is when I do go in there! My brain finds it fairly easy to process the short text of the window titles in the old taskbar - where the activities view overwhelms me with all the contents of those apps as well! My head explodes every time I open it! BAM 8 big white boxes of tiny unreadable text, no app icons, WTF one do I want, AHHH!?! *cries* Ultimately, I think the lack (?) of a simple, concise, re-orderable taskbar could be the deal breaker for me.
And the applications overview - how is having the default view hitting the user with a big confusing pile of *everything* a better idea than a nicely organized menu? And, again, how is burying all of this mess inside the activities view better than that organized menu being directly accessible from the panel? More clicks are fun, yay? It shows off the pretty icons all at once?
And I just downright detest any paradigm which mixes running apps with their launchers! I know the newb masses who only utilize a single window of any given app don't understand the difference and don't care, but I'm not a newb, and the resulting nerfing of the interface makes creating the desired multiple instances/windows of things into a major PITA! - aka I don't want to have to right click and select "new window" when I used to be able to just click! At least it looks like I can also hack around this to some extent.
I'm not against learning a new way of working. And I'm really trying to give the stock setup a go first, as to understand how I am intended to work within this setup. I just don't see how every aspect of this isn't less efficient than it was before, and for *what* gain?
I want my old desktop back!
cheerio158
26th May 2011, 02:48 AM
I hear you! You have pretty much described my computer usage patterns.
I recently spent several hours using G3 in a VM (VirtualBox with 3D) and determined that there is no way this will work for me.
Crippled panel, no applets, awkward application launching, puffy theme, restricted configurability ... how is this an improvement? Unbelievable!
I'll be sticking with F14 until end-of-live and then look around for another desktop. Hopefully G3.X will improve by then or somebody forks G2.
bob
26th May 2011, 03:05 AM
Well expressed rant! I hope you've taken the time to join the Gnome mailing list and explained things to the guys who make the thing. They really should hear from you.
HMSS013
26th May 2011, 03:59 AM
glad someone took the time to make this thread...
....does anyone know of an easier way to shut the machine down than logging off all users first??
everything in Gnome 3 seems to require an extra step to do... doesn't seem that efficient. :p
Dan
26th May 2011, 04:09 AM
This sounds a lot like my first knee-jerk reaction to Gnome 3. <..:p..>
HMSS013
26th May 2011, 04:11 AM
This sounds a lot like my first knee-jerk reaction to Gnome 3. <..:p..>
i just think that if something is to be considered intuitive it probably shouldn't require so much effort to understand.
it seems to me people realize that Gnome 3 is here to stay and have accepted that the desktop they know and love is gone. :(
Dan
26th May 2011, 04:16 AM
Not gone. Just in a cocoon awaiting rebirth as something useful. <..:p..>
For perspective ... http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=259442
HMSS013
26th May 2011, 04:24 AM
i'm still keeping the faith that it will find it's way back towards home... until then, i'm keeping F15 on my Virtual Box for toying with...i'll wipe F14 when that day comes. :)
but i agree with the Win/Mac envy getting the better of them... Ubuntu Unity was the first example of the Linux community cracking under the pressure.
i also think it has alot to do with the phone os surge... people are begging developers to dumb it down for them...to the point where it becomes completely unnecessary.
jtfolden
26th May 2011, 04:44 AM
i just think that if something is to be considered intuitive it probably shouldn't require so much effort to understand.
My mind is still a boggle over exactly what it is about Gnome 3 that requires so much Herculean effort to understand.
I can see if someone simply does not LIKE the way Gnome 3 works or some of the decisions that the devs made ( as you can't please everyone) but I haven't come across anything that takes more than a few seconds (or minutes) to understand.
For example, I think having only "Suspend" in the menu is a mistake... not necessarily because I think power-off should be there instead ...but because Suspend is normally an automatic thing; Desktops go to sleep based on power management settings and notebooks go to sleep when you close the lid. I never put my computer to sleep manually and I rarely power off... If anything, I restart my system more than any of the other options.
snoze
26th May 2011, 04:51 AM
I suspect somebody was working on chrome webOS while developing gnome3.;)
HMSS013
26th May 2011, 04:55 AM
but, realistically, shouldn't all options be available??
...at what point does it cease to be adding simplicity and become neutering functionality... :confused:
Gnome has become popular for being limitlessly customizable... now we've stripped it of that. :(
jtfolden
26th May 2011, 05:11 AM
but, realistically, shouldn't all options be available??
...at what point does it cease to be adding simplicity and become neutering functionality... :confused:
I can understand the logic of not having them all in the menu for consistency's sake (the physical power button can be used across desktop and mobile devices to actually turn the machine off) BUT the reality is that Gnome 3 is not going to be used on a lot of phones or tablets. if I were to design it myself, I think I'd make a single selection on the menu that lead to a dialog with all supported options (including logging out) rather than stuffing them all in the menu. ...and maybe that menu selection could be modified depending on what key was held down (holding down Alt and clicking would immediately power-off, holding down ctrl would restart, etc...).
It's not a big deal to me, right now, though because my systems are on 24/7 for the most part. The day it does bug me, there's an extension. ;)
Gnome has become popular for being limitlessly customizable... now we've stripped it of that. :(
...but that isn't true. The abundance of extensions just in the last few weeks is proof, imo, that Gnome is more customizable than ever. In fact, that a person can make fundamental changes just with a little javascript and css opens up the ability to a much wider audience. You can already customize Gnome-Shell to look and behave mostly like Gnome 2.
I have little doubt there will be a HUGE number of extensions and mods available in just a few months from now.
droopy4096
26th May 2011, 04:17 PM
Just to put things in perspective:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=186718
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=187798
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=194283
http://fixunix.com/kde/505728-kde4-rants.html
3 years ago KDE went through the same "rough" patch, and in case of Fedora and it's goal to stay "bleeding edge" KDE4 was unleashed on unsuspecting public way prematurely aggravating some. Considering I'm a KDE user I still think it may take about the same amount of time for dust to settle and features to be polished/reverted to get Gnome3 to usable state. I'm not sure however Fedora team should be bringing such "raw" materials to it's customers as a part of "stable" release. It may be worth considering having separate repo for those things - so that the adventurous kinds can follow that path if they chose to.
jesuisbenjamin
26th May 2011, 04:32 PM
What i feel with Gnome 3 is that it is coercive and it is precisely why i dropped Windows for Linux 6 years ago.
There are some good ideas in it, but they are badly implemented and the environment should be customisable easily and immediately.
So i tried Fedora for the first time today--i was really pissed off after Ubuntu got messed up by its own updates--but i had to give up on Fedora+Gnome3. Also my wireless was not working immediately which i think is an essential feature of a good OS (but that's another thread).
I'm willing to give a try to Fedora again: can it be used with Gnome 2 (classic?)?
Dan
26th May 2011, 04:38 PM
Sadly, no. There is the fallback mode, which is similar, and there are several other desktop environments available, such as KDE XFCE etc. But there has been so much changed under the hood, that the old Gnome 2.x just isn't going to work.
jesuisbenjamin
26th May 2011, 04:40 PM
why isn't Fedora working on its own DE?
droopy4096
26th May 2011, 04:48 PM
you can always use alternative desktops - KDE/LXDE/XFCE are the first ones that come to mind. I was really pleased with the work Fedora-KDE team has done integrating all essential components - after installing base OS (minimal install) all I have pulled in was @kde-desktop and voila! Things were working "out-of-the-box" - nice change after custom kernels of Ubuntu. I'm sure LXDE/XFCE teams worked just as hard so you should have no problem getting F15 a try. Since you're changing your experience with Gnome3 completely anyway - might as well try some other flavours ;)
---------- Post added at 09:48 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:47 AM ----------
@jesuisbenjamin
My impression "own DE" == Gnome. If memory serves me right - quite a few Gnome developers have @redhat.com emails ;)
fpmurphy
26th May 2011, 05:38 PM
Initially I have to say that I was not too enthusiastic abut the GNOME 3 shell. It takes a while to get used to and was pretty unable when I started experimenting with it However, compared to all other DEs on Linux, it has one huge advantage - the UI is mostly written in JavaScript, is themable using CSS and has a built in extension mechanism. After writing a few extensions, I quickly got the shell to work the way I wished it to work.
A whole community of extension developers has emerged in the last couple of months, standards and conventions are slowly being agreed upon by these developers For example, developers of theme managers/selectors have agreed a theme format specification (see http://fpmurphy.com/gnome-shell-extensions) and effort is underway to develop an shell extensions website like addons.mozilla.org which will allow developers to showcase their extensions and users to download an extension, rate extensions and comment upon them.
The GNOME shell has ushered in a new era of freedom for GNOME users. Now a person that knows some JavaScript and CSS can easily modify their UI to meet their individual tastes and requirements.
CarlosMosca
26th May 2011, 06:43 PM
I'm unable to rename certain files and folders on my mounted NTFS partition under F15 Gnome (I have NEVER experienced this behaviour in Gnome 2xx or KDE). Line in /etc/fstab/ is:
/dev/sdaX /customdirectory ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
EDIT 1: Removing/uncommenting line in /etc/fstab has no effect on the problem. This is *extremely* annoying.
jtfolden
26th May 2011, 08:26 PM
why isn't Fedora working on its own DE?
Look at the horrible mess an idea like that brought to Ubuntu users... :D;)
r0bis
26th May 2011, 08:44 PM
Well guys, I actually like the new interface way better than the Gnome 2 with all the metacity / compiz / emerald stuff. This new interface seems very much task/activity orientated. There is lots of free space, little clutter. I understand that there are going to be lots of opportunity for plugins and further customizations, so I am not too unhappy with the current obvious lack of some functionality. And it is always possible just to go to KDE if this seems a bit barren. For my taste it is great and I am calmly waiting for the improvements to come.
Kudos to Fedora for being the first to implement Gnome 3 !!!
:-)
Finalzone
26th May 2011, 08:49 PM
I'm unable to rename certain files and folders on my mounted NTFS partition under F15 Gnome (I have NEVER experienced this behaviour in Gnome 2xx or KDE). Line in /etc/fstab/ is:
/dev/sdaX /customdirectory ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
EDIT 1: Removing/uncommenting line in /etc/fstab has no effect on the problem. This is *extremely* annoying.
No problem here running Gnome 3 on Fedora 15. Perhaps permission issue.
droopy4096
27th May 2011, 09:09 PM
Nobody referenced guide here: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=263006 hopefully it will help to work around some problems people are facing.
Mariusz W
27th May 2011, 10:15 PM
Nobody referenced guide here: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=263006 hopefully it will help to work around some problems people are facing.
Probably because it doesn't need to be mentioned: it is a sticky in the Guides & Solutions section after all.
assen
30th May 2011, 09:46 PM
Hi,
Thanks for the nice rant - I'm glad I'm not the last one to see how counter-productive G3 is.
Looking for alternative, I gave F15 a try in two other flavours I've never played with before: LXDE and XFCE.
LXDE was first as it claims to be "light"; since I use a 1.8 GHz single-core P4 machine, so it seemed a good choice. But only seemed. A DE which has no GUI to add/remove keyboard layout (but has an "indicator" to show the current layout)... and docs which proudly tell me what to put in xorg.conf to get layout switching... guys, you oughtta be kiddin' :-) It's 2011 outside... yep, I do know how to switch layouts in xorg.conf - If I wanted to do so, I'd install Slackware :-) So, LXDE was wiped out as no-go in less than 5 minutes.
Next, enter XFCE. At least, keyboard layouts work. But gosh, it is ugly. Very ugly. And no reasonable way to fix it?! No way to remove the stupid grey balloons under each icon (unless you manage to find a whole theme - or want to fiddle with some CSS)?! No decent icon set, no decent themes... you have 4 (!) different types of themes - one for GTK, one for window manager, one for mouse... c'mon! And you get separate (?!) settings menu for the same thing like fonts and icons (one for the desktop, other for the window manager). Ye, no go too - far, far and away from G2.
So - no luck at all, looks like I'll be staying with F14 for quite some time. And I'm officially willing to join any team which undertakes the task to keep panel, Alt+Tab and all other reasonable, productive stuff we now enjoy alive - either in G2 or, probably more reasonable, by writing proper code for G3 (thank G-d they have not decided to rewrite GTK+ in Javascript yet! :-). Off-topic, but sooner or later one usually gets what he asks for: Phoronix came up today with some productivity tests on G3 with Mutter + Gnome Shell vs. Unity (and whatever they run below it in *buntu). The JS-based Shell is pathetic, falling at some tests more than 3 times behind decent stuff like good ol' Metacity or Compiz (in G2), even going down by a full leap to Unity.
WWell,
novafluxx
30th May 2011, 10:05 PM
Sounds a lot like my first reaction to GNOME 3 as well! I've sense given it more time, and I find myself navigating very well - even with multiple windows open. It IS a change, and some will not like it, nor will they take the time to adjust. That's fine and well, and that is each persons prerogative.
I now find myself tossing my mouse to the upper left corner of the screen at work to view all my window - except that ancient machine runs XP Pro!
I have a lot of hope that the majority of the "little" things will get worked out in future versions. I have a lot of hope and expectations riding on the next major release of GNOME 3.
I also hope the continue to develop the fallback mode, for those that wish to use that interface. I'm sure it is a lot of work, but I'm hoping the GNOME community and the downstream distributions can help out.
At first I gave Ubuntu a try, and I really disliked their Unity desktop. I tried GNOME 3 in Fedora, and although it's not perfect, I am falling in love with it.
Here's to the future development of GNOME 3 and hoping that it gets those "little things" we loved about the 2.x series!
Do any of you remember when GNOME 2 first launched? ;-)
sej7278
30th May 2011, 10:41 PM
i'm not sure the problem is just gnome3, i think the whole of fedora15 stinks, i'm on the verge of installing debian 6!
first the installation took 4+ hours as despite me unticking "fedora-updates repo" it still for god-knows what reason decided to download all the packages instead of getting them off the dvd image on the usb key it booted from.
then there's all this crap with yum and its i686 duplicates of x86_64 packages.
hell i can't even figure out how to configure the screensaver in gnome3, let alone startup applications and services!
the gnome3 theme looks like gnome1 and really could do with a panel.
flv files don't play in anything but totem despite me installing every codec and gstreamer-plugin under the sun from rpmfusion, i'm guessing their build of [gnome-]mplayer and/or vdpau and vlc is borked.
nfs4 is all over the place - i've got it working with autofs now, but if i do it from fstab then nautilus goes mental every time i try to umount.
i noticed that libreoffice 3.3 still can't cope with embedded files in office documents, i thought it was supposed to be so much better than openoffice.org ?
akmods don't work at all with systemd, jees i can see that becoming the new pulseaudio.
if it weren't for fedora's release cycle i seriously think i'd waste another day rolling back to f13 (as yum upgrade to f14 failed completely) which was rock solid for me, unfortunately clonezilla is a piece of crap and won't restore.
what makes me laugh is that gnome3 is supposed to be for n00bs, but seasoned users can't even use it! its certainly slowed me down.
DukeNukem
30th May 2011, 10:50 PM
Just to put things in perspective:
3 years ago KDE went through the same "rough" patch, and in case of Fedora and it's goal to stay "bleeding edge" KDE4 was unleashed on unsuspecting public way prematurely aggravating some.
Yes but for totally different reasons.
Gnome 3 is an attempt to create a dumb users interface, an interface designed to reduce distraction and maximize focus on a single task...
The Gnome devs have no intention of altering this design aim, so give it 6 more months all the problems such as those the OP is facing will still be present.
One can only hope the devs take a radical departure from this stupidity.
Hubick, KDE 4.6.x FTW!
mrlumpy
31st May 2011, 11:53 AM
I am quoting the whole of this post to get this thread back on track as the issues the poster has are the same as mine. Most of the replies to this thread have been of the "I like gnome 3, took me a few days but now itz da nutz" variety, there are enough threads like this in this forum but this thread was concerning a specific issue. I too raised this issue in my "bottom panel" thread but am hijacking this thread in the hope we can get a decent solution.
If you want to post a "gnome3 took me 3 days to get used to" comment, please don't as that isn't helping solve the issue or adding anything to the debate.
I am going to bold what I believe to be the issue with the current iteration of gnome3 and what it means for those of us who work in a specific way.
For the record, I use ubuntu & unity at home, it works well when all I want to do is mail, web, listen to music/watch video or the odd bit of work. However, at work I am using gnome2 in F14x64, I just counted up my open applications and across 4 workspaces in a dual monitor setup I have the following open:
Mail 11 folders being monitored (quicktabs) in 1 session
Browser 9 tabs across 2 sessions
VM console 1
Vms 3
gedit 7 docs across 3 sessions
Mgmt Consoles 2
gwibber 1
terminals 17
OpenOffice Docs 3
Banshee 1
Empathy 1
calc 1
Every single one of these apps has its own place on the screen and after working like this for 3 years. This is the starting point for my work, the number of terminals increases throughout the day as I perform specific tasks. I know which app is which based on its position on the bottom panel. This is essential with my terminal sessions as each is on a different server, I know that the 3rd one along on my 2nd workspace is the dhcp server, the 4th one on my 3rd workspace is a domain controller, I just know this as this is the way I work and this enables me to do my job quickly, efficiently and successfully.
I am used to grouping applications, I remember the kerfuffle when tabbed browsing came in and again when thunderbird switched to tabs! I use gedit as a holding place for bits of text I need to work with and like the way that it tabs the sessions, I am not a total luddite. I have so many emails sent to me automatically from processes and alerts that I manage these with filters on my mail which then show up in the quicktabs plug-in on thunderbird so I know whether a print queue has jammed or if a new ticket has been raised...etc but I need to be able to quickly get to my terminal sessions without even thinking about it.
Well, that's taken longer than expected! So, to go back to hubick's post:
Like most geeks/programmers, I usually have quite a bit going on on my computers. Historically, I have used the same 6 workspaces on my work/home machines:
1) Communications: Firefox email and IM.
2) Web: Usually 2-5 Firefox windows, each one grouping a set of related tabs.
3) Development: Eclipse and usually with 3-5 compiler/db/root service terminals also.
4) Remote: SSH terminal sessions, rdesktop terminal server sessions, VM's.
5) File Management: Usually two Nautilus browsers (one source/copy and one target/paste one).
6) Personal: Home Email/Web on work machine.
I don't think I'm alone in using workspaces to group related applications tasks (like those outlined above)?? I think like most people, it's become ingrained in me which workspace I need for whatever task I want to do - I know what desktop my Nautilus or Thunderbird or Firefox or whatever is going to be on without having to look. Everything in it's place, and /bam/, I'm efficient at getting to it. But those apps don't get all started up and running like that in an instant, when I come in to work, I might start with email and web and maybe a open an SSH session to read a log on a remote server, and then later on that day, open Eclipse or whatever. But with Gnome Shell it's now almost impossible to get the ordered workspaces I'm accustomed to! And even if I do open everything in the right order to get it setup right, if I then close my email on workspace 1 when I go home for the day, I can't reopen it on workspace 1 when I come in the next, as all my web stuff will have bumped down from workspace 2! WTF do the Gnome devs expect me to do here? What are they using their workspaces for where this isn't a huge problem? Is everything just in a big messed up jumble for them? Is this why the help documentation has instructions how to "find a lost window"? I don't lose windows!! Anyhow, it sounds like gnome-shell-frippery can lock those down again as a workaround hack, but that should be core functionality!
How is hiding the workspace switcher behind the activities overview a good idea? Workspace switching on my 30" LCD is killing me! I might have been able to handle an auto-hiding switcher if I could activate it directly with a hot-corner in the top right or something, but having to go top-left for the activities overview first, and then over to the right, is just a royal PITA. When you can see the switcher all the time (like Gnome 2), your brain can focus on scanning for what you are going to click on, while your body moves your hand and the pointer in that direction - so you can instantly click when the pointer gets down there. But with Gnome Shell, I have to move the mouse 3 feet back and forth over my 30" before the switcher un-hides and my brain can even start to scan for what I'm going to eventually click on! And Gnome 2 was one motion to the switcher on the panel, and one click to switch, where Gnome 3 is one motion upper left, one motion far right to switcher, and then a double click to switch. That's twice as many motions and twice as many clicks! If managing this stuff is the primary responsibility of Gnome, how can the devs view *doubling* the effort required for it's primary task as anything more than complete FAIL? Is there an extension to provide a workspace switcher directly on the top panel again? I'm using alt-tab as a workaround to just pick the app I want, instead of the workspace, but gah! In an ideal world, I think alt-tab should optionally only be for the apps on the current workspace anyhow, but in this case not doing that is saving me, so whatever.
Where is minimize? Do the Gnome 3 devs really keep all N windows on your screen at once? The are probably in the group of freaks who actually *like* the horrid GIMP interface! Let's say I am surfing, and download 5 files, starting 5 viewer windows... and after quickly looking at the contents, I decide I don't need to read those docs right now, but want to keep them around to read a short time later, without having to find the links to download them again. So, I minimize them, to get them out of the way of what I'm doing now. Or, at least, I used to, but now I have no minimize button?? WTF? Ok, so I can right click on the title bar now and get a menu to do it, yay, but that's really inconvenient! I can add some non-standard hack to get the buttons back, OK. I'm more wondering, in the Gnome 3 dev world view, what am I expected to do? Have a big jumble of windows peeking out from behind each other and distracting me?
The activities view sucks! I used my taskbar as an ORDERED LIST of things pending my attention! I no longer see any easy way I can see to re-order/prioritize my tasks like this. And when I minimize something, POOF!, it's like it's gone! - and because the workspace switching sucks and I'm using alt-tab to bypass it, I try never to go into the activities view, but I'm forgetting about the minimized things as a result! Even worse is when I do go in there! My brain finds it fairly easy to process the short text of the window titles in the old taskbar - where the activities view overwhelms me with all the contents of those apps as well! My head explodes every time I open it! BAM 8 big white boxes of tiny unreadable text, no app icons, WTF one do I want, AHHH!?! *cries* Ultimately, I think the lack (?) of a simple, concise, re-orderable taskbar could be the deal breaker for me.
And the applications overview - how is having the default view hitting the user with a big confusing pile of *everything* a better idea than a nicely organized menu? And, again, how is burying all of this mess inside the activities view better than that organized menu being directly accessible from the panel? More clicks are fun, yay? It shows off the pretty icons all at once?
I'm not against learning a new way of working. And I'm really trying to give the stock setup a go first, as to understand how I am intended to work within this setup. I just don't see how every aspect of this isn't less efficient than it was before, and for *what* gain?
Finally, as I've previously said, I currently have 17 terminals open, to do this I have clicked the icon in the top panel I have setup like win98's quick launch bar 17 times across the various workspaces, if I was to do this in gnome3 I would have just brought to the front of the screen 1 terminal 17 times, why is it so odd to expect that a linux geek may want more than one terminal? Some of us like the cli, in fact need it, that's why we are using linux!
I pity the fool who has the job of rolling out a distro that is running gnome3 in a production environment across departments of users, d'oh! Fortunately I have at least a year before this is me.
tl;dr summary - This isn't a gnome3 sucks thread, it raises specific issues relating to fairly simple usage of gnome that is not resolvable by playing with it for a few days and adapting to the new interface.
pete_1967
31st May 2011, 01:58 PM
Next, enter XFCE. At least, keyboard layouts work. But gosh, it is ugly. Very ugly. And no reasonable way to fix it?! No way to remove the stupid grey balloons under each icon (unless you manage to find a whole theme - or want to fiddle with some CSS)?! No decent icon set, no decent themes... you have 4 (!) different types of themes - one for GTK, one for window manager, one for mouse... c'mon! And you get separate (?!) settings menu for the same thing like fonts and icons (one for the desktop, other for the window manager). Ye, no go too - far, far and away from G2.
XFCE, like most DEs can be made to look how you want it to. Of course if you don't want to change anything from default, all DEs look like crap (imho).
Dan
31st May 2011, 02:13 PM
Thread summarily executed.
See this post for explanation: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=264139
P.S. Pete's last comment has merit. Don't b*tch. Fix. This is fedora. This is Linux. If you break it, you get to keep the pieces, and are all too welcome to start all over again.
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