What do you guys think of Gnome 3?

bjordan

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Jul 21, 2010
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What do you guys think about Gnome 3? Has anyone tried it out?

I'll admit looking at screenshots and reading about some of the major changes over the past several month my first reaction has been, "What the hell are the doing?". I rethought my initial, "OMG CHANGE!", reaction though and decided to try to read up on it a little more with an open mind. I figure a complete rebuild that took years and involved a bunch of people smarter then me probably had some merit. :D

I decided they probably didn't do things like remove the minimize and maximize buttons just for the hell of it. Once I read up it turns out they had reasons behind it.

I tried out the preview CD earlier this week. I didn't spend long with it (maybe 30 minutes or so). Overall it seemed nice. I'm not sure I'm totally sold on some of the major changes. Then again it's hard to change old habits in 30 minutes.

For the most part I want my window manager to handle what it needs to handle well and other then that, not get in my way.

I've been using Gnome Do for years so I'm already trained to use "<super>+<spacebar>" and start typing the app name, press enter to launch it. So I was pleased that this was built into Gnome 3.

I also have muscle memory to ctrl+alt+<arrow key> to shift quickly between workspacess. The major change here is instead of left and right it's now up and down. I'm sure I'll be able to adjust to that.

Some people say not having a panel to minimize apps to feels very odd after having one for all these years. I typically have my bottom panel auto hide since I need the screen real estate on my laptop so I rarely use it that way anyway.

Max Spevack has some interesting thoughts on his blog from his experience with it.

spevack: in which i destroy my laptop, and am introduced to gnome 3

His point about not having an actual "desktop" to organize things is an interesting point. I'm not sure how that'd effect me. I mostly use my /home/ folder to organize things, but I do keep some things on my desktop.

Anyway this post is already way longer then I intended ti to be .. haha .. What do you guys think about Gnome 3?
 

jdbower

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Jul 2, 2010
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I'm a bit uncertain. With Ubuntu I'm being given Unity as a default which I want to give a chance since it supports multitouch and I've got a touchscreen PC, but Gnome is an option. For my laptop I've gotten tired of Ubuntu changing around the UI repeatedly (first moving the window controls to the left, now Unity over Gnome) so I may just switch to Xubuntu and bypass all the drama.

Fundamentally a computer is a tool for me, I'll get used to any interface they throw at me. The nice thing is with a few window managers to choose from people can throw stuff at a wall and whatever sticks will be picked up by everyone else.
 

bjordan

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Yeah the Ubuntu moving the window controls too the left was really annoying. I quickly changed them back.

I've used Xubuntu as well and liked it. If Gnome 3 turns out not to be for me I'll most likely switch to Xfce as well.
 

TuxDotKing

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Meh, I never cared whether they were on the left or the right. When I used the default themes, they were on the left. I liked the default themes, so I used them on the left for awhile, no problems. Then I switched themes, and the new theme moved the controls to the right. And I was like meh, I want them back on the left, but whatevs.

I like Gnome Shell over Unity right now, just because Gnome Shell looks better and uses GTK3. I haven't used either of them since their really early alpha stages though, when Unity was meh but obviously unfinished, and Gnome Shell downright sucked (i.e., pre-Canonical's announcement that they were switching to Unity).