Submitted by The day is finally here, the day that the GNOME team releases GNOME 3.0, the first major revision of the GNOME project since 2002. Little of GNOME 2.x is left in GNOME 3.0, and as such, you could call it GNOME’s KDE4. We’re living in fortunate times, what, with two wildly divergent open source desktops.
Pretty much everything in the GNOME software stack has been touched, and it shows – GNOME 3.0 looks nothing like GNOME 2.x. The main culprit is the new GNOME Shell, which works rather differently compared to not just GNOME 2.x, but to pretty much everything else out there. As Jon McCann, a GNOME Shell designers, explains: “We’ve taken a pretty different approach in the GNOME 3 design that focuses on the desired experience and lets the interface design follow from that.”
Since I personally haven’t yet had the chance to use GNOME 3, I find it very hard to really say something sensible about such a radical departure from convention. I have my reservations, surely, but then, they are based on absolutely nothing and as such, aren’t worth a single thing. So, let’s just continue onwards to the other aspects of GNOME 3.0.
“The GNOME 3 development platform includes improvements in the display backend, a new API, improvements in search, user messaging, system settings, and streamlined libraries,” the press release notes, “GNOME 2 applications will continue to work in the GNOME 3 environment without modification, allowing developers to move to the GNOME 3 environment at their own pace.”
The release notes aren’t here yet, so we’ll wait for those to officially arrive (in roughly two hours) before we can fill this story with some more details about GNOME 3.0.
I hate what they did to my GNOME… In a world here user interfaces are standard (close buttons, taskbar, start menu), GNOME 3 will fail harder than KDE 4 did…
I abandoned KDE forever since KDE 4 and I moved to GNOME… And now? Shall I have to abandon GNOME as well?
And then? Move to XFCE4 or forget Linux altogether?
My only regret is that my core i7 laptop PC was 999 Euro, whilst a core i7 MacBook Pro is 2499 Euro.
Indeed. I switched mostly to OS X full time, but I still loved GNOME on a Linux machine that I use occasionally. The nicest thing about GNOME was that progress was evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. That day has now gone by. You can completely overhaul a user interface, but do it over the course of a few years.
At the very least OS X and Windows don’t force a completely new UI down everyone’s throats in a whim.
Windows 3.11 –> Windows 95: drastically different UI.
Windows NT 3.x –> Windows NT 4.0: drastically different UI.
Windows 2K/9x –> Windows XP: drastically different UI.
Windows XP –> Windows 7: drastically different UI.
Same for their Office suites (Office 2.0 -> 6.0 -> 95 -> 2003 -> 2007).
Yeah, it’s great that Microsoft doesn’t foist radically different UIs onto it’s users :roll-eyes: Especially considering how little benefit there actually is to the new interface(s) compared to the old.
Actually you’re mistaken in regard to Win2K/9X and switch to later versions. UI!=GUI.
Apart from skinning there is no particular difference between Windows 95 and Windows XP in the way you interact with the Desktop. Windows 7 is merely minor differences on that particular implementation of the Desktop Metaphor.
There is also no particularly difference for earlier versions of MS Office. Not until 2007 does anything major happen, apart from the ever creasing number of menu items and toolbar buttons.
From a UI perspective there is very little difference on the first Mac and Windows 7 or XFCE – or even KDE4. The Gnome Shell deviates strongly, and is pushing me towards KDE4, since I don’t mind giving up on GTK
Other than the interface being completely different, the location and behavior of the main system components in the UI being fundamentally altered. Yeah, you’re right there are “minor” differences across those windows versions.
Apparently, a GUI for some people only consists of “close window” functionality, and the location of the “start” button (which actually stops the machine, but who is really paying attention).
indeed – between windows 95 and windows xp, the only time I noticed a difference was when I “moved backwards” and found some feature missing
MS really did do a good job evolving their UI across those releases
I found Vista and 7 to be a bigger step from XP, but not nearly as much as 3.1 to 95.
Ever heard of that thing which Windows Vista called its file explorer? Or the regular mutations of the Control Panel in NT?
Most GUI elements in XP worked the same, Configuration Items were indeed different. However the amount of configuration in VISTA and 7 needed is far lower than Windows XP and lower.
Reorganising control panel items isn’t “changing the UI”.
Windows 3.1 to Windows 95/NT4 was quite a change indeed. But I disagree on newer versions. I rarely use Windows, but the small amount of ‘Windows UI knowledge’ was effortlessly transferable between Windows versions.
And same could be said about this gnome transition.
So I fail to see why is it that what was good for the goose is now so awful for the gander.
Have you actually tried Gnome Shell?
It’s really completely different from Gnome 2. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but it certainly is a bigger change than even changing from Win95 to 7 would be.
the NT4–>XP–>Vista/7 ui changes were not that drastic, not near as Gnome 2.x to Gnome 3, and to suggest otherwise is just trolling.
XP-Vista gave you a whole new HIG, 500 new widgets, a reworked graphical stack and a tonne of more obscure functionality and options. That’s not necessarily a bad thing (although I have my complaints) but it was a radical departure, nonetheless.
You have a very incorrect definition of the word radical. This is the first 2 definitions from dictionary.com:
rad·i·cal
   [rad-i-kuhl] Show IPA
–adjective
1.
of or going to the root or origin; fundamental: a radical difference.
2.
thoroughgoing or extreme, especially as regards change from accepted or traditional forms: a radical change in the policy of a company.
The changes in the Windows UI, over the years, do not meet this definition. The fundamental UI paradigm in Windows has not changed since Windows 95. None of the changes in Windows approach the changes in OS X, or of the massive fundamental changes being attempted with Gnome Shell or Unity.
And you haven’t demonstrated that my usage was incorrect; you’ve merely defined radical, good for you.
Right. They’re introducing hardware accelerated compositing… or was that Vista. They’ve bumped the toolkit up a notch… oh, wait, Vista. They’ve shaken up the main menu and added search… like Vista did. They’ve fucked with the directory hierarchy in an effort to bring more robust database-like functionality to the desktop, like Vista (and taken further with 7). They’ve made invasive changes to the way applications look and behave, Vista. They’ve made major changes to the configuration dialogues, like Vista. They only thing they’ve done which is particularly unique was shake up users’ work flows but then Win 7 was hot on Vista’s heels to do that, too.
You’re taking the piss, right?
Seriously Windows works the same as it did back in 95.
The look is different and things have been reorganised but saying the UI experience is radically different is just ridiculous.
When was the last time you use Win 95? Explorer not only looked completely different but behaved differently as well (spatial file management). The Control panel was a) a quarter of the size b) had no categorisation and c) launched external dialogue windows, as opposed to the ad hoc UIs that now replace the control panel about 1/2 the time. The start menu was recognisable as a menu, rather than being a multi-paned fixed-sized window w/ tree view abuse. With 7, even the taskbar is no longer recognisable, being about twice the size, having no text labels and little clear delineation of functionality. Ever since 95, every iteration has gotten more verbose, with more and more (supposedly) helpful text everywhere; you can’t even replace a file any more w/o being presented with 3 paragraphs of text and links, links, hidden therein, which you need to find and click to progress. The once clearly defined titlebars, menubars, toolbars and statusbars have all been thrown in a blender and poured over your screen in an unpredictable manner, while Win 7 and 8 progressively depreciate them in favour of that monstrosity formally known as ‘the ribbon’. Then you’ve got the NT gap, with whole concepts that didn’t exist in Win 95, like permissions.
Windows 95 is worlds away from the current Windows desktop. And sadly, not always for the better.
Things evolve and change over time … get used to it.
Just because you don’t like something, doesn’t mean it is wrong or bad.
Your reading comprehension gets a 0. Congratulations on wading into a conversation when you clearly have no idea what it’s about.
Fuck off and stop being a prick.
Every single one of your criticisms was about whether you liked it or not.
Of course the control panel got more complex … the system had more features for goodness sake. Explorer got more complex … possibly because it does more than it did.
However the central UI paradigm and work flows have not changed since Windows 95. Argue all you like, you cannot change what is fact.
No, every single one of my criticisms is irrelevant and exists for the purpose of my satisfaction. This is about whether there has been significant enough evolution within the Windows desktop for comparisons to Gnome 2/3 to be apt. You seem to have forgotten this in your last reply.
Yes, asserting that your generalisations are ‘facts’. My my, how could I ever argue with something so masterfully articulated.
Ladies first.
Quite like it how you left out the quote where I blow your arguement to pieces
You mean this? Besides your flair for stating the obvious, what does this demonstrate? This contradicts what, exactly?
I left that portion out of my reply, since it seemed utterly irrelevant – still does, for that matter. ’tis certainly a subtle smoking gun.
You were complaining it got more complex and I told you why, because it does more.
I didn’t complain that it ‘got more complex’ and we’d already established that this was an irrelevant tangent.
But what the hell, lets go down that rabbit hole.
Adding features isn’t necessarily a good thing: a good file manager can do less and there is such a thing as bloat and feature creep. Moreover, the radical changes in Explorer can only partially be traced back to an expanded feature set. I’m half asleep and fighting a migraine and I can still see at least two shitty premises in that little blob of text.
The problems with the Control Panel are more MS’ failure to develop consistent interfaces, sane categories, avoid information overload, or even just to list shit sensibly, without forcing your eyes to dart back and forth across the screen when sorted alphabetically.
http://ompldr.org/vODVyMQ/zigzag.jpg
You could make the window narrower but the moment you click on one of the newfangled items, it stretches the window back out again. Good thing Classic Shell (look it up on sourceforge) allows you to see the CP as a menu.
I believe the view you are looking for is called “details” and exists in every version of Windows ever and works on all explorer Windows.
Folder Options > Apply to all folders … DONE!
Firstly, the ‘Apply to all Folders’ thing has been broken since XP and remains broken to this day. After about 24 hours, your folders begin to forget their view settings.
Secondly, the CP doesn’t have a details view. The only views it has are small and large icons.
No it hasn’t been broken … Works fine on every machine I have used.
Fair point it doesn’t after XP .. But really how many times do you go to the control panel seriously? I never been there after a reimage … and I think to set up IIS.
It’s had amnesia on every recent Windows install I’ve used, can’t recall it existing on any earlier release than XP.
Regularly. Just today, I wasted a good 5 minutes trying to find the checkbox that toggles desktop compositing, as I thought that might have something to do with my VM not displaying correctly. It’s not hidden anywhere in Personalisation, Display, Default Programmes, Ease of Access, or Programmes and Features; it’s in Performance Information and Tools>Adjust Visual Effects. Go figure. I guess I’ve been spoiled by Window Manager Tweaks>Compositor in Xfce for all these years (although even Xfce’s divvying up of WM functionality between the Window Manager and Window Manager Tweaks dialogues is less than optimal).
I really get pisssed off with this crap. “It didn’t work for me in very specific situation X,Y and M” … yet I and many others don’t have any problems and it works flawlessly for years.
I press it in Windows XP and every folder is like that and I use Windows XP at work every single day 10 hours a day. I know several others at work who have done the same thing and I don’t hear complaints about how it has forgotten.
Anyway other than “configuration” items being moved about a little bit … the UI paradigm of Windows hasn’t changed since Windows 95 …. little wanky things like where “this option” has changed may change over a the years which for some reason you are fixated on … They are not a major part of the UI they are an “addition”.
I personally use XFCE on OpenBSD and rarely go to configuration items. I spend about 10 minutes setting it up and it is done … never touched again.
Me too. Albeit, for slightly different reasons. Whether it’s Mac, *nix or Windows tech support, pedants who can’t accept that shit doesn’t always work for others as it did for them are extremely counter-productive. They’re up there with the dipshits who unfailingly and needlessly give nubs the command line solution to their problems and don’t have the decency to a) explain what the command does or b) provide them with the graphical path to achieve the same end.
I’ve encountered this issue on XP and Win 7, on both my PCs and a couple of others I use regularly. On XP, I never switch out of Details and on 7, I never switch out of Small Icons yet, unfailingly, the uniformity degrades with use. I have to fix it once or twice a week.
That wasn’t my point. It’s badly laid out; that was my point, for which I provided one imminent example. It’s astounding how little thought goes into this crap, especially in light of how much better a bunch of volunteers on opposite ends of the planet manage to do it, without any of the resources, or focus groups at Redmond’s disposal. But, again, I digress.
This is just outright false. When you’ve got a month to spare, go compare one of the old, “Windows Interface Guidelines”, books to the, “Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines”. They’re worlds apart. There’s a metric f–k-tonne of new concepts, a few depreciated ones and, in the case of the newer editions, a mix of mea culpas and post hoc rationalisation waiting to become mea culpas.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511258.aspx
Google can help you with the older titles.
Edit: christ, this is how I’m spending my Saturday night. I’m going to go down my sorrows in porn.
Edited 2011-04-09 13:19 UTC
I really wished that Nautilus could lasso files in LIST VIEW, for goodness sake. Why does it have to immitate Apple interfaces?
I haven’t used Nautilus for some years but I don’t enjoy Thunar’s detailed list view for similar reasons: there’s no whitespace. You’d think that only the file/folder title column would be selectable but, instead, all of the columns are. It makes bringing up the context menu for the current directory impossible. Thunar also does some stuff with middle-click-drag gestures which don’t work with the details view, either. I don’t use them but I’m sure others do.
Instead, I just use thunar’s icon view but set text besides icons, make icons the smallest possible size and make the window about 240px wide, so that I’ve only got a single, vertically scrolling column. It works well enough.
Yesterday. Its not radically different.
Gnome 3 is radical because there isn’t a psuedo start menu, and the maximize and minimize buttons are gone. Thats what radical means in this context. Windows tweaks existing ways of working over time, such that users feel comfortable in the new environment. Keep in mind that comparing win 95 to seven is 17 years of incremental change. Gnome 2 to 3 is really just one day.
Activities is as much a ‘pseudo start menu’ as the old Gnome menubar was. It lays it’s launchers out in a matrix, big deal, Vista moved to a tree view; both no longer have the pretence of being a menu. They both added search. The only major difference is Gnome decided to move workspace management from the panel, to the menu. As compiz has been the defacto WM for Gnome for years, this behaviour is a surprise to very few, since it’s very close to the expo and scale behaviour enabled by default.
As for mix/max, if that’s our criteria, then Ubuntu 10.04 would constitute a radical change, which I hope you would agree is a prima facie absurd statement. There has to be more than just this and the Activities menu.
And yes, I’m aware of the disparity between time frames (I wasn’t the framer of this argument) but it’s also disingenuous to say that Gnome’s changes come over ‘just one day’ and that Windows’ doesn’t. Incremental Gnome point releases aren’t directly comparable to an OS that does a huge code update once every 3-5 years. Gnome has been largely static for a similar timeframe, even if the version numbers have been steadily creeping forward. Someone using a 5yo version of Gnome is going to be similarly confronted by Gnome 3, as someone using the last 2.x point release. In that sense, comparisons to the XP-Vista jump are fair.
Well, you’re certainly entitled to your opinion and I don’t think anyone is going to dissuade you. I really think that a person using windows 95 would be able to figure out seven much faster than a gnome 2.x user would adopt to gnome 3. I’ve actually seen people go from 98 to 7. I’m willing to bet those same people would have trouble from gnome 2 to three.
Although, a user who was using gnome 2 is probably more likely to be more technically adept that a user that was still using 98.
Most of that crap is under the hood, are you deliberately being obtuse? Changing the way the buttons look is not changing the way the entire desktop looks, changing some file dialogs is not fundamentally changing the way users interact with the OS. Adding desktop effects is not changing the way the desktop works. Hiding menus (especially when you can re-enable them so quickly, is not a fundamental change.
Replacing the menu and toolbar with the Ribbon, that is a fundamental change, and considering that the ribbon is only available in wordpad and paint, that’s hardly a change in the way Windows works.
With very real implications for users. If technical progress (for the sake of argument, lets call it that) never impacted the user experience, it’d be pretty pointless now, wouldn’t it?
a) this is composition b) changing the way a button looks can impact usability and c) MS haven’t just changed the way buttons look, they’ve changed the way they behave, also. Noticed those bastard children of a button and a combobox littered throughout recent versions of Windows, have you? Or the toolbar buttons that randomly spawn menus?
Who said anything about desktop effects? It’s kind of telling that when someone mentions compositing, your mind turns to teh pretties. Live previews, proper screen magnification, being able to manipulate windows responsively. Pretty big fucking change from the days of windows failing to repaint correctly and the CPU spiking when dealing with reasonably simple geometry manipulation.
Yes, yes, yes and throwing one Jew in an oven does not a holocaust make. Again, composition. Lern2logic.
No, it’s not. The ribbon is just a notebook widget with misaligned toolbar items crammed into it. Usability nightmare, yes; fundamental change, no.
I give your reading comprehension a 3. Go back and read what I said.
First of all, you’re wrong. JUst because something has implications for users does not change the fundamentals of an operating systems UI. Making a computer or an OS faster has real implications for users, but doesn’t magically change the way Windows works.
Second of all, that above statement is one of the most offensive things I have ever read on OSNews. DO NOT RESPOND. I am done with you.
Yeah, I am pretty crass. Then again, you’re intellectually dishonest so we’re a pretty good match.
How am I being dishonest, because I don’t agree with you that the changes to the Wndows UI over the years are not as big as you are making them out to be? Do you even use Windows? Do you even own a copy? Have you ever used Windows in the last 20 years? I support it every day, I use it at work, and I disagree with you.
Stop the trolling, disagreeing with somebody is not being intellectually dishonest. Other than calling you a troll, I haven’t insulted you, I’m not sure why you think you have the right to insult me, but please, just grow up.
Right, it’s not like you’ve failed to make any argument in favour of Gnome 3 constituting a radical change, or engaged in special pleading (most of your objections to my points are equally applicable to those same aspects of Gnome), or engaged in composition, or played the ‘offence’ card when I used a Godwin-esque (and apt, I might add) analogy, demonstrating the folly of your reasoning. No, my good faith is pretty much exhausted on you at this point. This has degenerated into a battle of egos.
I was arguing that the changes from Windows 95 to Win 7 were not radical changes, are you thick or something? My main point wasn’t the changed in Gnome, it was the changes in Windows.
Battle of egos, my ass.
Ergo, special pleading. Not a single positive argument to the effect that Gnome’s changes are radical. Even were I swayed by your arguments that Windows has not undergone radical changes, we’d still be no closer to determining whether the Windows-Gnome comparisons are apt. Considering most of my points in favour of Windows having undergone radical change are equally applicable to Gnome and you’ve taken specific objection to each of them, it would appear that you’ve been arguing against that premise, yourself.
Perhaps. I am not, however, an amnesiac:
Should also point out that a priori, labelling any dissent, “trolling”, is also intellectually dishonest, if not trolling in of itself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8K87H3T1UU#t=27s
There is a group of enthusiastic OS afficianados in Redmond. They have a promising little OS called Windows 7, gets updated regularily and starts to look promising, show them your support. Their website is http://www.microsoft.com, might be out of date though – so perhaps just google them …
You don’t have to use Gnome Shell, IMO it’s going to be as successful as “New Coke”. Anyway with Gnome Shell and Ubuntu also going with that crap “Unity” is many reason why to use Linux Mint. They have no plans on moving to either Gnome Shell or that crap interface Unity.
Give it a shot
For that matter I am planning to use Debian Stable for a while. But after that?
KDE4 is amazingly beautiful and easy to use.
OK
I feared that gnome-panel would be unmaintained in the near future, but apparently it will be available as an option. (?)
Also, it is possible to use the Desktop as a… desktop, I mean, you can put files on it that you are working on (as I do extensively).
XFCE4 is now pretty high on my list, almost at the top.
I just did a little experiment and an XFCE4 install can look mostly like GNOME in about 20 minutes of tweaking.
I might go back to Debian on the desktop, in that case with XFCE4 if I don’t like what GNOME or Ubuntu come up with.
And Thunar is much faster than Nautilus anyway. 🙂
Xfce has been my main work desktop for 2 years. It is great – I’m still using the 4.6 at work, but have tried 4.8 – which is even better.
With distro refreshes starting to pick up Xfce 4.8, it is a great time to give it a spin!
Or better yet, look at what Mint has done:
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1725
You get a debian testing base, with whatever Xfce version is there + all the Mint-ism.
Delicious hackintosh. On i7 it might even work… kinda.
I am an administrator of the largest hackintosh forum and, believe me, hackintoshing a laptop is not a great idea. That is because, contrary to desktops, you can’t choose the most compatible parts one by one.
You could try a move back to KDE. KDE 4.6 is the best current desktop system out there, bar none. The one and only problem was KDE 4.0 wasn’t ready for ordinary users, the developers said so, but distributions shipped it anyway. KDE has recovered from that fiasco ages ago now.
Such a shame if you won’t even give the best desktop system available to you right now a try. Your loss, though.
I’ve seen that argument used alot in the past few weeks. If it wasn’t ready for ordinary users then why did they call it KDE 4.0 and not KDE 4.0 BETA?
Windows 7 and MacOSX are better … it is purely subjective topic. If he doesn’t like it … he doesn’t like it.
The one thing that always confused me with the open source world is that they’ll strike a perfect idea and then completely f–k it within a few releases. GNOME 2.x in my books is a great desktop and if GNOME 3.x was merely some refactoring underneath components with GTK+/GLIB/ATK given an overhauling, speed improvements, refinement in the interface for better consistency and improving the individual applications that make up GNOME it would be a strong 3.x upgrade. What have we got with GNOME 3.x? it as though those who were designing simply decided to be different for the sake of being different – “its a big number revision we better do something that shows things have really changed!”.
Mac OS X and Windows haven’t stagnated, the developers at said companies have realised they’re onto a good thing and now in the process of refining and smoothing out the rough edges – why couldn’t GNOME developers do the same thing? GNOME is already a good desktop, why was the time wasted in re-inventing the wheel when it could have been better spent on improving the bundled applications for starters.
As for the MacBook Pro – I learned long ago you purchase what works for you and if it means you pay a few extra dollars for something that allows you to keep your sanity then so be it. Btw, price for price comparisons are meaningless – if you were in New Zealand I’d take you down to Dick Smiths and show you the obvious problem with saying, “but the MacBook Pro is more expensive!” without actually having a look at the device and using it. Going off on a tangent, two things that come to mind for example are battery life and build quality – how many of these i7’s are chocked full of desktop components with a giant screen which are little more than ‘desktop replacements’ rather than being actual laptops – when I purchase a laptop I want to use it for 5+ hours on battery rather than being told that I should be satisfied with a 2-3 hour battery life. The build quality is also important – go through the local big box store and check out the amount of cheap plastic garbage being sold and a tonne of bling clipped on to give the appearance that it less cheap looking than it really is.
Edited 2011-04-07 04:35 UTC
The GNOME 2.x interface is dated, GNOME 3 provides a new and innovative interface.
Because GNOME is not Mac OS X or Windows. In a few years you will probably realize that moving forward with the GUI is also important.
Learn to adapt yourself to changes, it’s not that hard, it will only do you good.
Edited 2011-04-07 07:28 UTC
But how is it ‘dated’? I never said that it should remain static, as I implied in the prior post the primary focus should be on the backend with the UI keeping the same but with some refinements. The GNOME way of doing things work, sure the new preferences in GNOME 3.0 is really nice but it could have been achieved without the need of GNOME shell appearing. Personally I would have sooner seen the move to the ‘global menu’ idea that was floated at one point than seeing the GNOME shell but then again since I don’t use GNOME my opinion doesn’t really count for much at the end of the day.
I suggest you look through Macrumors at the wailing and gnashing of teeth when it comes to people complaining about some pretty trivial changes that have appeared in Mac OS X Lion. I’m not complaining about these changes, I think change is good if done for the right reasons but one has to realise that for the vast majority of people they have never learned the fundamental conceptual underpinnings of a UI thus any slight change to the UI throws them off.
Incremental development and changes is nice as you say, but there has to be a point where you have to say “Let’s recreate this desktop and make it 1000 times better.” or whatever they said. And then start from scratch, looking for the future, and write something more beautiful than before with strong foundations for the present and future, something that doesn’t look just beautiful but something that is easy to maintain and something that performs better in every way.
How is that a bad thing? It has to be done sooner or later, we can’t just make incremental and little tweaks to a desktop that is showing its age when the competition (KDE4, Windows, Mac OS X) look much better in just every aspect of their GUI.
I think the GNOME team did a great job with GNOME 3, and things like that is what we need on Linux, people who are brave enough to say “We can do better than this and we will do it.”. and I believe that’s good, competition and innovation is good, it will only benefit the users in the long run, and I hope Desktop Linux continues with that path, I hope running the major DEs on Wayland is the next thing.
I understand that it might be annoying for some users to have to relearn the Desktop, but I don’t think it’ll be that hard, I mean, it’s not that different and it’s not that bad if you think about it, it just depends how you look at it.
Edited 2011-04-07 21:02 UTC
Initially getting used to a new interface will be hard.
After getting used it I think the majority will love it and see its benefits.
Digressing a bit, but I want to use an example of a recent experience I had.
Few weeks back I worked on an Apple for the first time.
This is at client that uses a combination of Apple and Windows computers. (Apple’s for the managers and Windows for the staff)
He needed to run a new program that requires pararels in order to run it.
He decided against it and use one of the other Windows computers for this specific task. (In a previous conversation I recalled him saying that Macs are easier to use.) This necessitated me to train him on how to work on a windows computer effectively.
While I trained him I managed to change his view on Windows being hard to use in about 15 minutes.
I showed him how to use Windows explorer, get to the control panel and see the options and most importantly to him how to add shortcuts to frequently used folders on his desktop and/or pin this to taskbar for quick access.
I still however am having problems convincing him to switch the Firebird email since they used Live mail in which you can’t create subfolders (Which they really need)
What I’m getting at..Take 30 minutes learn the new interface. This will only leave repetition to drill in the new way of working.
It is not the matter of getting used to a new way of doing things. Gnome-shell has something physically missing. Say when you have a lot of windows open, how would you navigate among them? Either use alt-tab or go to Activities first. Either way involves extra steps.
What sucks more is that the global picture of opened windows will not present itself unless you do extra clicking. Why does it bug me? because I want to check the windows list with my eyes ONLY, not my eyes and my hands together.
Edited 2011-04-06 20:00 UTC
I believe that’s exactly the point of this interface design. Focus on a single task or few tasks. Minimize clutter and visual distraction.
…and make it more difficult to efficiently use multitasking.
Yeah, great idea during a time when processors fly and computers have tons of memory available for just about anything its user might want to do, and then sone. Problem is, GNOME is about 15-25 years too late. This kind of thing would have been *great* ages ago…
Hardware takes us several steps forward and continues to improve… while GNOME tries to take us decades back in functionality.
Sounds like something Microsoft or Apple would do… but they have a reason: Microsoft can sell a more functional, more expensive license to those who want more features and power (ie. Starter -> Home Premium or Professional), while Apple is trying to sell shiny white overpriced hardware to computer-illiterate users and going for the lowest common denominator is the way to do it.
GNOME… I’m not sure what they’re trying to prove, given that they’re throwing away just about everything when it comes to modern UI design. They sure can’t be trying to steal Mac OS X users through ease of use and familiarity as they were often accused of in the past, since GNOME 3 doesn’t act anything like Mac OS X (let alone anything else).
That said, I am interested to try Gnome Shell again (tried it before very briefly, wasn’t too impressed then) and see it evolve. Hopefully it pulls a KDE4 and steadily improves while diminishing all of its shortcomings… but if Gnome 2 was any indication, it’s more likely to diminish more functionality.
Yeah, I’m prepared to be modded straight down to hell for this. Fire away.
Edited 2011-04-06 22:57 UTC
Unfortunately, the reality is that humans aren’t good at multitasking. Actually, we’re terrible at it. Thus it’s prudent to design interfaces and workflows with a single-tasking bent as opposed to multitasking one. This is something GNOME Shell actually got right from a cognitive design perspective!
There are many studies that show that we are terrible at multitasking. Google is your friend. Here’s a link to one of them.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95256794
Edited 2011-04-06 23:00 UTC
Despite what the studies might say, not *everyone* is utterly incapable of multitasking. Some people are actually more productive with it. Are those people supposed to stoop down to the majority’s level? If so, why even buy computers with gigabytes of RAM? And tabbed browsing? Get rid of that too–can’t have too many Web pages on your mind, now. Might as well go back to 512MB-1GB, tops, if we’re going to throw effective multi-tasking out the window. It’s a good thing GNOME has tons of competition.
Edited 2011-04-06 23:21 UTC
Most people are capable of multitasking. They’re just bad at it. For
example, people are very capable of talking on the phone and driving.
However, the chances of an accident increases dramatically when they do
that. Add 2 more activities such as eating and brushing your hair and
then chances of having an accident becomes certain.
Can people talk on the phone, eat, brush their hair and drive at the
same time? Yes. How well will they perform all these tasks? Not too well.
Should people do this? No. Why? People are not good at multitasking.
There’s an increasing consensus in the Nueroscientific community that
multitasking actually decreases productivity and not the other way
round. This is due to the expense of context switching and the energy
spent refocusing (entering into a state of flow) when switching to the
new tasks. And also due to the fact that the brain can’t multitask as
far as we know.
You are better off readjusting your workflow to eliminate multitasking.
Multitasking is cool for computers (hence more ram and cpu power is
welcome, plus new software can’t get enough of them), but not for us
humans.
The whole point of GNOME Shell is to reduce multitasking so you don’t
have to switch focus too often. That’s why, for example, instant
messaging is baked into the Shell. As more apps adopt this design
philosophy, hopefully in the near future switching back and forth to
different apps will become irrelevant. So also will starring at the
task bar.
This link shows articles and studies that show how multitasking is bad
for productivity.
http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=multit…
Edited 2011-04-06 23:38 UTC
“Most people are capable of multitasking. They’re just bad at it. For
example, people are very capable of talking on the phone and driving.”
Nice example of a type of “multi-tasking” that could mean serious injury or death to one or more people by an “accident”. Which I wouldn’t call an accident really–if someone was dumb enough to talk on the phone while driving and they really couldn’t do it before they took off or after parking, they asked for it and deserve what happens to them. And they don’t have the alcohol to blame–just their own sober stupidity.
Either way, I thought this whole “multi-tasking” thing was about computers specifically, not doing random things at the same time like: messing with your hair and watching the dog, while listening to the radio and making sure the food in the oven doesn’t burn. All while keeping an eye on a lit candle so a cat doesn’t bump it and burn the house down. Oh, and listening for the clothes dryer to be done for a new load to be put in. Multi-tasking on a computer is different, in that you do *not* need to constantly monitor everything that is going on. But you *should* still be able to quickly flip through programs if you need to.
I have Iceweasel opened with more tabs than you would care to know, but that doesn’t mean I have to constantly monitor them like I would have to look at the road while trying to listen to/talk on the phone (using your example). Those tabs aren’t going anywhere, until I choose to close them. I also have Geany running with several text files opened in tabs. A terminal emulator is also running, with wget downloading the newest Linux Mint Xfce release, just minding its own business. And PCManFM is sitting down there in its little corner with four tabs open.
Most traditional OSes and GUIs make it a simple click to quickly switch between programs. GNOME 3 is the one that decides to make things difficult.
I don’t understand your argument about multitasking then. Are you claiming that GNOME 3 does not support multitasking?
With regards to application switching, you’re overreacting. Switching between applications is as easy as pressing alt+Tab. Anybody who finds that difficult to do shouldn’t be using a computer.
If you want an overview of all running applications pressing the window key is all it takes. You can then visually select whichever application you want.
“It’s so easy even a caveman can do it.” – Geico Commercial
Once you’ve experienced the coolness of dynamic workspaces in GNOME Shell you won’t miss or care for clicking on taskbars or multitasking or whatever. I know. I also thought it was the end of the world until I tried out. Now I don’t care for bars, panels and docks. I even want them to get rid of that top panel.
OK, but who cares? Smoking is bad, but people still smoke, drinking is bad, but people still get drunk. Loud noise is bad, but people still “rock-and-roll”. Speeding is bad, people still speed. Why? because it makes people FEEL better. The same applies here. We are not talking about rocket science here, it is more about feeling. All we want is just comfort, and we do feel more comfortable when we do multitasking. That is it.
I don’t really understand these designers. I think they should adopt a “no-policy, only mechanism” approach. They should only offer tools which are “primitive” enough so that users can use them to implement their own work flow. They are not supposed to enforce their policy.
Edited 2011-04-07 05:38 UTC
Human preferences are numerous and subjective. I don’t think the designers of GNOME Shell, or any good designer for that matter, believes in catering to individual preferences. After everybody’s brain is mapped differently, however slight.
The objective of designers and engineers is to create the most efficient and effective way to accomplish a task. How you and I feel about it is absolutely irrelevant. We are just an amalgamation of emotions. And most of the time our emotions trump our rationality.
Mind you I don’t agree with all the design choices in GNOME Shell. But I also vehemently disagree with the idea that the whole objective of software design is cater to individual preferences, yours and mine included. It isn’t.
That is why I say they have to offer more PRIMITIVE tools. They are not supposed to act like a babysitter, and we are not babies.
This is not going to happen, because the nature of different tasks diverges so large that no static policy can ever be efficient. Policies for tasks have to change to fit different tasks, which is something they can never do. It is not even their business, it is the user’s business.
Perfect! Disagreement is an extreme case of individual preference
Software design is not purely art. There’s a science to it.
It’s not only their business, it’s their job. 🙂 There’s absolutely no way a random user can design a software experience better than a well trained designer with years of experience in the field. The exception of course is our venerable osnew readers. We all know osnews readers are self acclaimed experts in software and user experience design with more than 50 years of experience. And we all know they know more than this stupid designers who sit in their ivory towers designing rubbish. 🙂
Of course, designers make mistakes. But even on a bad day, they’ve thought more about the problem space than a random user would ever conceive. Why? It’s their job to do that, not the users.
Always. But the practical problem is that we still do not have a scientific model which is mature enough to get the job done.
I think you misunderstood me. I did not mean that the users had to design something or the designers had to do what the users asked. The designers are privileged to do anything they like in their own field. If they do not want the user to change something in THEIR PRODUCT, then they can just disable the customization options for it, like Gnome 2. It does not offer as many customizations as KDE does, and it is still good.
However, the designers are not supposed to FORCE the user to do the job in a way they expected. Gnome-shell is forcing users not to do multitask. And speaking that “multitasking is not good for human so we cut it off” is not a good reason. It is like typical mommy talk. The users are privileged to make their own decisions in their own domain. That is what I mean “it is not designers’ business”.
Well all products “FORCE” you to do things the way the designer intended on many levels. Take, for example, a vehicle. Now as a user, I might envision that the best place to put a steering wheel is behind the passenger sit on the floor. Don’t ask me why, “it’s just my preference.” 🙂 But I can’t do that because the designers don’t allow me to do that. Instead these dumb designers decide to put the steering on the dash. Or a more practical example, I might prefer a 10 shift gear manual transmission in my car, but instead the designers build a stupid less powerful 4 speed automatic one in the vehicle.
The “job” of a good designer is prevent you from making errors and gently coerce you to use their products in the right way, the way the designer intended. So, yes, the it’s the designers job to “FORCE” you to do things their way because they’ve spent countless man hours figuring out how to do things the right, most effective, most efficient and safest way, all things being equal, that you probably haven’t put much thought to despite your subjective personal preferences.
Perhaps users should try to understand the design before the criticize or resort to subjective emotional tantrums about having things done their own way.
Finally you got it. This is all about emotional stuff. I agree that all products somehow FORCE something, but Gnome 3 is OVERDOING it. Why? How can I say something like that? Can I formally measure it? The answer is NO! I say that because they are overdoing it. Why do I think they are overdoing? Because they are overdoing it. Somehow I feel that they are poking their hands in my territory or making decisions for me.
Again, they can do everything they like in their products, even they change the windows into ellipses, I can still survive, but enforcing their ideology is not acceptable.
In fact, these designers usually spend countless hours in thinking about making things right, they usually take into account every single factor that could possibly affect the product, and there is another thing which they usually do – ignoring the users’ opinions.
Really? GNOME seems to spend more time on pointless arguments than they do discussing and thinking over new features and interface changes. Their ongoing arguments with Canonical make it big, while they remove features and functionality at the drop of a hat; barely any infighting or arguments whatsoever. Features are just pulled.
well, all the work on HCI’s and cognitive science i’ve heard involves models that DO exist, afaik…
the real problem is that, of those who design allegedly usability-focused software, few (if any) prove to actually know them, or the research, or even the basic theory and the recognized metrics behind software usability…
I hate to break the news to you bud, but no matter how much you might think you excel at multi-tasking, it’s utterly impossible for a human being to multi-task. Period. Sorry. While you might be able to efficiently switch between tasks, you’re incapable of true multi-tasking, as is everyone. I only wish I could convince others, like the ones hurtling down the expressway at 80 mph while yapping on a smartphone, of this fact.
Okay, second person to take it this way. Clarification: Multitasking, as in computer multitasking. Not using both hands and feet to do various things while listening for things with your ears and eating food–simply switching between tasks in a multi-tasking computer environment. Which takes only one or two hands depending on mouse vs. keyboard or both when using a GUI that is decently designed for multitasking, and can be done at will.
How the hell did a thread on computer multitasking and GUIs get misinterpreted and turned on its head to be about human multitasking? Seriously?
Edited 2011-04-07 01:46 UTC
Aviation experts confirmed decades ago that humans can’t multitask. That’s why airliners have two pilots and a seperate cockpit without a stereo.
Those who claim that mere mortal cannot multitask and apply to computer usage is, what can I call them? retarded?
The multitasking in computer sense are not limited to you do your work while listening to music, while responding to chats, while posting on facebook. Even these, people do so all the time. Now what, you are saying that those people are retarded and they are going to kill themselves?
But even for a single piece of work, you may need to open a web browser with gazillion tabs, an email client, a word processor or editor, and a file manager. We are not multitasking, we are performing a single task that requires multiple sources of information and multiple tools. So you suddenly want us to type in a word processor for 30 minutes, take a rest, google for 30 minutes, rest, then reply email for 30 minutes, so that I am not multitasking so to speak in computer usage sense?
Sorry but not everyone is bad at multitasking. I and many millions of others was multitasking just fine 20 years ago on the old Commodore Amiga. Now they want to make Gnome hard to multitask or even incapable of doing this? This is a couple of decades step backward at least! Thankfully we have KDE, XFCE and E17 to fall back on. Gnome is now unusable for me personaly, would even prefer using Workbench 1.2 off floppy disks again than Gnome in this state!
Your misinformed. Multitasking is well and alive in GNOME 3. After all, it runs on Linux.
That’s a rather pretentious assumption for any designer to force on the userbase.
Exactly because we are so bad at multitasking, it will be helpful to have a list of things that you’re working on available for viewing at all times. I have read that gnome-panel will keep being available in Gnome 3 (?) which provides exactly that.
A list of running applications are available for viewing at all times in GNOME 3. The only difference is that in GNOME 3 the list of applications are __not__ competing for your attention and focus. Nobody cares what applications are running in the background when they have __work__ to do.
The GNOME panels are only available in fallback mode in GNOME 3.
If I have work to do that involves more than 1 application, it is relevant to know what is running. For my workflow, icons won’t do, because the titles/labels of the tabs are really helpful to me.
I haven’t tried Gnome3, but I should at least try fallback mode (can that be switched on even though hardware acceleration works??).
I’m sure the GNOME developers made provisions for different kinds of workflows when they designed GNOME Shell. You should try it before jumping to conclusions.
Yes, you can switch GNOME 3 to fallback mode.
Wow, such blinding ignorance is mind boggling, and I’ve been on this website for just over 9 years (prior to the existing registration system that exists today). If you don’t mind sunshine, us Mac users aren’t all ‘computer-illiterate users’ who are simply attracted to ‘shiny white overpriced hardware’ (as your post implied) – some of us have IT backgrounds with many other users knowing how to use a computer and have indepth knowledge but no longer wish to play ‘nurse’ to their computer. Some of us are actually happy not to worry about our computers because some of us have other stuff in our lives to focus on rather than to be constantly nursing something that should take care of itself.
Btw, I have earned by Linux/*BSD/Solaris stripes and if you want to use those operating systems then all power to you but don’t come on this forum all high and mighty thinking that pushes you up to the totem pole of prestige any more than other people who have been posting on this website since it first opened.
Edited 2011-04-07 04:47 UTC
I didn’t say that *all* Mac users actually *are* computer-illiterate–I implied that those are the people Apple primarily markets to. Obviously there are exceptions (when aren’t there?), and different types of people get Macs (Leo Laporte likes them, and he’s certainly not computer-illiterate), but you can’t deny that Apple tries its hardest to dumb things down and make a walled garden where things get done *their* way or not at all, all in an effort to make it as “user-friendly” as possible.
If I were to brew a craft beer and advertise it with rainbow-colored zebras, I’m sure some male beer connoisseurs would try it too, not just the women its advertising material (including logos) might be expected to attract. Just look at Delirium Tremens with its pink elephants (case in point: I need to try that one…).
Microsoft does that too but they bank on their entrenchment within the enterprise to carry them through into the consumer desktop – “gotta have at home what I have at work” is the mentality of so many who would consider an alternative but believe if it isn’t the same as work then all hell will break loose.
What is so bad about the AppStore – you can install load applications on your computer today and into the future without relying on it (no, I don’t indulge in the fantasies 1984 like conspiracies that Apple will turn it into an iOS device) and I like the fact that with the AppStore they tell developers that they’re not allowed to use private API’s or rely on external libraries that are not bundled with their applications. Far too often I’ve had applications break because some dim bulb at said software company thought it would be cool to use a private API because they were too lazy to implement said functionality themselves. If it means that the AppStore forces software companies to bundle everything they need in a self contained application then I’d sooner have that than the mess that exists- especially when it comes to Adobe and their ability to sprawl shit from one end of the hard disk another (the only thing worse than the uninstaller from Adobe is one from Symantec to uninstall Norton Anti-Virus).
*shrugs* But I’m sure the vast majority would buy one and keep buying one if it tasted good – no one would keep purchasing a beer that tastes horrible if the only satisfaction is viewing the logo on the front. In the case of the Mac the ‘look’ might pull in the customer but something has to keep them there beyond just ‘teh shiny’ and Apple knows that if their product isn’t up to what customers demand then they’ll simply decide to go with another vendor. Those people tell others of their negative experience and their over all sales drop. If we were talking about ‘mindless purchasing’ then common sense would dictate that the path of least resistance (purchase a Windows computer) would have the largest number of informed people due to their non-interest in any alternatives
I can’t really argue with the points you brought up in your previous article, except the above. Marketing sells… that’s what it’s there for. I don’t know what country you’re in, but here just one look at what beers people drink might make you gag. Bud Light, Budweiser, Miller Lite, Coors, Coors Light. Advertising does sell.
My cousin, a Bud Light drinker, thinks I’m nuts because I don’t drink the “normal” stuff and I pour in a glass at a higher than almost-freezing temperature instead of drinking straight from the bottle, ice cold out of the fridge. Most people wouldn’t know a good beer if it hit them in the head… hell, my uncle used to drink Busch every day, until the doctor told him to stay away from alcohol and he started drinking Busch NA. Advertising and image is everything, and Apple knows that.
I might drop down and get a 30-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon or Genessee myself if I’m broke and care more about the alcohol and getting drunk/lots of beer than anything else. At least those tend to taste decent when slightly warmer and poured into a glass… I’ll never attempt another Bud Light out of a glass again though. But this is getting off-topic now, heh… I’m done.
Very true; I guess the whole purpose of marketing is to sell ‘image’ that people can ‘buy into’ when they purchase a particular product in much the same way that Marlboro Cigarettes banks itself on the whole ‘lone cowboy’ image. iPod has got that ‘cool’ image but I’m really surprised there hasn’t been some sort of backlash against it for being ‘too mainstream’. Some how Apple seems to maintain its ‘street cred’ where most products once they hit a peak stop getting the amount of attention (via the media) that they used to as people move onto the next ‘must have’ thing.
When I was in Australia I was always confused me why people would ever want to drink VB (Victoria Bitter) when it tasted absolutely crap and Cascade Light was a far nicer brew but had less visibility in the market. Then again with VB they had a huge presence when it came to sponsorship and marketing even though their product has been consistently crap since it first appeared on the market.
I used to drink beer but found that I used to get sleepy so now I just stick to wine. When I first started on wine, interesting enough, I started on my reds and worked my way to the whites where as most people start on their whites and work their way to their reds. First red was a Church Road Cabernet Sauvignon but these days I tend to hover around a good Aussie Shiraz or New Zealand Syrah when having venison but an Otago Pinot Noir does the trick but it really doesn’t marry up with the gamey nature of venison. If I have a curry I’ll go for a Riesling, Gewurztraminer or a Pinot Gris – the nature of the wine compliments the underlying sweetness that many of the curries have – especially the tomato based curries.
My 6 virtual desktops with a viewport of 2560×1024 allows me to minimize clutter, avoid distraction, and jump to any running application with no more than two clicks on the taskbar.
And then for comic relief, I can move the mouse to one corner, and show all my active windows on my current screen.
I want a desktop that works for me… not a desktop that I have to learn to work for.
GNOME 3 is in no way like the KDE4.0 release was. For one, GNOME 3 has printing, bluetooth, network manager and other needs stuff on it’s release.
People seem to have it in their head that every new Linux DE release will fail and people will not like it. This is a mind set problem by users and doesn’t do Linux any good at all when trying to innovate the desktop.
Well done to the GNOME team for an excellent release. I am very happy with it and it’s very usable.
Edited 2011-04-06 20:29 UTC
Read the GNOME Journal article on the design. I think you’ll find it very interesting (http://www.gnomejournal.org/)
But GNOME 3 is the first unixy desktop that actually subsumes printing, network, bluetooth, services all under one consistent interface.
Which of course, you can also all access using extensions.
1. Experts tell us users do not need maximize or minimize buttons.
2. Experts also tell us that menu’s are a waste of time.
3. Users tell the experts – screw you!
Can’t mod you up, so I’ll just say Thank you, very much
I thought it was pretty good for a .0 release, at least one with such a radical departure from the previous version. Some things do need to be fixed, especially in the GUI, as the whole Gnome Shell simply uses too much space. For instance, instead of getting an app menu by the push of a button, you now get a exposé-like effect when pushing the pointer up into the top right corner, and from there you can get applications icons covering the entire screen instead of a simple menu. Naturally, this means you have to look over a much bigger area. Oh, and to change to a different app folder, you have to go all the way over to the right side of the screen and choose eg. Internet or Graphics.
The biggest problem for me was that it broke audio entirely, and after a while I got fed up trying to fix it, and switched back to KDE.
It’s less flaky than KDE 4.0, less bloated than OS X 10.0 and Windows Vista, but a more radical change. Just for that, I think it’s a decent start.
Oh, and despite some design tweaks needing to be made, it’s not at all difficult to use. The launcher, especially, is just too spacious.
I have to give the Gnome team some credit here. They actually learned from their own 2.0 release and KDE 4.0 in that they’ve been replacing key components in Gnome 2.x with the new 3.0 libraries for quite some time now.
Now the question is whether distros will also have learned and show restraint in running out to make it the default desktop till it’s fully ready
Edited 2011-04-06 19:04 UTC
To be fair to KDE4, difference b/w gtk2 and gtk3 are nowhere even close to difference b/w Qt3 and Qt4.
Which is why the KDE team should’ve known better than to push a beta quality release into the mainstream before the associated apps had a chance to properly catch up.
The Gnome team went for continuity and as smooth a transition as possible incrementally updating during the entire lifespan of the 2.x series and pruning out old code before finally switching a good portion of the 2.x releases over to the new libraries. You end up in a position where it’s entirely feasible to support Gnome Classic in parallel with Gnome-shell for a long time to come, should the market prove to prefer it that way.
The KDE team didn’t do that, the various distributions did. The KDE team said they wanted people to try KDE 4.0, in order to get feedback. They did not say they wanted people to use KDE 4.0 as their primary desktop … it wasn’t ready for that.
They deliberately released admittedly beta quality code as a point zero release and then tried to justify it by attempting to redefine the standard expectations of what a point zero release is for the sake of getting wider testing. I’ll agree that the distros were partially to blame for pushing it as a replacement for 3.x so early, but they aren’t solely to blame by a long shot.
Personally I found what KDE 4.0 no better or worse than Apple with Mac OS X 10.0 when it was first released where Apple offered machines with OS 9 and dual boot configurations, free upgrade to 10.1 for those who took the plunge first. At some point you have to get the software out there, it is hardly the fault of KDE developers if distributions ignore the advice and decide to make it a default desktop.
10.1 was a free upgrade for customers.
In late 2007, the kde folks were facing a number of chicken and egg problems that were only going to get resolved by making a release.
Internally, there was tension between the parts of KDE4 that were mature and stable (kdegames, the libs, kdebase outside of kwin & plasma) that were itching to get their work out while kwin’s compositing and plasma were quite late in becoming usable and there were still other devs going on and on with blue sky work.
Kwin & plasma were needing big improvements & bug fixes in drivers and the rest of the X graphics stack, and those issues weren’t going to get resolved until there were at least some users putting pressure on upstream.
So a release was scheduled, and timeline set. The schedule was pushed back twice, and plasma was still in a really, really, rough state, but once it was barely functional (launch apps, show a taskbar & half broken system tray, draw a clock, etc), they released.
Then, in the midst of all this, as a result of poor communication, several distros planning their spring releases felt the need to pick up 4.0 and drop maintenance 3.5, and by the time it was clear that 4.0 was in poor shape, it was too late to change back.
Then prior to the 4.1 release, to take advantage of some important new features in Qt, plasma was heavily reworked in a way that broke most of the widgets, and by the time 4.1 was released in July, it wasn’t in much better shape.
Was it a mess? Yes. Was it the end of the world? No. Did it burn some users? Yes. Did it attract a whole bunch of new developers hacking on the code. Yep – and that is partly why KDE is in a much more mature state now.
Edited 2011-04-06 23:22 UTC
I just want to correct one point: KWin was not in an unstable change in 4.0 or needed a release badly. It is true that OpenGL compositing support was new, but disabled by default. KWin did not start to enable compositing by default before 4.2.
So the KWin the user of 4.0 had was the same rock stable, feature rich window manager as used from 3.5.
The whole drawing, theme, and input system in gtk3 was overhauled. That’s huge! Almost as huge as the change from qt3 to qt4. The changes open possibilities for real animation and composite framework something that was almost impossible in gtk2.
Edited 2011-04-06 20:31 UTC
But at the same time GTK+3 is a whole lot more source compatible than qt3 to qt4 was – as long as you followed the GTK+ ‘general rule of thumb’ your application might need a tweak here and there but it would pale in comparison to what the transition from qt3 to qt4 required.
gtk3 is completely incompatible with gtk2 source or otherwise.
Edit:
Well you may have a point. But developers who maintain an application larger than “Hello World” would definitely have their work cut out for them.
I can’t remember the details of the changes needed to port from QT3 to QT4, but I do know for most gtk developers (especially the ones that use the language bindings, there are lots of them these days) would definitely need to do a rewrite of their apps.
Migration Guide:
http://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-migrating-2-to-3.html
Edited 2011-04-07 05:22 UTC
I kind of wonder where OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice fits into the equation given that there is a degree of GTK+/GNOME integration but how much of a PITA is it going to be with the migration from gtk2 to gtk3. I’ve always wondered to what extent is the open source world better off stripping off the abstraction layer from OpenOffice.org/lIbreOffice in favour of replacing it with native front ends as to have the best native experience rather than the half baked pseudo integration that exists today.
IIRC a lot of the applications have already done the preparation work mentioned in the documentation with the last part of the migration being pretty straight forward. Although I am seeing GNOME and many open source projects becoming more and more ‘Linux centric’ with the lack of contributions by non-Linux developers (why isn’t there a native FreeBSD backend to the GNOME features that hook back into the system?) but in the long run if it means consolidation where Linux becomes a strong number 3 competitor in the desktop world then hopefully it’ll translate into more vendors will to consider providing software on said platform.
With that being said, others have pointed out that GNOME 3.x has become more of a a complete platform for developers to aim against with the desktop abstracting things such as Bluetooth and printing which should mean application writers aim for the GNOME desktop and the GNOME desktop API’s take care of the rest. If GNOME keep working down this road then I see in the long term third parties seeing it as a viable environment to target.
Edited 2011-04-07 05:47 UTC
I share your sentiment on LibreOffice. I’d much prefer it be split into a backend and frontend and have each community design the frontend in their native widgets (Qt, Gtk, Windows, Quartz, etc). The frontend should of course should be designed to an accepted specification. How well this will work in practice is open for debate. I know old school unix apps back in the day used to be designed with multiple toolkits/interfaces (especially the command line interface) in mind. It wasn’t hard find an application with a cli, motif, tcl/tk, gtk, gtk2 and qt interface. Maybe it’s time to resurrect that culture. LibreOffice’s emulation layer will eventually be ported to GTK3 but GTK2 isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
I’m sad the BSDs are second class citizens in the free desktop ecology. I don’t think their marginalization is intentional. The reality is that it takes resources to port and maintain projects to multiple platforms. At the moment the resources and momentum are skewed towards Linux. The developers have held their end of the bargain. They’ve worked hard to make free software available. It’s now left to the community and corporations to provide funding and/or resources to make sure the software runs on ALL free software platforms. At the very least, the BSD community if they are interested in GNOME should find a way to influence the decisions in the GNOME project.
What constitutes a GNOME 3 application is not solidified. Heck GNOME 3 isn’t even solidified. What we’re really celebrating today is GNOME Shell and the vision that GNOME 3 might become. A lot of so called “GNOME libraries” have been pushed into GTK3. So today, if you wrote a GTK3 application you can easily get away by calling it a GNOME 3 application. I think eventually what will make an application a “real” GNOME 3 application is how well it integrates into and interacts with GNOME Shell.
From a technical perspective you can have a look at what the GNOME Platform consist of. http://developer.gnome.org/
Personally I’d sooner have each platform to be designed in a way that conforms to the operating systems UI specifications rather than a situation where each front end might use a native widget kit but they all try to ‘feel’ the same through everything laid out the same way. For me I’d sooner there to be a shared back end but when it comes to the front end that the GTK+ one behaves and laid out like a GNOME application or the Mac front end is laid out like a Mac OS X conforming application.
I’ve never really investigated much into OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice as so far as the code base itself but from what I have read in terms of what programmers are saying about it on the mailing lists, it isn’t a pretty thing to work with. Lots of dependencies for example, code that some people don’t know what it does, very few programmers from a UI centric background whose focus is on fit in finish rather than solely on a utilitarian solution (does it get me from a to b), no real long term solution to move SAL further down and replace the UI parts of it with native widgets etc.
Well the big thing is the majority of the contributors are Linux developers so they’re going to focus on the platform that they run, the responsibility for FreeBSD support in KDE and GNOME falls on the shoulders of developers who use FreeBSD as their platform of choice rather than it being the responsibility for Linux developers. I know for me if I was an x86 user I’d be more than happy to put up a bounty for a FreeBSD developer(s) to write FreeBSD backends to GNOME and KDE but since I’m a Mac user it wouldn’t make much sense. If someone said to me, “hey, lets put together a bounty to pay for it” I’d be happy to throw some cash their way simply to see it happen but I’m really in no position these days given Mac OS X is my primary platform.
With the move to the GNOME shell, are they going to update or replace the GNOME HIG? If they’re going to change the paradigm that much then wouldn’t it necessitate a revision of the HIG?
Well, you pulled it out of me. But I have little faith in LibreOffice. Thank goodness for Google Docs. However, I understand the “cloud” solutions are just not practical for many individuals and businesses.
What would excite me as a geek/developer would be if some brave soul went the “gnome-shell” route and started a productivity suite project that isn’t a trying to be Microsoft Office. Bonus points if it’s inspired by something like iWork from Apple.
I bet you that will get a lot of geeks excited. As far as LibreOffice is concerned, word on the street is that it’s boring complicated stuff and nobody wants to play with it.
The bounty system is great for individual community members, but corporations just need to be more serious and become venture capitalist in projects like the BSDs. Given the huge number of companies that use FreeBSD it wouldn’t cost much to higher 2 full time developers to work on maintaining and integrating GNOME in the BSDs.
They have to update it or completely revamp it. The behavior of windows is different in GNOME Shell and sometimes inconsistent. Some dialogs slide down, others pop up. Some dialogs have a close button on their window decorations others don’t. Many of my own applications won’t focus properly because of the focus prevention behavior in GNOME Shell. The window management behavior is clearly different. So the HIG definitely needs a revamp. And of course more documentation is needed. Otherwise, many developers are going to be left confused for a long time and gtk2 applications will continue to behave like epileptic step children inside GNOME Shell.
This is far from “complete rewrite needed”:
“Thankfully, most of the changes are not hard to adapt to and there are a number of steps that you can take to prepare your GTK+ 2.x application for the switch to GTK+ 3. After that, there’s a small number of adjustments that you may have to do when you actually switch your application to build against GTK+ 3.”
You do know that Vista and OS X are whole operating systems, and by that measure, they includes various services, a kernel, and other components that Gnome, being just a DE, does not supply, so of course they are more “bloated” then Gnome.
“Of course”? Of course not. Gnome depends on a bunch of operating system services to run. I never claimed to run Gnome with no operating system. Your nitpicking is uninteresting and stupid.
It’s not nitpicking, it’s a serious statement, you can’t compare a DE to an entire OS, it just doesn’t work that way, you can’t even compare Gnome to Gnome on different FOSS operating systems, because Gnome on BSD is going to be a hell of a lot less “bloated” then on Debian, which would be more bloated than on Debian.
This whole site is based on nitpicking, you better get used to it.
Don’t tell them that … they will mod you down.
Everything must be open and free no matter what the arguements are to the contrary.
You cannot question the “Church of Open source”.
Check this out … I can almost write a script for some of the answers on here.
Check it out.
http://tmrepository.com/about/
Edited 2011-04-07 10:40 UTC
Absolutely agreed here! The GNOME 3.0 release is, by far, more stable and usable than my experience with OSX 10.0 and KDE 4.0…and certainly more pleasing than Windows VISTA was. One really cannot fairly compare GNOME 3.0 against KDE 4.6, OSX 10.6/7, or Win7 (basically Vista “done right”)… every desktop *.0 release has significant usability issues… but based on its introduction, the GNOME 3.0 is a good start and strongly positions the platform to be great in the long-term.
That may not be a GNOME-specific problem. Audio stacks are a bit convoluted in Linux, so unless the distro was tailored specifically for GNOME 3, you might find some quirky behavior. I could be wrong.
This is/was my gut reaction as well… reflecting further, however, I think the designers might have done this intentionally. The overall shell design seems to lend itself very well towards tablet and touch-based hardware. I wonder if that (sort of “future thinking”) drove this layout. [Though, they probably shouldn’t bet the farm on one style. I would have preferred UI elements that adapt to the system being used—standard desktop, Tablet, portable, phone, etc.]
Overall though, component integration is well-delivered; UI is consistent; and notifications are really unobtrusive but usable. Window “snap” functionality is useful (wouldn’t mind having keybindings defaulted for this though), and the type-driven app/doc finding functionality brings GNOME more on-par with Win7 & KDE4’s app menu and OSX’s spotlight.
The biggest hurdle is change: people, by default, tend to not like change. Sometimes benefits are less apparent simply because we’re accustomed to working a specific way. And I’m guessing that, in areas where users are unable to adapt, the desktop will be changed to fill that usability gap. Time will provide those fixes… Gnome2.x,KDE4.x, and every major commercial desktop have thoroughly demonstrated that.
Come to think of it, especially with its “just type”-like actions, GNOME 3.0 sorta makes me feel like I’m working on an over-sized Palm Pre/WebOS. haha… so GNOME 3 is like a new cell phone—usability feels rigid at first because I’m used to my old phone; there’s a different (but better) UI, and it’s full of tricks and cool features that I’ll discover over time. I think GNOME 3 will grow on me.
I’m definitely looking forward to see how user feedback, dev enhancements, and new infrastructural implementations land in future releases. I can’t wait for 3.1, 3.2, and so on!
Actually, what you just described is pretty much exactly what plasma-netbook (the “small screen” desktop shell for KDE4).
Personally, and I haven’t played with GNOME Shell much yet, plasma-netbook got things “more” right. Although, you do have to remove the default “launcher” bar and put back the default panel, taskbar, and systray to really make it useful.
Anyone tried GNOME 3.0 via an NFS-mounted / and /home? Does it work better than KDE4? Better/worse than KDE3? Better/worse than GNOME 2.x?
No, it was of course a PulseAudio problem. I don’t think I had PulseAudio installed at all before, and used bare-bones ALSA, which never caused any trouble. When Pulse started on top of it, it seems to have muted one of the ALSA channels, and of course then the mixer didn’t quite work and I couldn’t see what was wrong. Or at least that’s how it seemed after I uninstalled PulseAudio. I’ll look into it some more when I reinstall it later. PulseAudio should be mature enough for general use now.
When you are in the activities overview, just start typing the name of the application you want to launch. Typing will filter the available application icons to a manageable number and make it easier to launch the application. This is a not a smooth as it should and I’m surprised the devs didn’t spend time ensuring this is less jerky than it currently is.
You should also add frequently launched application to the side dock to make launching easier.
You can also use <alt>F2 to launch applications if you don’t want to switch to the activities overview mode. It’s much faster. However, it doesn’t have the autocompletion features that made the run dialog in GNOME3 so useful and powerful.
Your audio problems are most likely unrelated to GNOME Shell or GNOME. Your distribution probably failed to start the right audio services for GNOME.
Isn’t Linux about innovation? Developers want to hear opinions. They don’t mind rejections. At least, in the free World.
I love GNOME Shell, I love the performance, awesome .0 release.
Thank you GNOME developers and great work.
Hiev can you give some more reasons why you love gnome 3.0?
Of course.
I like the way you can switch between applications, looks like some users are having problem getting use to it but it feels natural for me.
No need to minimize windows, I already did that since GNOME 2.28, I used compiz instead of the task bar, (I just dragged the mouse to the top-right corner to trigger expose and switch between applications).
Centralized menu, the way to launch applications it is easier and intuitive.
The way it leverages the power of virtual desktops is great, I thank to them because they reused what was already there w/o the need to reinvent the wheel.
It very stable and smooth for a .0 release, this way they show respect for their users instead of using us as guinea pigs.
The notifications system doesn’t get in your way with unnecessary animations, it just goes what it has to do w/o distractions.
There are many more, I have a lot of hope for the next release, I tried Unity and is not for me, GNOME Shell is more close to they way I work.
Edited 2011-04-06 20:38 UTC
Very well said. The devil is in the details and the GNOME Shell folks worked magic with the details. Gone are the days windows popup and jump right in front of you when you’re working.
The dynamic and automatic workspace creation is just genius. I’m using workspaces the way they are supposed to be used.
The new notification system is fantastic and out of the way again to eliminate distraction.
Animations are fast, smooth, classy and out of the way. I can’t reproduce any window or visual tearing with my graphics driver. So kudos to the clutter and mutter devs for finally making this a reality.
It also helps that GNOME Shell is not a visually distracting eye sore unlike Unity, which I couldn’t even use for more than hour because it crashed every time I blinked.
I don’t like the top bar in GNOME Shell, it’s a waste of space and provides very little utility to waste that much vertical spaces which is premium on laptops and mobile devices. I’ve suggested it should be a floating bar that should be intelligently hidden when apps are maximized or should just be moved completely to the activities overview.
Finally, it’s stable. This is what shocked me the most actually. They did a fantastic job.
Edited 2011-04-06 21:05 UTC
Good points as well sir! I completely agree here too 🙂
Good points sir! I completely agree 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxlhyX-4qKI
I thought I’d hate it at first. But I’ve used it for the past 2 months exclusively and I’m now very impressed. The polish, smoothness and the focus on providing a non-distracting environment is second to none. What’s more, we can’t say the Linux Desktop doesn’t innovate anymore. GNOME Shell is unlike anything out there.
Kudos to the devs for this bold new direction I initially mocked in secret.
Thanks guys, it’s great to see comments like this.
It looks they did the same shit, as someone did to kde 3 with 4..Well, being modern is not being confortable, i`m driving audi 80 and i dont care about new fashion cars – mine is good, fast and unbroakable! So, it seems, i have to go with lxde, or just XP..
I want a desktop environment in a desktop computer, not a mobile computing environment.
I tried the last betas, and I found the same problem again, and again, and again, and again, and …: no way of fast switching between windows, and total discontrol about what programs are running at the same time.
Sorry, Alt+Tab is not known by ALL users – and is slow too -… Changing windows by using “Activities” is VERY slow. It may be the new GNOME vision, but I warn that somebody should give the developers a set of new glasses :-D.
No fast access dock, no taskbar, sudden notifications without a full system tray – some people use the tray with a reason, like checking network activity and computer resources usage -. Very good for mobile computing, very bad for a modern multitasking desktop.
So much bad press and flamewars against KDE at the 4.0 launch, and now GNOME people is doing things worse than KDE people then.
Meanwhile, angry users at GNOME’s door … 😀
The Gnome 3.0 release is nothing like the KDE 4.0 release.
KDE 4.0 latter was slow, unstable and not very functional. Gnome 3.0 is smooth, stable, nice looking and indeed very functional.
Can things in Gnome 3 be improved? Certainly!
Will they improve in upcoming releases? Certainly!
Will your favorite feature be implemented? Perhaps! Start by letting them know what you think and come up with constructive ideas 🙂
For many of us, Gnome 3 presents a radical shift in window and notification management. I run a huge gkrellm panel with *a lot* continuously updated sensors and data, have 10-20 programs running at the same time and many chat sessions going. Having switched between Gnome Shell and KDE 4.6 for a while, I have come to realize I am probably one of those power users who really benefit from cutting back on UI elements to avoid distraction.
In KDE 4.6 I had pretty much given up on managing windows and workspaces and I was flooded by fairly useless notifications. I never found a Plasma theme that blended well with the Oxygen widgets.
I find Gnome 3 to fit my lazy UI management better. I tend to run more programs maximized and actually bother using workspaces. I would not say I am faster in locating arbitrary windows, but instead I am more focused on what I am doing and less distracted at little or no expense to fast task switching. Could I set up KDE to emulate some of this? Probably. Would I ever bother? No. Even if I did, I would not get the performance and automated workspace management that Gnome Shell provides.
I now have gkrellm running as a window below all other windows and switch to a free workspace to look at it when I need to. I realize I could have done this before as well, but when using Gnome Shell, I somehow stand less widgets and clutter and expect a calmer interface.
Overall I am very pleased with Gnome Shell. It has a level of smoothness to it that I have yet to experience in Kwin and Plasma. I think this is just the beginning in rethinking Desktop UIs and that other DEs will develop along these lines.
Edited 2011-04-07 09:49 UTC
Yes, it looks nice, but it is absolutely not functional. It misses a lot of functionality I’m using daily with Gnome 2. There is no easy and fast way to see what apps are running. Access to menu is slow and absolutely inconvenient – move mouse to corner, then select applications, then try to find your application among all the icons – it is very confusing even computer-literate users.
I have very constuctive idea: look at the long list of features removed and implement them all. Here are just few of them, for start:
1. Make panel configurable and movable
2. Bring back all those gnome applets
3. Make things confirurable.
4. Bring back launchers
5. Make normal fallback mode, which really has features of Gnome2, not the same useless interface, but also ugly.
For those who need it, I think it would be nice to provide the dash (?) or similar panel on the desktop and autohide it using some “intellihide” algorithm. AFAIK, there is already work on such a dock extension:
https://piecesoflint.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/how-to-tweak-gnome-3-t…
If such a solution is inadequate, I would suggest using one of the many fine separate panels available, such as Avant Window Navigator or similar.
Nah, it can also be blazing fast. Hit Win/Meta/Mod4 key and you can start typing the name of the application even before you see the search window.
Yeah I too wish that those dash icons were launchers that I could right click and configure the commands for. But this is a minor speed bump for me. If these are essential to you, I suggest you stick to Gnome 2 for the foreseeable future. I am sure it will be maintained for a while or perhaps even forked by those who care for it.
“Yes, it looks nice, but it is absolutely not functional. It misses a lot of functionality I’m using daily with Gnome 2. There is no easy and fast way to see what apps are running.”
Why would you need to? Why does it matter what apps are running? If you need to do something, you switch to the app that does that thing. Does it matter if the app is running at present or not? Do you need to know whether an app is running in order to decide what you want to do next? Then why is this information that’s so useful the desktop should waste space to tell you about _all the time_?
I am using Xfce right now on my MacBook 2.1 (single-boot Lucid 64), and I am pleased with it…
I also have a Debian Squeeze Xfce Mac iBook G3 (single-boot as well).
I believe Xfce is the way to go.
I enjoy it with a classic KDE3 look, or win2k look, taskbar on the bottom, old-fashion icons on the desktop…
I guess the best combo would be Debian Stable/Testing with Xfce…
On some boxes, Ubuntu is needed, like my MacBook 2.1, who won’t single-boot Debian for some unknown reason, so I stick to LTS release…
Good for you. shame this isn’t about how awesome XFCE is.
The GNOME 3 Shell interface was designed for touchscreens, tablets, and “mind control”. The ordinary desktop computer with the old standard keyboard and mouse input is not going to be efficient for this interface.
That said, I think their design decisions may have been a little too radical (and ahead of their time) for the vast majority.
I don’t expect any tablets or smart phones to run a GNOME 3 desktop, and… I don’t see touch input devices phasing out the mouse and keyboard on the desktop scene anytime in the next 3 or 4 years.
Like I’ve said many times before, my desktop computer is not a tablet, and thus it requires a GUI that is well suited for it. The traditional desktop metaphor works well for DESKTOP computers.
Does it work very well? Or are you just used to it? We are creatures of habit even when the habit is bad.
Gnome2.32 isn’t the same Gnome2.0 they released, it’s a moving target.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME#Past_releases
I have been using gnome-shell from jhbuild/experimental in one form or another for about 18 months now (2.28?) and when it broke, using Gnome2 again was PAINFUL. Painful to the point of me avoiding my computer until i could fix it.
The Gnome Team have done really well creating an environment that is a pleasure to use. Anyone complaining it hasn’t actually used it as a desktop longer than a week. Or is so resistant to change that they’re just looking for things to complain about.
The fundamentals are all there. (Applications menu, quick launch, open windows list, window management, workspaces, favourite app shortcuts) They’ve just changed some concepts you have about how they work.
Gnome3 is clean simple and gives more focus to what you’re actually using your computer for. It’s by no means perfect but in it’s current state it’s already better than any Gnome2.x release.
Let me say this first, this comment contains only my thought/impression. Not to start flame war or anything.
Not a single person spotted so here it goes. As soon as I saw the UI on their website, I thought it somewhat very similar to Unity by Ubuntu team. (Given that this aims for similar set of devices than it is understandable since there should be boundary/limitation in human imagination)
And while watching the video on the website, I thought oh this and that features are already in KDE4 and Mac OS X.. I neither know nor want to track the history of each feature anyway so I am just saying there are similar/same features already found in other DE/OS.
My final thought was that by just looking at the UI and some features shown in the video, GNOME3 looks like mimic of KDE4, Mac OS X and Unity ( in alphabetical order (: ) *to me*,
Though I guess there should be differences beyond them, until I try it out I cannot tell.
Anyway, kudos to GNOME dev team.
Edited 2011-04-06 23:09 UTC
The videos and screenshots don’t do GNOME Shell justice. You have to use it, for at least 2 weeks, to appreciate the fact that its experience is unique among desktop environments.
Edited 2011-04-07 00:03 UTC
Come on. I have already said that Though I guess there should be differences beyond them, until I try it out I cannot tell.. What I meant was that unless I try I cannot judge. and I know that. Still I could feel a bit what the experience would be like, with those videos and screenshots.
However, even they might not do full justice, if it doesn’t do at all then no point of putting up screenshots or videos in the first place!
Fully agree with you!
Actually Im happy to see someone finally innovating. Doing something different other than adding social networking B.S and calling THAT revolutionary.
I give 1 year for the developers to take their words & design layout back and revert the good old panels again by continuing to developing the “fallback” mode and abandoning the Shell, using all the 3.x engine technologies.
GNOME 2.x had been consistent through a decade, being adopted by major distributions and its evolutionary cycle guaranteed many Windows converters. It’s just now that, in effort with Canonical and GNOME, the linux community will spit out many many users. If Shell and Unity persists, we’ll be facing many defections.
Now that grandmama just learned how to use GNOME and hated Windows XP, it will be a military operation to get her to use GNOME Shell or even Unity. No, no, and no.
In the meantime, we have a couple of interesing scenarios:
– Linux Mint will top over Distrowatch.com and long first timer Ubuntu will have to be content with a second position. Actually I see that happening… for days now the Mint statistics are always +10 a day against +4 Ubuntu’s average ups and downs.
– XFCE being adopted as a major main desktop interface on Linux, after some major polish to look like GNOME. Better themes and wallpapers comes to mind now. (Yes, I hate that silly rat.)
– KDE may slashback its way to the mainstream, after the 4.x series fiasco. Of course, if they strive to integrate GTK applications perfectly out-of-the-box, Compiz and revamp their menus and cut down the too-many preferences. Of course if someone doesn’t BLOW UP the whole thing again…
I for one will keep Fedora 14/GNOME 2.xx for undetermined time, for now…
You think KDE has too many preferences?
*falls over laughing*
*realizes you’re serious*
*starts drinking heavily while muttering about broken cup holders*
The youth is decadent, we will face massive defections, the world will come to an end, kittens will die, etc. I wouldn’t worry so much.
Keep this in mind folks: many Linux users are just happy/content with the new design and quietly use it instead of posting on osnews/slashdot.
Also, the demographics of Linux users is changing. It’s not just hardcore people running fluxbox or some obscure combination of software “because it has been like this since 1995 and it should stay that way!” or because “I need it to run on 64 MB of ram and no 3D acceleration!” anymore…
What we’re seeing here is pretty much an echo chamber for negative reactions to disruptive change.
Also: GNOME Shell hasn’t yet revealed its true potential. It is made to be extensible. Imagine when people start writing gadgets and extensions for it… just give it some time.
There was a lot of complaint about KDE 4, and similarly for Gnome 3. Now, I’m mostly experienced with KDE 3 (it’s what they have on the computers at Uni), and have never thought much of Gnome (I just didn’t like the way it did things), but both Gnome 3 and KDE 4 seems like great innovations to me.
Having had a look at those videos about Gnome 3 makes me think I should really give it a go. I think they’ve done some quite clever UI things. Then again, I’m a big fan of projects that try and come up with new UI ideas.
Ok, I admit I am in disbelief with GNOME Shell and Unity… Just trying now the GNOME 3 Fedora spin from their site. This surely looks like NO KDE 4 fiasco release. Actually some things got clever (The ON-OFF switch I found really clever and original). GNOME Shell is sporting a cleaner and pleasant interface. The fallback mode also got more similar to the Shell. Both black panels now, and the System menu is now gone from main panel. Nice.
I will have to see if I get used to the lack of maximizing/minimizing windows and this global Activities menu sucks big time… I am sure that A MIX between the Shell and Fallback mode is what is going to really make GNOME 3 a whole. I really don`t see a future for Activities menu – at this time, but I may change my mind after using some days….somehow moving the mouse towards the corner is more pleasant than targetting a 20px minimizing button. I start now to get the idea through this…
Comparing this to Unity, it`s miles away and this will make Ubuntu bite the dust, as I predicted. I consider now, the war between GNOME and Shuttleworth, in my humble opinion, really WON BY GNOME. What can I say…
I just can`t, FOR THE LIFE OF ME, change the UI font, which is *HORRIBLE* by the way. I can`t set the right DPI, and can`t do anything really. I looked for instructions over the internet and haven`t found one that worked. Please if someone knows how to tweak the UI font, I will be grateful. Another thing is the mouse, I usually like to change the pointer (DMZ-White, size 32), and it doesn`t have an option to do that.
If any GNOME developer hears this, please INCLUDE these settings before next distro releases…
I think I may now start stopping to bash GNOME Shell… (Well, not my fault since anything previous to this 3.0 release was broken.)
NB – I am FINALLY GLAD, Nautilus fixed the renaming bug in List View – it`s not selecting the extension for renaming anymore! Phew…
Edited 2011-04-07 00:48 UTC
gnome-tweak-tool allows you to change fonts among other things. I think it ships with gnome 3 but I’m not sure.
You should probably install “gnome-tweak-tool”, which will allow you to change less-often used settings that were taken out of the gnome-control-center 3.0 panels.
gnome-tweak-tool provide some ability to tweak UI. It is functional though not all options are available because of early stage.
You can use gnome-tweak-tool to do a number of modifications to the way the shell works and looks.
If I saw the youtube preview without knowing I honestly would have thought it was a parody of the desktop.
I think Linux distros should go for speed and build around OpenBox. Going after Windows or OS X users is a waste of time. The Linux desktop is too far behind in usability.
But I would actually rather leave a new user with OpenBox than Gnome 3. G3 is a case of engineers designing a desktop without any feedback from average users. The KDE team should send Gnome a cake to thank them for driving users away.
Say what? The KDE 4.6 desktop on suitable hardware is the best desktop out there. It is eminently useable, and ahead of Windows or OSX.
For anyone thinking along these lines and yet wishing to stay GNOME 2.x-like (rather than migrate to KDE/Qt), then might I suggest Linux Mint Debian Edition?
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1725
“With KDE 4 and Gnome 3 bringing drastic changes to their environments, and with the emergence of Fluxbox and LXDE on the lightweight scene, Xfce represents a nice alternative for PC desktop users who are looking for a light yet full-featured desktop solution. Its relevance is becoming more significant and this is another reason for us to support it in both 32-bit and 64-bit and to give it a mainstream software selection.”
This is an Xfce desktop system (gtk-based) built on the Debian testing rolling distribution. It would appear that the RAM use is quite modest (between 128MB and 256MB), depending on how many applications are loaded, as opposed to 800MB for GNOME 3.0 or about 600MB for KDE 4.6.
Edited 2011-04-07 04:47 UTC
That is an opinion, not a fact. Every single time I’ve tried KDE4.x I’ve either had the panel go in endless crash-loop, KWM crashing, the whole desktop going unresponsive or similar stuff. It has every single time been REALLY unstable, even 4.6 which I just recently tried! Such unstability doesn’t quite make it “best” in my opinion.
Very strange indeed. I’ve never had any kind of a problem with stability of KDE, (except minor flakiness for KDE 4.0), even with compositing on. This is my experience across a number of different machines (ordinary desktops, laptops and netbooks, ATI, VIA and nVidia, Intel and AMD, a whole range of clock speeds) a whole range of KDE distributions (OpenSuse, Kanotix, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, MEPIS, Sabayon, Arch and Kubuntu), and a range of KDE 3.x and KDE 4.x releases.
I can’t say the same for Windows, for example. I have never had a Windows installation last for more than a few years before the person who was using it came back to me and asked me if I could fix it. Again.
So this is not just my opinion, it is my experience.
PS: I haven’t seen any instability in GNOME, either, BTW, it is just that the KDE applications are IMO generally better than the GNOME equivalents.
Edited 2011-04-07 06:54 UTC
It is “Strange” … Oh comon, It is known not be reliable.
You will never find a comment like this about Mac OSX or Windows.
Wow that has never happen to me since the KDE 4.0-.4.1 days, using KDE 4.4.3 and its been really stable, more so than windows 7 64-bit. Even with those flaky fglrx drivers. Of course this could be do the fact that I use KDE under Slackware….
http://tmrepository.com/trademarks/worksforme/
😀
Well, I don’t know what the issue is. I keep on trying KDE every now and then in an effort to try to “give it a chance”, and every time the result is something like this. Note that I’ve tried it on several different hardware configurations, both with Radeon and with GeForce, and even in a virtual machine, and I’ve tried it with Ubuntu and OpenSuSE.
The easiest way of making KDE crash has so far been to try to resize the panel or to move it to the top of the screen where I prefer it.
If you experience horrid stability problems in KDE4, you will very likely experience the same for GNOME3, as these problems all come from graphics driver problems. If you run KDE4 in a virtual machine, or disable all the bells and whistles, you will see what I mean.
And, just to remind you, in KDE4, it is not possible at all to crash the panel without bringing down the whole desktop.
What is interesting is that I have been testing GNOME Shell on Fedora 15 (to be released in May), on a machine with only 512 MB of RAM.
I have no idea where those people get the “it uses 600 MB of RAM” figure.
On my machine (without any tweaks whatsoever), GNOME3 with GNOME Shell uses less than 180 MB of RAM on startup. I don’t even touch the swap file. And you know what? This RAM usage is the same as GNOME 2.x!
Bleh, can’t correct my previous comment since I posted it >20 minutes ago.
My “180 MB of RAM” figure was actually quite pessimistic. It actually uses less than 120 MB: http://jeff.ecchi.ca/blog/2011/04/07/gnome-3-0s-ram-usage/
Personally I’m more interested in trying out the fallback interface, since I dislike graphics intensive desktop effects that wreak havoc with many video cards or simply aren’t compatible with older hardware. Any comments on the fallback interface? Thanks!
I thought that the default on the SuSE live CD available at gnome3.org was pretty slick, though slow. Kind of silly, though: it’s like a locked down GNOME 2, nothing is configurable through the usual menus. Minimize/maximize buttons are enabled. (YaST and other SuSE configuration stuff is available, though, and so is the GNOME 3 configure tool.) The new messaging system is activated and that’s pretty nice, I guess.
Back to XP.
EDIT: I have a netbook with ATI X300 graphics, which haven’t been supported by Catalyst since 9.3 and aren’t supported by radeonhd. You can install other drivers through SuSE’s tools.
Edited 2011-04-07 07:17 UTC
These GNOME 3 boys be mad slick.
Don’t know how I feel about GNOME 3. Their ideas sound quite interesting, but I have yet to try it in practice. Forcing the use of something fundamentally broken like window compositing is a jerkish move, though. And, what’s more, since they’ve broken compatibility of stuff like notifications, distros will have to integrate it properly before it works well.
I think I might be one of the kind of multitaskers which GNOME 3 targets. I need simultaneous task execution in the background, however I almost never need to interact with several things at once, and when I do the current windowing systems prove to be completely broken anyway (something like tiling would be more suitable if only window resizing worked in a better way). I rather need fast task switching, will see if the Shell provides it (among other things) in Fedora 15. I think something like the task switcher from Mac OS classic would have been more discoverable than what’s described here, though.
Surprisingly enough, the notification system is entirely backwards compatible. It still uses libnotify and requires no patching at all from apps to work with it at least at the basic level, it’s transparent.
Concrete example: I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see that Specto’s notifications work 100% fine and “as you would expect” with GNOME Shell. I did not have to touch a single line of code. This is frankly quite an achievement.
Edited 2011-04-07 13:47 UTC
Must have confused with tray icons… The big conflict between Gnome and Shuttleworth’s company is about the fact that GNOME have reworked the way system tray works in a fashion that’s incompatible with the solution from Canonical that has also been adopted by KDE, right?
Indeed, the GNOME Shell doesn’t use the “Indicator Applet” (aka libappindicator or libindicate or something like that); but keep in mind that applications actually had to add optional support for libappindicator, not the other way around.
Let me illustrate with an example: Specto already supported the standard notification system (libnotify) + “tray icon” (gtk status icon) for years, but it had to be extended and complexified with a bunch of if/else in the code to make it work with Ubuntu’s indicator applet.
When this applet is not detected/available on the user’s panel/system, Specto reverts to using the standard notification system… which is what is used by gnome shell, nothing much has changed in this regard.
And app developers have somewhat less to worry about because the new notification system’s design paradigm solves the friggin’ problem we’ve been plagued with since Windows 95’s introduction of the notification area (aka the “tray icons”).
As I understand it, in gnome shell’s notification system, new possibilities are added for application developers wanting to extend the precision of the behavior of their notifications (ex: to be able to mute them when the user is “Busy”) and integrate better than they already do.
Didn’t know that old apps still work perfectly. That changes the Canonical-Gnome situation a lot
In that case, no problem at all as far as I’m concerned.
What is this problem from the Win95 era ?
Long story short, in Win95 MS introduced the notification area (aka “tray icons”) but did not strictly restrict it to system notifications.
Every damn app maker on the planet started abusing it and docking his apps into it.
Microsoft then tried to cover the problem in Windows XP and subsequent releases by making icons autohide in that area… which is a band-aid, not a fix, and a stupid one.
GNOME Shell makes this distinction clear and doesn’t allow apps to show icons into the upper right corner, which is reserved for system stuff.
And how do background services like Transmission, which used to hide in the tray in order to take up less room but remain available, now work ?
They can still sit with a notification icon, but now that icon will be in the lower right corner, not shown at all times unless you put the mouse over there.
But more importantly, it doesn’t need such an icon anymore. Since there is no “window list” (aka “taskbar”) anymore, the “better” way to do this in GNOME Shell is to not have a tray icon; instead, simply put transmission onto its own workspace. Since you can have as many workspaces as you want (they are dynamic and automatic after all), you can afford to do so.
Then when you want to call that transmission instance, just hit the Win (or alt+F1) key or the upper-left hotcorner to call the activities view, type “tr”+enter to switch directly to it (or click the transmission icon that shows up on the dash (“dock”) on the left).
Same goes for IM clients like empathy: no need to worry about minimizing them anymore.
So it’s kind of like the application-centric interfaces of Win7 and OSX, I assume… If so, it’ll be interesting to see how well applications which spawn multiple windows are handled. That’s generally a weak point of such interfaces.
There are distributions supporting good old Gnome 2 for another 7 yrs plus from now. So why the hysteria to change or not to change the desktop? Dear, this is OSS. It developes with different premises than commercial software.
And if you think about it, isn’t it great that Red Hat as the main contributor to Gnome didn’t step in to stop this mess they call Gnome 3.0? Isn’t it exciting to watch, what direction Gnome will take after this – and after that – and after that?
At least, this major release doesn’t seem to struggle with stability and speed issues, so heads up.
I am writing from the GNOME 3 Fedora preview live CD and so far i’m loving it. I know that the change from the older 2.x release is very big but even after several minutes of use i grew accustomed to it and i like how it works. The systems is snappy and fast (even though i use it on a live cd) and the whole design concept works well in my opinion. The biggest drawback of the new desktop is that you need some time to get used to it. But after that it works quite well. What is even more impressive is that this is a x.0 release. Compared to what i saw in KDE 4.0 and to what i’ve read about GNOME 2.0 (back when it was released i wasn’t using linux so i don’t have a first hand experience of it) it is quite stable. I can only imagine what it will be like after several more releases.
Congratulations to the GNOME developer’s team for their great release!
Impeach the Gnome leadership for:
* Implementing every fad that comes along
* Their deathgrip with shareware known as Evolution
* Getting rid of Gthumb, or any photo program that you can do anything useful in.
* Not making it a priority to fix Nautilus bugs.
* Making the users bookmarks too man mouse clicks in
* Not caring about the users needs
* Copying Apple on everything
* Taking the Rojin-Z’s worth of applications into its core
* Still making us install fonts manually after all of these years
* Letting Nautilus shell scripts rot on the vine
* Taking away our place to drop the files we are working on, our desktop
* Not listening to users
Dolphin is to me is one of the major killer features of KDE and the best file manager I have ever used. I agree that a central piece of the desktop such as Nautilus needs more love.
About having iconds on the desktop, you can activate that if you feel like it 🙂
I downloaded the live Cd and I got to a pretty much standard Gnome desktop; a top bar with ‘applications’ and ‘places’ menus, time, sound volume and network icon; a bottom bar with workspaces; and a blue background.
The applications are standard Linux apps: Firefox, Evolution, Gimp etc.
What exactly is the big deal with Gnome 3? from what I remember, Gnome 2 was extremely similar.
Use it for real for a day or two, and ask yourself the same question. You may have an answer then.
That’s the fallback mode.
The Fedora image doesn’t start the new Gnome3 features under Virtualbox, fails back to a standard Gnome desktop.
Burn KDE, burn… LOL
Ok, how to enable back metacity and panels and applets in GNOME 3? I was trying with metacity –replace &, but something crashed.
Anyone LIKE Gnome 3.0? Can anyone see anything good about it at all?
see below
First: I like Gnome 3. I think I actually grok what the devs were going for, and, considering the look of my gnome 2, android, and even OSX and win vista machines, I fully support decluttering. I have my problems with the software (I mean come on, it is a 1.0 release!). So this is coming from the perspective of someone who likes Gnome 3 and gnome-shell.
There seems to be two types of people commenting on this negatively: those who don’t use Linux full time, or at all, and those who do, but don’t like Gnome 3 and g-s.
The latter first: This has been in the works for over a year (GTK+3 and then Gnome 3), we all saw this coming a very long way off. And if you don’t like it, fine, I am cool with that. I don’t like KDE, but I know people who do like it. The wonderful thing about open source is that there are other options out there (KDE, XFCE, LXDE, *box, Gnome 2, CLI, whatever) and you can use what you want. Don’t cry foul because a developer killed one of you sacred cows. It will be okay. Change isn’t something to freak out over.
Secondly, to those that don’t use Linux (much or at all): WTF? I mean, seriously, WTF? You don’t use Linux! Why does it matter to you what design decisions are made by a community that you are not even a part of? I really don’t see the fun, or whatever in complaining about something you don’t use, and I am sure, don’t have any plans to switch to. If you were on the fence and this sent you back to OSX or Windows, fine. That is okay with me.
Everyone has their opinions, and are entitled to it, I just don’t understand all the bitching about something YOU DON’T HAVE TO USE. It is just a DE. Nobody is holding a gun to your head telling you that you have to swallow the pill.
(Yes, I know. The internet is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, and no one can agree on anything. But this has become ridiculous. )
BTW i think that if gnome tweak tools is installed and fallback mode is enabled you can configure your gnome 3 to work pretty much like gnome 2. Gnome tweak tool allows has an option where nautilus draws the desktop so you can have a standard desktop where you can save files and folders and when the fallback mode is enabled there are the standard two panels with a task bar on the bottom panel. Only the applets are missing.
Thanks for the dudes and ladies who pointed out how to change the UI font in GNOME 3. Interesting tool this one. However I couldn’t change the black panel font.
Tried it again this morning, I really don’t see the point of this global Activities menu. Hopefully the Shell and Fallback mode will merge into one single DE.
this is definitely an odd time. look at what apple is doing to osx. adding bits of the iphone interface to osx?!
“post-pc world”
if you ask me we haven’t advanced significantly past windows 2000. OOH THE BUTTONS ARE IN A DIFFERENT SPOT.
the useful innovation is going on in the mobile touch space. the blubbering desktop PC guys are just spinning their wheels.
Edited 2011-04-07 17:05 UTC
I believe I’m part of the silent majority when I say that I like the direction Gnome 3 and Unity are taking the desktop.
If you have huge projects that require several open windows on-screen simultaneously there are other alternatives like Openbox or XFCE which you can set up to behave just like the old “start menu/taskbar/system tray” paradigm you are familiar with. Personally, I’ve been sick of that system for a decade and it’s one of the first things I removed from my machine in 2002 when I switched to Linux.
It’s time to move the desktop into the future, and this is the way forward. I’m ecstatic that FOSS is leading the way here and I can’t wait to see the projects in their full glory.
Should I laugh or should I cry?
It’s big step back at … everything. Gnome’s removing stuff from UI is getting ridiculous.
I hope > KDE 4.6 succedes otherwise GNU/Linux desktop is screwed.
Edited 2011-04-08 09:22 UTC
for sure you made me laugh today 😉
seriously.
Once upon a time Red Hat was the first distro. They took decisions, users fled away to other distribs.
Trust the open ecocystem to make room for the best D.E.
If it does’t yet exist, it will.