I like Gnome Shell

http://malexandre.fr/posts/2012/Nov/10/i-like-gnome-shell/

by Thagor • 14 years ago

119 80 14 years ago

donniezazen5• 14 years ago

I have never enjoyed the idea of extensions for essential functionalities like power menu. With release of newer versions of Gnome Shell every 6-8 months, extensions break. Like Firefox, there will always be some extensions not working. You have to log-out to enable extensions. I don't like to reboot or log-out my Linux box, not for trivial things like extensions. I only reboot when there is a kernel update.

I am still unable to understand where do they want to take notification.

I like both Gnome and Unity. Gnome Foundations and Canonical should be left to pursue their own objective goals as long as they don't destroy projects that are used by other Desktop Environments like XFCE, etc.

skbohra123• 14 years ago

You don't need to log out to enable extensions, just reload gnome shell. Press Alt-F2 and type 'r' without quotes.

aprescott• 14 years ago

I actually don't even need to do this, they just enable immediately. (Version 3.6.1, if that's relevant.)

mseepgood• 14 years ago

Extensions enable and disable without relogin at least since 3.2.

Thagor6• 14 years ago

Like other comments, I don't need to reload or log out my gnome shell when adding an extension. But it's true that I used Shell only for the last 6 months, so I'm not really aware of the broken extension problem, but it's clear that it can be a huge probleme, especially because even though Shell is good, it misses some things out of the box that are really useful, like I said in my blog post.

donniezazen5• 14 years ago

What distro are you running Gnome on? I ran 3.6 on Archlinux and some extensions didn't come up automatically. For example, the gnome-shell-system-monitor doesn't apply changes without log-out (I am not sure about reload, never tried that).

Andrex7• 14 years ago

"Power Off" is now a default option in 3.6. It seems like they're using extensions to get a feel of what the most popular feature requests are, then adding them to the default experience. You may disagree with it, but a hard number of extension installs is more to go on a couple blog posts.

comice• 14 years ago

After some time using (and customizing) it, I now quite like Gnome Shell but its sudden major change from Gnome 2 left me pretty shell shocked (arf) at first.

And to be at all comfortable with it I'm using about 15 extensions.

So now I see Gnome Shell as basically the core of a framework to develop your own desktop system. Not ideal, but I like it more than xfce (and cinnamon, last time I tried it).

keithpeter6• 14 years ago

Ubuntu Unity and Gnome Shell on Gnome 3 both seem to take a few weeks to 'get into' I find.

Currently GS on Gnome 3.6 as provided by the Gnome Ubuntu Remix 12.10 has my attention, seems a good fit to my end user like use cases. The only plug-in at present is the one to put the hibernate command back on the power/system settings menu.

I find GS gives me the illusion of being more responsive (perhaps because when invoking the search screen there is no dynamic search going on) and is somehow 'quieter' in operation.

RivieraKid• 14 years ago

My main problem is the lack of task bar: - I need to see what windows I have open, it gives me context - Without a taskbar, I'm not able to switch windows quickly

acous• 14 years ago

I like the visual context too, some of the dock extensions did a fine job last time I played with it.

rogerbinns5• 14 years ago

I tried really hard to keep using Gnome Shell, and even managed to do so for many months. But then there was the 6 monthly version bump and all the extensions broke.

I have two problems. The first (shared with Unity) is that I have a dual monitor setup with large screens. I usually have at least two of each top level window (eg emacs, browser) and many terminals. A panel has turned out to be the most productive way of managing them, providing the panel lets you do drag and drop to change ordering. Every Gnome release cycle the old panels break, new ones appear, and they keep missing functionality. The only way to get a decent stable usable one is to use fallback mode which Gnome is killing in the next release.

The second problem is "random stuff". When I tried Gnome Shell the most recent time, the System Monitor applet showed up at the bottom and only if you moved your mouse to the bottom of the screen. That is beyond spectacularly useless - it needs to be always visible. You get many many niggles like that, that add up to a whole lot of annoyance.

It seems to me that the whole experience is being optimised for a single 11 inch screen where one program at a time is run. Quite frankly Android is a better bet in that kind of scenario.

fmoralesc5• 14 years ago

>When I tried Gnome Shell the most recent time, the System Monitor applet showed up at the bottom and only if you moved your mouse to the bottom of the screen. That is beyond spectacularly useless - it needs to be always visible.

But the System Monitor is an external extension to the shell; the problem you have with it is not gnome-shell's fault at all.

rogerbinns5• 14 years ago

That makes things worse! Am I supposed to not use the System Monitor at all and count that as an improvement? I believe the System Monitor applet is somewhat part of the official extensions - ie it is in the gnome-shell-extensions package.

This is one of many little niggles that add up to an unpleasant experience. Another example is whether additional workspaces go horizontally or vertically.

Swizec3• 14 years ago

This shifting blame in a lazy fashion, I see this a lot with open source projects.

If you want to provide a good desktop experience, go the distance. Make sure I have a usable system, be accountable for everything that is installed by default and/or I need to actually use the system you are offering.

I don't care if Apple uses a subcontractor to make their Activity Monitor app. If it doesn't work, it's Apple's fault.

donniezazen5• 14 years ago

I agree with the last bit. Neither Gnome nor Canonical have any competing devices in the mobile market. They don't have developer base or user mass to support their ambitious mobile projects. Why leave desktop users behind in hope that mobile users will pick up Gnome or Unity. Even if they are able to bring their shells to market, the deciding factor in mobile market is availability of quality application. A hugely successful project like Android has not made its mark in tablet market due to lack of tablet optimized apps. All this mobile-driven development is work in futility.

rogerbinns5• 14 years ago

I too am mystified by Gnome and Canonical. If they want to compete in the tablet/mobile space then they need to be good at something. Anything will do such as price, freedom, apps, developer productivity, distribution, popularity, localization, tools, privacy, security etc but I can't name a single thing. And the competition is constantly improving - being better than Android/iOS today is useless if you ship in 3 years. Not to mention Mozilla/Firefox are also messing in this space diluting effort and attention even more.

The only thing Gnome and Canonical have to show so far is a homescreen/launcher which is by far the least useful/interesting part of the tablet/mobile experience.

On the being constructive side, what they should be doing is what happened to the GNU project. Do not try to take over the whole world with your stuff all at once. Instead run parts on existing platforms, and provide alternatives or replacements for the other components until it is possible to run completely "native". This way the development effort can be used most effectively, feedback is quick, and you have a working system from day one. What Gnome and Canonical seem to be doing is following the model of Hurd!

akandiah• 14 years ago

> The first (shared with Unity) is that I have a dual monitor setup with large screens.

Unity supports large multiple-monitor set-ups without any issues! Each monitor is provided with a copy of the launcher. IMO this makes it far easier to interact with applications when using a mouse.

Personally, I have Unity running across 3 x 24" screens without any issues at all.

Swizec3• 14 years ago

Luckily it's very easy to disable having the launcher on every screen because that's just about the most annoying possible default.

It really gets in the way of dragging windows across monitors. Let alone having windows placed "over the fold". Something I often do when things start getting crowded.

xiaomai• 14 years ago

I first started using GNOME when GNOME 1 came out. GNOME 1 and 2 weren't ever very satisfactory for me, so I spent a lot of time trying alternate window managers (mostly WindowMaker and openbox, but I also spent a considerable amount of time using awesome).

GNOME Shell is my favorite GNOME so far. I wish the extension system was documented (I would like to write some of my own, but the intitial investment is too high right now). I'm currently just using two extensions (Message Notifier and windowNavigator).

mverwijs• 14 years ago

> There is of course the Alt+Tab switch window

To be more precise, the ALT+Tab works as in Mac (I believe). It switches between windows of the same application. Not between applications themselves. Which I just don't get.

Whenever doing anything I type in Vim in a Terminal, Alt+TAB to another application, and check the output. I am almost never in the same application between an Alt+Tab. It baffles me that this is default behaviour.

Thagor6• 14 years ago

You can change the behaviour of the alt+tab via extension. I'm not sure I'm using one, but the first window selected by an alt+tab is the previous one.

keithpeter6• 14 years ago

There is rapid change in GS at present, and they are still puggling about with application switching.

GS 3.6 as on Gnome Ubuntu Remix, no extensions

Alt-Tab switches between applications, irrespective of how many windows a given application has open.

Alt-' switches between windows of the currently selected application.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8403291/gs-alt-tab.jpg

In the screen grab above, I've pressed Alt-Tab and reached the terminal window, then pressed Alt-` and am cycling between the two terminals. In practice you keep your thumb on the Alt and the pinky switches between the tab and ` (back-tick is above the tab on UK keyboard, it might be ~ on US keyboard, my memory fails).

silon3• 14 years ago

Gnome shell breaking Alt+Tab is why I switched to XFCE / KDE and will not be returning until it's restored.

revscat• 14 years ago

Can anyone speak to how this compares to Quicksilver on OS X? It sounds similar, albeit with the added ability of being able to manage window sizing.

donniezazen5• 14 years ago

Never used OS X but Unity search seems to be better than Gnome's.

Andrex7• 14 years ago

Unity is probably slightly better, but Gnome Shell's is a little quicker in my experience. Aside from that, Unity's search is getting Amazon ads and I can't imagine that's going to be positive for the user experience.

Symmetry• 14 years ago

Gnome-Do is pretty precisely analogous to OS X's Quicksilver.

acomar• 14 years ago

The problem has never been Gnome Shell though, and the flak against would never have occurred if a few simple things had been done. A lot of people love Gnome Shell, but many more people simply hate it. But the Gnome developers insisted that they knew best, and that they alone had the "One True Way". And this lead to a lot of shoddy PR that everyone involved should have known was coming -- telling people that they're wrong for disliking something never wins you support.

keithpeter6• 14 years ago

"The only missing point in here is the selection of a window while in explode mode. Maybe there is a way, but I haven't found it yet."

Marc has nailed it here for me. On the rare occasions I use the 'exploded view' I want to be able to tab between the windows.

I mainly use Alt-Tab and Alt-backtick to move between applications and windows at present, but adding a keyboard mode for switching within the dash would help with organising workspaces by task irrespective of application...

Thagor6• 14 years ago

In the blog's comments, Felipe Morales linked this extension : https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/10/windownavigator/, and it's quite good. You can use alt+<Number> to select a window while in 'exploded view'.

keithpeter6• 14 years ago

Very nice too, works with GS 3.6 as in Gnome Ubuntu Remix 12.10. Thanks for pointing out the link.

I think some functionality along these lines should be provided by the basic GS though.

fmoralesc5• 14 years ago

Felipe here: I would also recommend another extension that provided window search abilities to the overview, so I could type "hacker news" or "handler.py" and go to the window I needed to, but it doesn't seem to be updated to gnome 3.6. I've been looking at the code and I can't figure out what is wrong with it.

[1] https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/317/window-display/

bkor2• 14 years ago

This is actually an accessibility problem and as such it should just work by default (no extensions or anything). The difficulty is spending time to figure out the best way to do this as well as trying&developing the various solutions. I do hope it gets solved soon (GNOME 3.8 or 3.10).

lampe• 14 years ago

i loved gnome2 but i dont like the gnome-shell! gtk3 is really really cool and thanks to gnometk3 we have mate and Cinemone

but the best thing is elementary os Luna this is an amazing distro and the best desktop for me.

i also like crunchbang linux on slower boxes.

zanny• 14 years ago

Like many others I also gave Gnome Shell a chance to impress, I recently tried 3.6 for a few days... but

1. It is an unacceptable UX to go "I wish I had feature X, but I don't, so lets go google search for a shell extension that provides it" then use the extension affiliation for Chrome / FF to install it. I got way too frustrated after looking for a way to make the super key not take over the whole screen (like Win7 / Unity don't)

2. There is a dire lack of a unsettings / Ubuntu Tweak style configuration editor for Gnome Shell. I don't want to read a book to figure out what my desktop can or can't do in the form of the shell manpages or help pages. I don't want to be forced into having the panel only show up in superkey mode, or to have to scrounge for a setting to enable that behavior, etc

3. I just plain don't like the usage of web technologies as a way to alter the desktop. In general, scripting languages inherently waste memory and cycles in favor of getting something done fast. But when you want a fast responsive desktop maybe the overhead of jaggermonkey (I think that is the JS backend they are using) is just insane.

dtbx• 14 years ago

How to disable the super key overview manually:

Edit /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/main.js

Comment this line:

global.display.connect('overlay-key', Lang.bind(overview, overview.toggle));

Restart gnome-shell with this command:

gnome-shell --replace

It's just Javascript, so it's very easy.

Ankaios• 14 years ago

That's an 800+ line, system-wide file under the control of the package manager. Just because it's "easy" to hack it doesn't make it a good option.

mercurial2• 14 years ago

I'm sorry, but this is rubbish. You are talking about editing a file in /usr, which means your fix is guaranteed to break at the next upgrade. And this is not "easy". Or at least not "easy" in the sense that Gnome "is not meant for users who don't want to select their terminal emulators". This is neither discoverable nor maintainable.

What's wrong with sane defaults and a configuration panel?

aortega4• 14 years ago

Gnome 3 is the "Windows Vista" equivalent of Linux. It looks better? yes, but at what cost? it takes a lot more resources. I hope Gnome 4 pulls a "Windows 7" and comes back as a modern, optimized DE, with a "no 50 watts GPU/CPU required" mode for people that don't want/have it. Until then, Mate desktop it is.

Thagor6• 14 years ago

I have no graphic card, and just an old i5 from 2011. It doesn't eat much of my computer power. For a light processor maybe, but I can't talk about that.

aortega4• 14 years ago

Old i5 from 2011, I hope you are trolling me.

You know just how hugely powerful an i5 processor is? the "no graphics card" that you actually have inside your CPU is more powerful than the latest gamer graphics card from 5 years ago. And consumes a lot of power too.

Gnome 2 ran quite fast on a 500 Mhz ARMv5, 200 milliWatts idle. Yes, it is a niche application, but it shows just how much hardware (and batteries!) Gnome 3 needs.

jamesgeck02• 14 years ago

I run Gnome 3 on a four year old laptop with a Core 2 Duo and Intel GMA X3100* integrated graphics. No performance issues.

* View the internet in multiple colors! Run games almost a decade old on "low" settings! Sometimes capable of displaying HD YouTube videos without jittering!

bkor2• 14 years ago

My GPU is from 2007 or so and doesn't have a fan. It runs GNOME 3 perfectly fine. At that time it wasn't the fastest; I went for the cheapest fanless GPU that would still be supported by Linux.

That compositing requires more resources, yes, but IMO you're exaggerating on the resource requirements.

aortega4• 14 years ago

You still are talking about a x86 architecture with a discrete GPU. It would be nice if it worked fast with no GPU at all like Gnome 2 did, so it can be used in Virtual machines, OSes with crappy drivers (*BSDs), weird architectures (MIPS, ARM, etc.)

Gnome 3 sacrificed all that compatibility to gain some nices graphics, I think it's not worth it.

Andrex7• 14 years ago

Chiming in here to say Gnome has run great on all the hardware I've tried it on, which is more than I can say for Unity which is jittery on even mid/high-end-ish hardware.

PuercoPop• 14 years ago

I like gnome shell, (although I like kde even more so I use that), but that doesn't mean I'm going to agree with the outrageous views expounded by the gnome devs: "Please Remove the tray icon functionality we don't use it anymore", "You have to decide if you are a gnome app or not", "I'm against having use themes", etc. I don't think it is the gnome shell that was under attack recently it was the attitude of the gnome 3.0 towards the user/contributors.

foenix• 14 years ago

I was actually a fan of Gnome Shell until I went to the LinuxCon 2011 and started talking to the devs. It seems to me that they are trying to turn Gnome into something meant for beginning users while trying to train them with "good" habits. Example: shutdown can only be achieved by holding alt (without gnome-tweak). Considering I have limited power when I'm mobile, I usually shutdown (bootup time is negligible compared to standby power-loss on my netbook).

That being said, I've switched to Cinnamon and haven't looked back: http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/

vacri• 14 years ago

'good habits' apparently don't extend to having a quickbar for frequently used programs. I don't understand the horror of that idea - pretty much everyone else, including mobile OSes, give the user the opportunity to be able to start favourite programs with a single action.

nagisa2• 14 years ago

GNOME Shell has had a dock for favourite applications starting with 3.0. It's on the left side in overview.

Andrex7• 14 years ago

"Power Off" is a default user menu entry in Gnome 3.6 now. :)

HBKN2o1MhO• 14 years ago

You've spelt 'thoughts' wrong.

omaranto• 14 years ago

I was about to correct your spelling, but decided to look it up just in case and learned something: while in the US the past tense of spell is "spelled" other English speaking countries use both "spelled" and "spelt"...

pacoverdi• 14 years ago

I guess it's ok to mention the spelling issue as the typo is located in the top bar of the blog, not in an obscure comment.

Another glitch that could be corrected: the Me/Twitter link links to twitter.com, not to the author's profile.

Thagor6• 14 years ago

Thanks.

Pengwin2• 14 years ago

I Like (or liked) Gnome Shell too. But to me it is still broken. There are a lot of whys that i don't understand:

Why is it that some apps maximize, or take up half the screen and lose their title bar? I like my title bars. This should be an all or none thing.

Why are all the themes I find broken? I found the answer to this myself. The latest gnome 3 has a lot of changes which essentially break a lot of themes. I dislike the main theme as i find it is too "fat". Things are bigger than they need to be, and it makes me feel stupid. an alternate theme would fix this easily, as things are smaller in certain themes. Sadly my favourite shiki-colors themes are probably never going to support gtk3 and all the other gnome 3 themes i have found are broken in 3.6.

Why have you removed configuration options that you had in gnome 2? I found a lot of what i was missing in gnome tweak tool, But it seems like someone has decided that I don’t need those options, and it makes me feel stupid.

Why has connect to remote server in nautilus become unhelpful? I know from my experience from linux in teh past few years that i can access windows shares by going smb:// and ssh with sftp://, but in gnome 2 i had a nice list of what woul work, and what i required to enter to get to it. It was helpful when i was learning my way around accessing what i need to at my job. In gnome 3 i have a location bar to enter a URI, which seems daunting and unhelpful.

All these whys have lead me to drop gnome 3 at the current time and im trying to get along in xfce on another, which was okay until i found screen tearing is still a problem. At the moment im still using ubuntu 11.04 on my main work PC, and its just started telling me it is no longer supported, and im still on the fence of what to do.

I don’t want to go back to windows, I will miss the terminal dearly, and OSX is not for me, but i cant find a new linux based OS im currently happy to work on :(

nagisa2• 14 years ago

Disappearing title bar is up to applications developers, not shell but the trend is to hide them when window is maximized.

> I dislike the main theme as i find it is too "fat".

But you just said you love title bars. They are fat space-hogs by definition. Regardless of theme.

>Why have you removed configuration options that you had in gnome 2? I found a lot of what i was missing in gnome tweak tool, But it seems like someone has decided that I don’t need those options, and it makes me feel stupid.

Because 1. GNOME is not a final product. It'll never be. 2. Regular users really doesn't miss them.

Pengwin2• 14 years ago

I don't think its contradictory that I want title bars and thinner theme. The title bar serves as the main handle to move a window. When its taken away it makes it hard to pull the window out of being maximized, depending on where there is free space that will let me drag a window around to pop it out of its maximized state. The title bar serves a purpose. The extra padding on tabs, buttons and menus doesn't help me much as I know what i am looking for.

I fully understand that gnome 3 isn't a final product, and like basically all Open Source software it is available "as is" and without any guarantee that it is fit for your purpose. I would have thought that the "regular user" for a system like gnome was a person like me. I guess that is no longer the case, which is fine, its just hard finding a new desktop environment that i'm comfortable in.

coolg54321• 14 years ago

I really like gnome shell. My rule of thumb is once you get it working don't go for updates.

Andrex7• 14 years ago

Seems like Gnome Shell has been in the headlines quite a bit lately, which is kind of weird since it's been about two months since the last version was released.

The articles on the development philosophy behind Gnome Shell are indeed troubling, but I still think Gnome is getting much better with each release and I can't imagine using a different desktop environment. As a developer who is acutely aware of design and user experience patterns, so much so I can't bring myself to use "ugly" programs even if they might be useful (which is why I use Sublime for coding), Gnome satisfies all my urges. If I wasn't so vain I know I'd try a tiling manager like Xmonad or Awesome, and those can be customized to look decent but Gnome satisfies all my design needs out of the box (with a couple one-click-install extensions for functional enhancements.)

Linux for the hackery stuff and tools, Gnome Shell for a beautiful and elegant user interface. And isn't that why OS X has become so popular with hackers these days? A Gnome installation is pretty much that, but with more emphasis on the hacking and open source aspect.

buster• 14 years ago

I also like it, needs some customizing though. But that's quickly done (and luckily possible at all.. yes i look at you Windows and Mac Users with the default settings all over! )

I like Gnome Shell

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