It's Easy To Guess What Angers GNOME Users

[nzjrs]

All he is doing is showing the developers how the vast majority of users feel. Sure, he could have done it more constructively, but none the less. He is helping the developers see there are other people than themselves and they should do what the users want.

If you think we (developers) do not know there are a bunch of old angry linux users floating around then you must think we do not read ddl or the g-s mailing list.

That is quite a different matter to choosing to minimise the weight of those users feedback. I do not consider them highly because those who complain the loudest are the most capable of using XFCE or switching to a new DE. I want to build a desktop for the rest.

Simultainously I use G3 for a variety of technical tasks and find myself more productive that G2.

Not to mention the obvious contradiction of most of the complaints.

I want to upgrade my distro so I get new things but I do not want new things, I only want new things that I like and that are free1!!!11!!! freee!!!! linux is about choice!!!! choose my opinion or I will not use your DE and then you will be sorry!!!!

[AliBaba]

To all the "gnome-is-great" 'tards in here:

Hi! You don't mind if skip the "blabla" part, do you?
I also hope you don't mind a few questions.

1) It doesn't do anything special that it requires compositing. It may be "pretty", but it just makes it SLOW and UNRELIABLE.

Why is a composited DE (like KDE, Windows 7 and MacOS use it) unreliable? It's definitely not slow (even on old i915) here.

2) It most DEFINITELY should NOT take up the entire display area. The bigger the area it takes, the further the user has to chase across the screen to get what they're after.

I didn't really get that one. What do you mean? Can you give a (valid) use case? I rarely use my mouse to control the gnome shell.

3) It should NOT require flipping across the screen 17 times and 273 mouse clicks to launch firefox.

I agree with you on that. Luckily - for both of us - it doesn't. I'm able to start Firefox just by hitting the Activities-key (Windows-Key, but reconfigured here for Win+Space, I was a happy user of "Do") and typing F. Maybe your counting skills went wild, the above figures seem to be imprecise.

4) It would be nice to have an easy way to see what programs are running and switch between them rather than opening that insane big ugly bloated mess (one click)

I agree with you on having an easily accessible list of open programmes is nice. The developers of gnome shell though so as well - that's why there's Alt + Tab and Alt + "Key above tab".

...whatever they call the stupid mode where every open window is shown in microscopic overview so you can't tell the difference between them

I think they call it "overlay mode". No clicks required by the way (you know, Windows-Key). In case you are using a fairly modern mouse you might be able to resize those preview windows (referred to as "microscopic overview" by you) by moving the scroll wheel up. Scrolling down will make them smaller again.

5) How about a PARENT DIRECTORY BUTTON IN NAUTILUS???!?!?!!?! Instead, you open, say "Desktop" and you're TRAPPED there....

I never went into a trap using Nautilus before. Maybe because I know how to use the so-called "breadcrumb navigation" below the menu-bar of every Nautilus window.

No only does said navigation strip implement a "parent directory button", there's also a "parent of parent directory button", "parent of parent of parent directory button" and even a "parent of parent of parent of parent directory button". Each of them is placed left of their successor giving you an hierarchical navigation choice.

Should your mental capabilities impair you and make it impossible for you to click on the buttons provided by that navigation element - I highly doubt that because, as you already said, I'm the "gnome-is-great 'tard" here and you are perfectly sane - you might also be able to go up one directory by pressing Alt + Up (on your keyboard, no mouse involved).

6) The "Every bloody .desktop thrown into a single category" category is a completely useless MESS

That's why they called that category "All". "All" is usually prone to being quite a mess, so they also added all the other categories. You might be able to find them in the right column in the applications overview.

Now, rather than logically finding the application I'm after by its category, I have to scan the hard way through 10 THOUSAND ICONS IN ONE BLOODY MESS. WTF ARE THEY THINKING???!?!?!

I know exactly what you are talking about!
When I'm hungry and I want to order food online I search Google for "food" and clicking through all those 3.250.000.000 results until I find a nearby food-delivery restaurant is such a pain!

Luckily for both of us gnome shell is a lot more sophisticated here: When in overlay mode (important, or else every keystroke will go the the application that is currently in front!) just start typing let's say "Firefox" with "F". This will narrow down your search results to only a few - unless you have 70 concurrent versions of Firefox installed on your system of course.

The big problems with gnome-shell are the result of a bunch of VERY poor design decisions.

The actual big problems with gnome shell are the result of a bunch of VERY poor users in terms of their mental capabilities.

Nearly every single one of your rants boils down to: I'm not able to use that damn thing because I don't know how to and I'm too stupid to find it out myself. Nevertheless, you could still get a lot of help from various generous users that actually do know how to read so that wouldn't be that big of a problem. Your actual problem is your total lack of an attitude that would make people help you.

This made you a sad troll but don't get me wrong: I'm not feeling sad for you at all. I'm actually quite happy that the developers behind that great desktop environment called Gnome don't give a shit about people calling them 'tards for no reason.

[bwat47]

All he is doing is showing the developers how the vast majority of users feel. Sure, he could have done it more constructively, but none the less. He is helping the developers see there are other people than themselves and they should do what the users want.

A few things.

1. Phoronix readers hardly define the "vast majority" of gnome users.

2. Internet polls/surveys are often filled with trolls and can rarely be considered accurate.

3. It seems like he purposely cherry picked the most outrageous comments for page views. At the very least he should release the full survey results

[Hamish Wilson]

I do agree that to truly use Gnome Shell you do have to engage in a bit of a re-education before it makes sense, but once you do, you realize that it is not that much different from the standard interfaces you are used to. The main difference between the two is that the Gnome Shell is heavily keyboard based, while the traditional desktop metaphor makes the mouse primary. Once you figure out the keyboard shortcuts and how to use the search functions, most of the "WTF?" aspects of Gnome Shell are revealed as simply being "oh, that is why they did it like that..."

Whether or not you feel this benefits your workflow is up to you. But you can not truly appreciate something unless you learn how it is supposed to work. And if you do not want to bother, there is the Gnome Fallback mode and the extensions that were mentioned here earlier. There, that was not so hard, was it?

[LinuxID10T]

A few things.

1. Phoronix readers hardly define the "vast majority" of gnome users.

2. Internet polls/surveys are often filled with trolls and can rarely be considered accurate.

3. It seems like he purposely cherry picked the most outrageous comments for page views. At the very least he should release the full survey results

First off, I do consider this accurate. However, most of the people I know in real life that feel the same way as all the "trolls." Very few people I know like the new interface. The old interface was simply quicker and leaner regardless of what you started on.

[bwat47]

First off, I do consider this accurate. However, most of the people I know in real life that feel the same way as all the "trolls." Very few people I know like the new interface. The old interface was simply quicker and leaner regardless of what you started on.

I am sorry I have to be the one to tell you this, but your friends are internet trolls

lol, anyway I find gnome-shell is just as fast as gnome 2 was for me. Different workflows work for different people, it is certainly NOT a fact that gnome 2 is unequivocally faster.

Gnome-shell is more keyboard driven, if you are trying to use it exactly like gnome 2 of course your workflow will suffer. If you are incapable of adapting to any other workflow switch to xfce, use gnome-fallback, or customize gnome-shell to act more like gnome 2.

[allquixotic]

I didn't "hate" gnome-shell despite using it for a few months with Fedora 15, but I noticed a significant slowdown in my productivity (i.e. ability to get things done). I've since installed Scientific Linux 6 on my main production laptop for real work, and with its Gnome 2.x desktop, I'm back to normal productivity.

I said this in the survey and I'll say it here: I can't put this more simply. If I can do something with fewer mouse clicks, less mouse movement, a simpler shortcut or all of the above in Gnome 2 than Gnome 3, then it stands to reason that Gnome 2 yields higher productivity than Gnome 3. Since I am noticing that a great many things I do constantly (task switching being the most important for me) fall into this category, my conclusion is that I get shit done with Gnome 2, but Gnome 3 looks oooooo pretty. I guess I can't have both (though I'd like to), so I'm gonna stay with productivity for now. We'll see if Gnome 3 picks up the slack in terms of usability over time. But they'll probably have to break their ABI and release a Gnome 4 before they really get things back to where they were.

Oh wait, that's right -- they're treating all the minor releases of Gnome 3.x like major releases now, and breaking the ABI every release. So maybe 4.x would be unnecessary. If you don't like the state of Gnome 3.x, wait a minute -- a new version will come out, break all your plugins, break all your applications... but it'll be better!

[LinuxID10T]

I didn't "hate" gnome-shell despite using it for a few months with Fedora 15, but I noticed a significant slowdown in my productivity (i.e. ability to get things done). I've since installed Scientific Linux 6 on my main production laptop for real work, and with its Gnome 2.x desktop, I'm back to normal productivity.

I said this in the survey and I'll say it here: I can't put this more simply. If I can do something with fewer mouse clicks, less mouse movement, a simpler shortcut or all of the above in Gnome 2 than Gnome 3, then it stands to reason that Gnome 2 yields higher productivity than Gnome 3. Since I am noticing that a great many things I do constantly (task switching being the most important for me) fall into this category, my conclusion is that I get shit done with Gnome 2, but Gnome 3 looks oooooo pretty. I guess I can't have both (though I'd like to), so I'm gonna stay with productivity for now. We'll see if Gnome 3 picks up the slack in terms of usability over time. But they'll probably have to break their ABI and release a Gnome 4 before they really get things back to where they were.

Oh wait, that's right -- they're treating all the minor releases of Gnome 3.x like major releases now, and breaking the ABI every release. So maybe 4.x would be unnecessary. If you don't like the state of Gnome 3.x, wait a minute -- a new version will come out, break all your plugins, break all your applications... but it'll be better!

I agree so much with every part of this statement.

[Hephasteus]

As long as it runs people out of linux and into mac and pc it's working as intented. Game theory suggests if you are going to put crappy intefaces on programs you need to run all the alternatives to trash can to avoid defectors.

[nzjrs]

As long as it runs people out of linux and into mac and pc it's working as intented. Game theory suggests if you are going to put crappy intefaces on programs you need to run all the alternatives to trash can to avoid defectors.

Cool story bro.