A New Development Release Of GNOME Shell

[phoronix]

Phoronix: A New Development Release Of GNOME Shell

GNOME 3.0 will not be rolling out until the first half of 2010, but work is already underway on this major GNOME update that is the first to bring some radical changes in a long time. One of the major components of GNOME 3.0 is the GNOME Shell...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzQ5Mg

[Ikipou]

I have not seen the GNOME shell so I might be wrong, but from the description it seems to be copy of Plasma from KDE?

It would be nice to see at least one real new feature in GNOME 3. I have not seen any improvement of my desktop for a long long time .

[Dragoran]

I have not seen the GNOME shell so I might be wrong, but from the description it seems to be copy of Plasma from KDE?

Not at all.
It is a completely new user interface (not finalized yet), based on the clutter toolkit.

See:

http://www.gnome.org/~mccann/shell/mockups/20090808/shell-black2.png

http://www.gnome.org/~mccann/shell/mockups/20090630-demo/

http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell

(First two links are mockups, the wikipage has some outdated screenshots)

[Pfanne]

the gnomeshell needs a "fullscreenize it all" feature!
it is really annoying, when you have to use fullscreen applications, that have to change your resolution, because your hardware is to slow( or for other reasons )
so it would be useful if you could just start the application in a window and zoom into it, catching the mouse, blending out everything else and adjusting the mouse speed.
this way you could have any application in fullscreenmode without having to reset your resolution which is especially annoying if you have a smooth composited desktop and everything works great, but these fullscreen applications destroy everything
the compiz enhanced zoom plugin kinda does something like that, but its more of a hack (especially the mouse catching).
thats a feature im missing with all the composited desktops...
people seem to focus on all the shiny effects of the composited desktop, but they seem to ignore the window managing advances they bring...

[Dragoran]

the gnomeshell needs a "fullscreenize it all" feature!
it is really annoying, when you have to use fullscreen applications, that have to change your resolution, because your hardware is to slow( or for other reasons )
so it would be useful if you could just start the application in a window and zoom into it, catching the mouse, blending out everything else and adjusting the mouse speed.
this way you could have any application in fullscreenmode without having to reset your resolution which is especially annoying if you have a smooth composited desktop and everything works great, but these fullscreen applications destroy everything
the compiz enhanced zoom plugin kinda does something like that, but its more of a hack (especially the mouse catching).
thats a feature im missing with all the composited desktops...
people seem to focus on all the shiny effects of the composited desktop, but they seem to ignore the window managing advances they bring...

For this to work reliably you need input redirection in X which is still not done (being worked on thought).

[Louise]

I wonder how much thought they have put into the name.

Gnome Shell ~ GnomeS hell

[whizse]

I wonder how much thought they have put into the name.

Gnome Shell ~ GnomeS hell

Heh, fortunately it's not something users will see. Much like you won't find "Metacity" anywhere in the menus

[thefirstm]

I wonder how much thought they have put into the name.

Gnome Shell ~ GnomeS hell

I agree :-)

[V!NCENT]

I have not seen the GNOME shell so I might be wrong, but from the description it seems to be copy of Plasma from KDE?

Lol absolutely not! The Plasma desktop is a desktop shell that uses SVG and OpenGL to draw widgets. The entire KDE desktop are just widgets inside of Plasma. Plasma is designed as the foundation and graphical shell that anyone can use to make their own desktop with. The only thing you need are widgets; taskbar, icons, etc.

The Gnome shell might have SVG (not sure) and OpenGL, but the Gnome shell is integrated with the WM and more static. The goal of the Gnome-shell is changing the way people manage their programs and files. It more or less a window manager and file manager in one and build on the existing foundation of Gnome 2.x. It's mostly recycled code.

A Flash video demonstration of the Gnome-shell: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQUuH...eature=related

It's a really refreshing concept

[benmoran]

I just tried it out today for the first time, and I gotta say i'm impressed. I There are still a lot of unfinished things, but overall it's really usable. Working with multiple desktops is super easy and finally feels natural to me.