Problems With The GNOME Shell

[liam]

Nope.

We're people who use Linux every day for real work rather than Facebook. Unity and Gnome 3 probably both work fine if you just want to open up a web browser and post a new funny kitten video to your friends (Unity does, at least). But they're god-awful for those of us who are used to having dozens of windows of a dozen or more applications spread across multiple workspaces.

Gnome 2 works for that. Neither Gnome 3 nor Unity do. This is a huge step backwards for those of us who actually use Linux to do something productive.

Works well for me. Though admittedly I'd hardly call creating web sites "work".
Do you honestly not see how condescending you're being? You are being as bad as those designers who remove a feature b/c they don't see why it's needed.

And after calling us elitist, you apparently agree that the interface is broken.

No, I agree PART of the interface needs work, but I am not saying that one cannot get "real work done" with GS.

As for 'favorites', again it's fine if you use four or five applications, but it's a crappy idea if you use a dozen or more; you'll never have enough 'favorites' and hence the application you actually want to start is likely to have fallen off the list. Or if you do set it to two dozen 'favorites' your list will be so long that it will require ten seconds of scrolling to get to the application you want.

Currently I've 13 icons on the Dash. No it's not ideal, but it more space efficient than a windows list (unless the windows were grouped and iconified). What it needs is a theme that more clearly differentiates between running and non-running apps.

Straightforward hierachical menus work well. 'Activity' interfaces that require moving the mouse all over the screen, clicking multiple times and waiting for fancy animated effects every time do not. The fact that the fans of these changes have to resort to 'but I can press a key and then type the name of the application' clearly demonstrates just how poorly the graphical interface works.

The fact that it works fairly well for both mouse and keyboard is a great thing, IMHO. The effects simply don't bother me since they are quick and effects actually help by providing smooth changes which inform the user of the paradigm in use.
If you are a programmer you will probably be using the keyboard for navigation and, from experience, it works nicely for this. Is it optimized for BOTH keyboard and mouse? Do I really need to answer that? But it is a nice improvement for keyboard navigators, IMHO.

Best/Liam

[t.s.]

How so? I have a few of the same issues identified in the article, but for the most part, Shell is great on a 24" screen. And on a netbook, it's no better (or worse) than it's predecessor in terms of efficient use of screen space - something Unity (the latest version, at least) does much better on.

All the people asserting Shell was designed for netbook use - I don't see where they're coming from...

Tried both Unity and GS. Prefer the former (using netbook for the test). Yes, the huge Icon and panel and the rest make all workspace (screen space) wasted. KDE's better, by much. Windows 7 too..

No, I agree PART of the interface needs work, but I am not saying that one cannot get "real work done" with GS.

Yep. Hope that they'll became better, though, I am pessimistic about that.. Since 2.x, gnome-dev prefer large icon, etc., than flexible-design-icon. Open inkscape on netbook and you'll know what I mean (yes, sometimes I use inkscape on netbook).

[kraftman]

Funny you say this. There's been a few posts on planet gnome with devs giving gs to their computer illiterate friends and each time they picked up gs quickly (hmm, I think there was on person who had issues).
GS is pretty easy to use the it had problems especially if you want to do things in different ways.
Best/liam

It depends what were they doing. I'm sure they would adapt to any other DE and I guess their experience will be better.

[grege]

After early resistance I now like the shell

A few observations ...
The Activities Favourites bar is just a version of the old top bar - turned sideways and set to Autohide. Quick launch icons just as before.
The Windows desktop is a task switcher.
The Applications desktop defaults to All, but all the traditional categories are on the right. No different to selecting Applications -> Internet-> Firefox, just in a different place.
I have a Weather extension next to my clock copied from the examples on GitHub, and I find it better than the old Gnome applet. Make your own extensions in javascript.
Workspaces are created dynamically and you can just keep making more and more by dragging and dropping running applications from the "Windows" task switcher to the workspaces bar on the right. You can move between the workspaces simply by clicking on them - just like the old desktop but in a new place. You can create a new blank workspace just by clicking in the space beneath the last one in the list - something new.

There is nothing "dumbed down" about Gnome Shell. I many ways it is for the so-called power user. Writing or modifying extensions in Javascript sure ain't for beginners. And you can just change the way an extension works. Try that with a traditional applet. My weather extension is much cleaner, I removed the icons and just left the info I want. I made it the way I want it, you can make it the way you want it - the point is you now have the power to change it easily. Extensions are just snippets of javascript in a folder.

Now, there are a couple of omissions. In Ubuntu you can just right click on a folder in Nautilus and create a simple Samba share. In the new Nautilus there is no nautilus-share extension. I have Dolphin and KDE sharing stuff installed to overcome this deficiency. My shares work as they always have done and my Media player can see and use the shared folders. We need a new share extension for Nautilus. Also needed is a CPU frequency control applet. Vital for notebook users. You can set it up from the command line, but some sort of replacement for the old applet is needed.

From an aesthetic point of view Gnome Shell makes the old Gnome look very dated all of a sudden. Pretty is a feature.

There are bugs that need ironing out, like 3d acceleration not working properly. Even Glxgears segfaults on my machine. But, normal activities - Web, Wordprocessing, video playback, flash all work fine for me. I do not care about 3d games.

I have changed desktops several times in the last few months - Unity, Xfce, KDE and Gnome-Shell. The old Gnome is now static, there is no going back. Xfce 4.8 is a reasonable replacement for Gnome 2.x, if that is where you want to be. Gnome-Shell has lasted a week so far. I look forward to constant improvement and more features and to stop changing. My notebook runs Xfce 4.8.

[mudig]

I looked for my login data specifically to announce, in this thread, that I switched from OpenSUSE 11.4/KDE 4.6.3 to Fedora 15/Gnome 3 because I liked the Gnome-Shell so much. I now use it on my 10" netbook and my 24" desktop PC. Sure, it still got a few kinks here and there (global keys have some problems, session restore doesn't work reliably, a cut&paste indicator-thing like in KDE would be nice, ...) but 3.2 will probably fix most of it. The best thing about the GS is that I find it so much less distracting Sure, you can hide the panels on a KDE desktop, too, but it simply doesn't feel as seamless and integrated. That, and I've used KDE since 3.5 days up to now without looking at alternatives and tripped over a fair amount of annoyances. Now I want to try something else. I'll keep an eye on KDE development of course!

GS just feels good. Thank you Gnome makers!

[Delgarde]

Tried both Unity and GS. Prefer the former (using netbook for the test).

Well, Unity did grow out of Ubuntu's netbook edition, and so it's pretty good at minimising it's use of screen space. Well, apart from the previous release, in which the sidebar permanently ate a huge chunk of precious horizontal area... a problem thankfully rectified in Natty...

[liam]

It depends what were they doing. I'm sure they would adapt to any other DE and I guess their experience will be better.

It was typical media consumption, IIRC.
What do you mean "their experience will be better"?

[Khudsa]

But you are truly to use the same interface to all devices? The design principles that apply and go well for a tablet UI doesn't fit to a desktop UI neither a pda/smart phone. So, at the end, you have a product that doesn't fit any segment.

I have to eat all my words regard my rant about GNOME Shell. I have been compiling it with jhbuild before it release and it leave me an odd impression. So I change to Unity and I like it less, so finally, I change to KDE (I haven't use it since a almost 5-6 years) and wow, KDE is good.

Now, for some time, I'm using it with fedora 15 and... wow I have change my mind about GNOME Shell. It run smooth, and it's workflow it's easy and fluid. In my desktop machine, when GNOME 3 hit's Debian Unstable repository, I will install it!

[tjwhaynes]

Fedora 15

I switched over from Fedora 14 to Fedora 15 on my critical laptop. This is where I do all my work (the stuff that pays the bills). I checked that everything worked using a live USB key before I clicked the preupgrade button and I really haven't looked back.

Several things needed tweakage before I was fully set up again. Icons on the background are back - until I have a better place to drop temporary items, the back drop is a useful repository for temporary stuff.

I had to set my backdrop directly, rather than using the GUI, because the GUI takes a copy of the current file, and my backdrop updates every few minutes, seamlessly fading between the old and new.

I installed the extensions for the 'power off' back in the top right menu. I also played around with the auto windows extension and I have a whole raft of ideas about automatic window management that I will try and develop into a new extension.

Indeed, the power-user part of me has never been so happy. The opportunities for outrageous, highly targeted and extreme customization with the mutter/javascript/css combo are huge. I hope that the APIs settle down for 3.2 and I can start building on a stable API.

Ditto Empathy - having everything under the DBus should make some specialist uses possible. At some point I need a better notification system for empathy, and tying the messages to a speech synthesizer is also on my list of todos (I can decide whether to respond to an unseen message immediately if it is read to me).

[kraftman]

It was typical media consumption, IIRC.
What do you mean "their experience will be better"?

They'll do the tasks faster and in a more simple way. Gnome shell is simply too complex.