GNOME Ended 2013 With 46k Open Bug Reports

[brk0_0]

I'm using GNOME 3.10 here and I'm very satisfied. Actually, I don't like it's typography (not even close to Ubuntu's fonts, that I love for UIs), but it's still better then KDE's. Here (Core i3 Sandy Bridge, 4Gb Ram) it's pretty responsive, with nice animations, pretty colors, good icons (not all of them, but still...), and a interface that I like.

I don't relie on lots of work from distro-mantainers (Arch Linux here), and given that, it's one of the most consistent experience that I had with a vanilla DE. Everything is making more sense now than it did on GNOME 3.6. Every color, every animation, notifications, volume/brightness, menus...every piece of the DE is solid. And, despite the 46k bugs reported, I never experience major one here. The top-right menu is also a bright idea.

That said, I liked Unity very much too. Only god know how much the HUD helped me and made my work faster. And the tiny UI (in terms of space on screen) just stayed out of my way and let me work. I liked the blobal menu thing, even more when I started using the HUD. I would still be using it if it was a distro-independent UI. For me, it's sad that it's being developed by Canonical.

I like GNOME very much, and they are reaching convergence (tablet/PC) one day at time, and doing it very well (compared to Microsoft or even Ubuntu). But I have a feeling that Qt is the future (for it's features, portability, etc.).

[Kostas]

Minor:
Major:
* If an operation requires elevated privileges, Nautilus does not show a password prompt - you just have to give up and use the command line. I'm not sure if any other file manager can do this, but it's ludicrous that in 2014 I have use a command prompt to paste an icon into /usr/share so everyone can see it...

This x1000. It's beyond embarrassing.

To the KDE guys, this is likely to be taken as flame but even Linus thought the DE looks cartoony. Feel free to flame but I can't get past it looking more fisher-pricey than WinXP. It's IMO no coincidence that most of the good looking and well-designed desktops on this side of the fence are mainly using Elementary, GNOME and Cinnamon. I've got no problem believing that the KDE components are more technically sound and would welcome the thought of jumping ship but I've yet to see a non-minimalist attractive KDE screenshot.

[chrisq]

XFCE runs on my servers since it works out of the box better with RDP.

My opinions.

Why would you use a gui on a server?

[hrkristian]

Boy what massive amounts ridiculous hate.

I have something like 10 extensions installed, without them I'd not be a fan of GNOME Shell, either.
Caffeine; Adv Volume Mixer; Places; Workspace Alt-Tab, these are all pretty essential to me, especially the latter. Not separating programs by workspace as a default is beyond me, completely eliminates the point of workspaces.

Nautilus is truly awful though, it does a fine job of being a good-looking, basic, file explorer, but it's lost like three quarters of the features it used to have. I don't even know how to divide the window anymore, used to be F3, which also allowed easy pane-to-pane actions (with elevated access IIRC).

I never figured I'd see complaints about mouse actions, though, you're Linux users for pete's sake. There's this thing called hotkeys, if you're not obsessively using them, you're making your life harder, whatever OS or DE you're using.

[erendorn]

On the topic, I really like GNOME3. It is the first ever environment where I have never felt the need to customize anything to have it working as I want it. My only tweaks are choice of background image, and having the date shown in the top bar.

Hum, count me in on that. When I install/use a vm, clean install a new environment, get a new machine, I don't always want to customize the hell of my GUI. I'm not a super fan of gnome 3, but most of the time I find it sufficient out of the box, which I like a lot.

[Krejzi]

Major:
* If an operation requires elevated privileges, Nautilus does not show a password prompt - you just have to give up and use the command line. I'm not sure if any other file manager can do this, but it's ludicrous that in 2014 I have use a command prompt to paste an icon into /usr/share so everyone can see it...

edit:

Ehm, didn't read it well. Sorry for the noise.

[gamerk2]

Good points as well. Thank you!

I suppose I'm not a Nautilus power user. I tend to just pop open a terminal.

Question: Isn't the entire POINT of a GUI to not have to bother with a command prompt or keyboard shortcuts for basic system operations? If you are required to do so, then the GUI has failed in its most basic purpose.

[Guest]

The only desktops I can't stand are KDE and Windows 8.x . KDE looks and runs like it was designed by a teenager obsessed with anime. Windows 8....well.. uhhhgggg.

KDE compared to windows 7 is usability heaven. I find strange that you think otherwise. There's krunner in KDE which gives a little feeling of Unity and Gnome while there's nothing like this in windows 7. Furthermore, microsoft os has terrible window manager.

[Guest]

You can say that about every program aimed at professionals.

AutoCAD has a steeper learning curve than MS Paint, but it can do so much more in the hands of an expert

Which cannot be said about gnome.

[Tgui]

Question: Isn't the entire POINT of a GUI to not have to bother with a command prompt or keyboard shortcuts for basic system operations? If you are required to do so, then the GUI has failed in its most basic purpose.

In the real world the GUI exposes often used functionality to speed up use. virt-manager for KVM. When I need to get really dirty with KVM I crack open a terminal.

The world isn't black and white. You're just trying to be argumentative. You're insane if you think GUI/command line world is either-or.