RHEL 7 Linux To Use GNOME 3 Classic Mode

[AdamW]

Red Hat not eating its own dog food and going for the non-default option by default. Interesting.

Red Hat developers develop the Classic Mode too. And the RH staff who work on Shell, use Shell. (So do I).

[iniudan]

Just hope gnome 3 got better at working in VM, it kind of sucked last time I tried, if you didn't also have gnome 3 running has your client DE. But other then that I admit I always found gnome 3 to be fine, especially since I very much like the automated virtual desktop.

[oleid]

Red Hat not eating its own dog food and going for the non-default option by default. Interesting.

Classic mode is included and available by default since Gnome 3.8. Simply select it from GDM.

[Morpheus]

I think it's a clever choice, as it stays visually close to gnome 2.x style, therefore not losing corporate people (primary "client" of the distro) with a brand new ui to their eyes they have to learn, so almost no work-time lost.

Laugh if you want, but it has been the Microsoft Mantra for years (it begins to change with Windows 8, where touch interfaces and cross-platform coherence calls for a bigger change). And it worked, not only because you can use the same software, but because it has the same overall look and feel across years.

I don't know how it is called in english, but there's a phenomenon called (french translation) resistance to change. Common people (even those who use computers every day, at home and/or at work) don't want to re-learn things as basic as user-interface (not talking about the ERP, a mess I could see in my previous job, people were all lost, even those theorically more skilled than me). After migrating my laptop to Wheezy, I am myself struggling with tuning KDE interface to get some personal windows-era behaviour back, even if I'm used to manipulate different UIs every day.

So for people going from previous Red Hat flavours (from 5.x or even 6.x), it's a very good choice, as upgrade won't be so harsh visually speaking.

[uid313]

Which classic?

Will they be using the GNOME Classic Session which has deprecated by GNOME, or will they use GNOME Shell with the new classic extensions?

Either way, I am a fan of Classic Session, and not found of gnome-shell at all.
I hope Red Hat makes it great.

[uid313]

The classic session loads the extensions.

There is a classic session that doesn't use gnome-shell and its extension.
It uses gnome-panel.

So I was wondering, if they were using the real Classic Session powered by gnome-panel, or if they're using the new gnome-shell powered classic mode with gnome-shell extensions.

[ssam]

great news. Lets hope they put some serious work into it, to make it into a high quality desktop, and not just a discouraged fallback mode to appease haters.

For now though MATE seems to be the best choice of gnome2-style desktop (kind of obvious as gnome2 was the best gnome2-style desktop and MATE is just gnome2 with some small new features, bug fixes and library updates).

[Chaz]

So, it was Red Hat devs who led the way on the new interface in Shell in the first place, right? Why is Red Hat paying people to develop something they don't actually want to use? And if they want to use Classic, why did they stick to Shell for so long only to bust out Classic at the last minute--it seems like they'll need to be adding features right up until RHEL's ship date.

I don't have a clue, but I like speculating. Perhaps the Gnome Shell guys were working away on their own, and had a low profile within Red Hat, and they think Shell is great. Then as 7 got closer management realized Shell wasn't what they want, or maybe customers complained, and they sent a pronouncement down that a traditional desktop must be made for RHEL. But of course if RH execs use Fedora then they would have been exposed to Shell ages ago. I'm stumped.

[Kivada]

If it's not good enough for RedHat ...

They should have thrown their weight behind Mate and told Gnome to take their shitty UI and devs that don't listen out to the bridge and throw it in the river like a sack of unwanted kittens.

Harsh yes, but this is what Gnome deserves.

[Mike Frett]

Xfce

Might as well use XFCE. It can be tweaked with minimal effort to look like Gnome 2x and It's based on GTK like Gnome. Everybody acts so afraid of XFCE for some reason, like the Cousin you never want to be around yet have no reason for it. And don't even try to argue with me, I'm sitting here at my desk right now with Xubuntu looking just like Gnome 2x, which by default is stocked with GTK Apps where possible. There is nothing to be lost unless those Corporate people actually care about wobbly windows, in which case installing Compiz is a snap.