What Linux Users Are Saying About GNOME In 2012

1401: Stop copying apple's attitude (the users a dumb, we are gods!)

1402: More configuration options,
add applets to the panel easily

1403: Collaborate with Ubuntu, for a fusion of Gnome e Unity!

1404: More apps and configurability please! Keep up the good work.

1405: More apps and configurability please! Keep up the good work.

1406: I don't like that thing advance so slowly, comparing to let's say Unity. However, I do think that you are on the right track and I am generally satisfied with the way things work.

It is nice that you do so much work on accessibility, but to be honest, to the 99% of the users that doesn't matter. You have to balance the work more.

1407: Clear way to restart gnome-shell from the Ctrl+Alt+F1 after freeze of gnome-shell,
respawn of lightdm on ctrl+alt+f8 after login on ctrl+alt+f7,
extensions via softwarecenter: NOT via website,
better documentation about features (Ctrl+click in launcher for example)

1408: 1. Be more open community
2. Vala is bad idea.
3. GNOME registry is bad idea.
4. GNOME3 user interface could be perfect if it was not so much targeted on touch-enabled devices. (Dont forget your main "market", the desktop)

1409: Every change is painful, Gnome Shell is a nice clean-up from Gnome 2. Perhaps I'd want the PackageKit interface to work nicer with Gnome, to more prominently advertise new features I was missing out on for a long time (like weather and timezones).

1410: In-folder search by typing with the keyboard should be improved... when typing and reaching a file I can not use arrow keys until I get out of the little textbox apearing in the bottom-right corner.

1411: Fallback mode is needed not for it's UI but for the #D performance advantage, power usage advantage, and general low resources use.

1412: It is foolish to alienate the desktop or treat it as a second-class citizen. For the foreseeable future, the desktop will be by far your biggest use-case so efficiency for that platform should be put first.

1413: I mostly USA the command line, not nautilus. I use Thunderbird, not evolution.

1414: GNOME is now my current desktop, by choice. I've used other from when I migrated to GNU / Linux (since 2007), but GNOME was what pleased me most. I started to follow the development of environments GNU / Linux from 2001 and since then I only see evolution. I need to share this with you, I am studying a degree in the field of computer science which increased my awareness about software development and from now I hope to contribute more to the community.
Congratulations from Brazil.

1415: Don't let your software regress by the functionality.
Ignore Apple trends.
Listen to the users voice.

1416: I like gnome shell.
Remove minimize / maximize buttons is great idea.

1417: I believe GNOME suffers (to a smaller degree) the same fate that KDE did when they went from 3 to 4; The redesign syndrome. People who used GNOME, and there where a lot compared to most other DE's, either found it ok from the start, learned to like it or configured it to work the way they preferred.

GNOME 3 really feels like it was designed by someone who wasn't using GNOME from day to day, and instead of building on top of GNOME 2's strengths and evolve it to become a better GNOME, they designed something completely new, and called it GNOME3 were they should have made it a new brand, like FEET Desktop Environment or something.

1418: Continue with Gnome 3, but include all the good, missing features from Gnome 2. Make the UI intuitively to use and easy to configure.

1419: I can't speak for all the users here at Newtec.eu, but I just want to point out that the GNOME 2 was a *really* good interface for business & developer desktops. Most of our engineers got used to it and used it daily.

Then GNOME 3 came along (We mostly use LTS versions of Ubuntu) and many of them complained hard. Most heard comment was "what was so bad about GNOME 2 that they had to change that?!" ...

GNOME 2 and forks are, IMO, still much better than GNOME 3 is from a daily business usability standpoint.

1420: Rethink the gui design so you dont have to move around the mouse pointer from the left to the right to the bottom to the top and around and around. It might work well on a touch controlled system, but with mouse its just a big waste of time.

Atleast make some sane config options so you dont have to have HUGE window borders, icons etc, once again, might work well on touch systems, but all the space it eats up makes it virtualy useless on a netbook or similar system.

Stop the removal of features people use, just in order to make the system simpler, most of the cases so far have actualy reduced useability aswell, and that is NOT good. Instead its time to start ot realy think about the user gui, and perhaps realise that simple touchy stuff is one thing, and classical desktop apps used for many hours is something different. The solution i can see is to have several guis, for the same app, eg separate logic from presentation. And then have one presentation for touchy simple 1 hour a week users, and another where power is not sacrificed, for the the 2 hours a day users.

1421: I think it is better to offer the users the interfase they want than trying to reinvent user interfases.

Easyy configuration is a must. Something as usual as telling Gnome "please do not suspend when I close my laptop" is a mess in Gnome.
gconf is a very bad idea (mimics Windows registry wich is also a very bad idea!). Per-application text-based human-readable configuration files (following the UNIX tradition!) are much better.

Performance is also a must. The desktop should comsume the least possible resources, so that they are available to the applications, which are the programs that the user really needs or want to run.

1422: Add support for per-window input sources.

1423: Performance could really be improved, especially with radeon driver. I think some minor yet important features are missing or hidden (such as Nautilus' "back" with backspace by default) and shouldn't have been deleted. Accessibility options in GNOME are very useful to me.

1424: Don't turn the world upside down, evolve instead. Even unity is basically the desktop people are used to.

1425: Keep up the good work. Thanks

1426: Please make three or monitors work on Gnome 3.
Please make it easy to build Gnome 3 without PAM (I'm a Slackware user)

1427: Gnome 3 looks nice and got some nice new features but in Gnome 2 my productivity is much higher. Gnome 3 would be ok on a tablet or something else with a touchscreen, not on a normal computer with mouse and keyboard.

1428: While I like the current Gnome version (shell/applications), Gtk 3.6 broke all of the current themes, and they now have to be remade. Making my desktop look nice has been a huge pain because of this. It's my biggest gripe, and it's an important one for me, practically and in principal. When there is a solid foundation for something, please don't change it all of a sudden in a way that breaks all of the compatibility.
Other than that, bang-up job.

1429: Keep the black theme looks good.

You know better.

1430: Keep the current theme .
Less features implies faster apps

1431: Add flash support to Epiphany
Add citrix plugin support
Avoid mono at all costs
Remove Mono it is bulky and i hate it.

1432: gnome shell extensions should be controllable from system cobtrol panel not activated locally via the website

1433: Avoid Mono
Improve the performance of Gnome like WIndows 7
Avoid adding unnecessary features there by slowing down gnome 3.

1434: I would like GNOME to be geared for programmers. Most of your users are not classical users, but people who profit from using Linux.

If it is easy to contribute to GNOME and there are personal gains for contributions you get the benefit of patches.

1435: Keep the code length low
No Mono Please
Improve theming like windows 7
Keep the features to bare minimum
AVOID a KDE-- keep configuration options to bare minimum if confuses users

1436: Turn back before it's too late. I honestly believe members of your team are actively working to destroy the project, and it is time for a coup.
Stop removing basic functionality, nautilus is no longer usable, the only way gnome3 is still usable is by adding half the extensions that have been created, a sentiment shared by damn near every gnome3 user that isn't part of the core dev team, yet still you seem to go out of your way to break compatibility each and every update. I loved gnome 2, I really like the look of gnome 3, think its great to see people trying to innovate, I've defended gnome3 and it's devs in many a flame war, but each release makes it harder to defend/justify/understand your actions, and more tempting to see how the other DE's are performing these days.

1437: Please, please, be the best traditional desktop interface that you can be. You have a window of opportunity, for me, my parents, and everyone else who are not moving onto Windows 8 and beyond.

1438: Keep the apps small
We dont want a monolith app doing everything but multiple apps so performance improves
Keep configuration options in apps to minimum
Improve performance like windows 7.

1439: Gnome rocks

1440: Add flashsupport to Web
Add hardware(NVIDIA /AMD) support for TOTEM like Gnome Mplayer
Integrate GNOME MPLAYER Better with Gnome 3 shell
Improve Theming performance like windows 7
KIll Mono
Add option to add numbers to torrents in transmission to arrange download priority.

1441: bring back gnome fallback

1442: Flash support to epiphany
Tile vertically in File(Nautilus)
Add Nvidia vdpau support to TOTEM
Mono not an option it is not good

1443: Remove Horizontal add Vertical alignment in Nautilus
Flash support for Web
Hardware support for totem
Improve Nautilus performance
Improve theming performance like windows 7

1444: Keep improving Gnome 3. I like many of the new features, but don't throw away the useful window management features of Compiz, Which i use for switching between full-screen Virtualbox instances on a multi-monitor setup.

1445: Integrate KVM better add driver support like virtual box
Make configuration easier
Avoid increasing configuration options in apps
No flash suppport ?
No H/W SUpport in totem
integrate gnome mplayer in GNome 3 shell

1446: Don't remove features in order to add others, unless they're really unmaintened.

1447: Follow KISS Philosophy
Avoid providing lot of configuration options like KDE
If you are adding more things to gnome make it a different package (avoid dependencies)
so users who dont need these can simply skip it by not installing that package
add flashsupport
add nvidia support to totem
integrate KVM

1448: Until September this year, I ran Fedora 14 (months past it's EOL) on my desktop PC so that I would not have to use Gnome 3. I use it on my netbook, because I have simpler needs on my netbook, and in the hope that I'll notice when it becomes usable. When I bought a new PC, I installed Fedora 17 and immediately moved my working environment to Xfce.

To come back to gnome I would need:
. my needs to be met by the gnome base system. My perception is that extensions are fragile, often poorly/partially implemented, and become unsupported when the system is upgraded. (even if this is not universal, how can I tell without spending hours trying them out to determine for which extensions it is and isn't true?)

. focus follows mouse

. a comprehensible way of launching applications: currently I use alt-f2 + command name. In gnome2 or xfce I can have an icon on the menubar. A screen full of unrecognisable icons is really difficult to understand, a list of names is much easier for me.

. the interface needs to be more discoverable. gnome3 has lots of hidden features: power off is unfindable, the invisible system tray is invisible, when using alt-tab how do I choose a particular window when the windows of an app are grouped together, and who knows what else?

. I need to switch off drop shadows. When my windows are tiled, the shadow partially obscures the other windows' content.

. all I want from a desktop environment is the ability to arrange 6 xterms in grid on one desktop, firefox on another, and a 3rd virtual desktop for miscellaneous other apps. gnome3 makes working like this hard (how do I even launch xterm 6 times?)

. performance would have to match that of xfce (I don't know if it does, but gnome3 seems rather sluggish on my netbook)

1449: Thank you for all your work!

Some notes:
- please, don't detach main menu from applications
- notifications from chat are very easy to miss
- navigating between open windows via gnome shell is very distracting

1450: I have used GNOME since it was first available on Red Hat in the late 1990's (and currently on Fedora 17). After suffering through the GNOME 3 changes and learning to deal with extensions so that I could still be productive, I read about the developer plans going forward. It became clear to me that GNOME was continuing to go in the wrong direction. I switched to KDE. Having never used it, I expected to encounter considerable pain, but found it was easier than upgrading to GNOME 3. I've been very happy with KDE over the last few months, and have switched all our systems to KDE, with no push-back at all. My suggestion to the GNOME team is to find a new project, perhaps contribute to KDE. GNOME is pain for your users; they're still using it out of habit or loyalty or because some just don't know there are better options.

1451: Overall, everythings feels to big. The buttons, window titles, top bar etc. I'm using a low-resolution laptop most of the time, and therefore every (vertical) pixel counts.

1452: I was more satisfied with 3.4 instead of 3.6

1453: I cant just say that i want the old gnome interface back as it was in 2.x. but i can tell that i loved that interface more than any other Desktop environment!. So therfor im using Mate desktop, which is a great project for those who want the old gnome desktop back.

1454: Review the move to document-centric paradigm. It may work well with notebooks/netbooks where the screen estate is small, but feels awfull on large screens, where many windows could fit easily. It feels clumsy to switch between windows the way it's implemented now -- pretending that over night all apps had become document centric (anyway -- what does that mean in a web browser ?).
Extensions should become part of GNOME3 and be supported. The only way GNOME3 is usable these days is using extension. However, running desktops on Ubuntu and Fedora I'm not able to reach the same setup and behaviour. A thing I was able to achieve using gnome 2.x series.

1455: Your users are not chimpanzees. Stop treating them like retarded brain-less users... If you want to develop (rather, ruin) a piece of decent software, get employed at microsoft (their surface metro crap is arguably better than GNOME 3 in terms of usability, that really says alot about how doomed GNOME is).

1456: There are five things that annoy me the most in GNOME 3:
1. It takes much too long to load the application list (Activities->Applications)
2. Java applications do not integrate properly with the favourites/currently-running bar.
3. There is no simple way to edit the application list.
4. There is too much unused, empty space on the screen. When I maximise the window I have the system bar and the application bar (which serves little purpose). Why not unify them for maximized apps?
5. The notifications bar is working differently for pretty much every application and appears in random moments. It seems terribly broken on many fronts.

1457: Listen to your users. People will not like/learn your stuff just because you say its better than it was before.
Gnome until v2 was popular (it was THE de facto default Linux desktop in pretty much all distros) because it worked and provided a familiar environment.

1458: make it faster, stop dropping/adding things and work on performance, stability. There is still some glitch that a new Linux user would not appreciate.

1459: - Stop acting so aloof.
- Understand that the 'average user' is an idealised lowest common denominator and not an actual person.
- Stop acting in denial and acknowledge that a sizeable number of users (or former users) are not happy.
- Stop dismissing critics as luddites who are scared of change. I own a smartphone and like the touch interface, but I don't use it like a desktop computer.
- Stop insisting that we change our behaviour. The vendor should adapt to the users, not vice-versa.

1460: Keep things simple and design with touch in mind, but don't remove settings that actually matter. My example of the latest rewrite to the control center. Under wallpaper I can't select a specific file path for my pictures anymore, nor can I change zoom/stretch/scale properties. These things matter on a desktop, even one with touch in mind. I don't want to see features like this stripped away. I'm all for removing cruft, but these have legitimate use and should be kept. Thanks.

1461: listen to users.

1462: Ah, well it's probably too late but strictly relying on OpenGL disqualified my good'ol laptop. KDE can run fine with 2D acceleration and not loose it's modern interface.

That, and Evolution. The UI could be much lighter and clearer (lighter even than the express mode).

1463: + fundamental design is nice
+ clean desktop...
- ...that hides all information on standard configuration
- for lots of things you have to switch to the application-starter/dock/desktopswitcher/etc. -overlay which disturbs the workflow
- keyboard control could be greatly enhanced, e.g. copy from the "everything"-starter module in enlightenment
-- customization and changing of many system settings not possible, if a user encounters a design or usability choice he does not like, he has to live with it

1464: Change your attitude - it's both elitist and despairing and it will drive away the community. Commercialize: launch a GNOME OS distro that ships with dedicated hardware.

1465: Listen to people, I feel the GNOME team had some design whizes dictate to them the perfect desktop and the dev team is sticking to it like scripture. I always used GNOME2 as did most people because it was simple and functional. GNOME3 is neither of these things and in my opinion the worse possible thing for a project to do is remove configuration options from their software, everything possible should be configurable and optional. GNOME3 feels like a desk with drawers made of Iron, impractical and not very functional.
Other smaller issues include the design of the interface being quite bad in my opinion, window decorations and such just looking bad. Having no real resemblance to a typical desktop is not a good thing either.

1466: in my option, Cannonical team and Gnome team needs to foi to work in a single desktop environments instead 2 desktop environments.

1467: Don't cross the line between considering users "dumb" and "stupid", creating a power-user-hostile system.

1468: Give users what they want, not what you think they need. You're ideas may be utopia for you... but they're pain and suffering for me.

1469: Gnome3 is slick, but it's a little difficult to manage running applications on a desktop. I realize that the desktop paradigm is dying, but there are still a lot of desktop users and Linux has always been about configurability. It would be good to have options to make life easier for desktop users with big screens and no touch support. For the most part I think Gnome3 is great and I don't know what all the whining is about, but it could still use some tweaking.

1470: Choice between shell and old-style interface.

1471: Keep on doing exactly what you are doing currently.
I am one of those silent users who found design of GNOME3 just great: minimalist, simple and to the point.
Please do not listen to grumpy old man that criticize everything that does not follow Win95 UI.

1472: Give us the good old Gnome 2 slightly tweaked

1473: 1. Improve Color configuration and/or merge Color configuration for displays into the Displays window.
2. If I already have a Nautilus window open for a drive that is just plugged in, don't show the notification nor offer options to show in Files or Eject. Either that or remedy with an "Ignore" button.
3. If Online Accounts fail to create a proper token, check if the clock is synchronize. If not, notify the user and provide an option to synchronize their clock.
4. Encourage distributions like openSUSE to release Gnome versions at a faster pace. openSUSE 12.2 is still using Gnome 3.4.2.
5. Simplify PGP/GPG and S/MIME settings under the Security tab in Evolution.
6. Provide a means of allowing USB-based connections to Gnome Phone Manager.
7. Rather than developing your own Music application, improve integration with existing players like Rhythmbox and Banshee. Have this integration baked into the vanilla Gnome experience as well, not via an extension.
8. Provide an easy means of adding extensions through Gnome itself, maybe somewhere in the Settings area!

1474: Support for mate development team.

1475: Closer to KDE. Sorry, Google Translate :)

1476: Tab key shouldn't raise all application windows in all workspaces but only in the current one.

1477: Try to create a more "desktop" (non-touch) user interface and maybe I'll try to use GNOME again. Until then, I am happy with KDE.

1478: I like the way the GNOME Desktop evolved, comparing GNOME 2 and GNOME 3.
Made me switch back to the Original GNOME, been using Unity for a while to fill the gap from GNOME 2 to my needs half way.

1479: keep gnome2 active. Gnome3 is another wm - not just a new version, or a natural development from gnome2. I am switching to xfce4 for now, but hope to find gnome attractive again sometime in the future.

1480: give the people what they want (all the points in question 9)

1481: What the hell were you thinking when you released GNOME 3.0?

1482: Bring back Gnome 2 functionality & usability, please.

1483: I would like to state that I do prefer Gnome to other options. I just don't like the new Gnome Shell. I am a Mint user, and I believe that what Clem and his team are doing with Cinnamon is a far better option for the desktop than Gnome shell. Take a look at Cinnamon, and Nemo. This is what the typical user wants for a desktop interface. Mobile environments like cell phones and tablets are of course different, and it seems lately that developers seem to think that users want these new mobile interfaces on the desktop. I can assure you the majority of us don't. For example Windows 8 works great on a tablet. It sucks on the desktop. I wish the Gnome developers could see that.

1484: keep it simple

1485: Keep up the good work. Please improve the default gnome3 theme and try to use a lighter gnome3 DE. With games coming to Linux, the Desktop should be as light as possible.

Fail over is a perfect environment to have a full performance desktop for gaming.

1486: Please maintain the build stable. And add more configuration options. Also, the popular apps like Eclipse, chrome are not still ported to GTK3.

1487: Improve the meny system. It should be easy to find applikations installed on your coputer.

Top Application menu bar like Mac os x and unity. Use less screen space.

Make it better looking. Improve font rendering. Improve the Graphics and user experience.

Exit an application should not bring up the menu.

1488: Without extensions I would find Gnome unusable

Many pop up windows are missing control buttons in top bar, having to right click to close is not intuitive

Give users the option of greater control of their DE

1489: Keep up the good work. Thank you. And let's improve window management/switching better in GNOME 3.

1490: Ensure that GNOME keeps working on older systems. Don't make removal of fallback mode a regression.

1491: Integrate gnome-tweak-tool aka advanced settings. Give few more advanced settings for power users, but hide them from basic users.

1492: Gnome 3 has become a solid Desktop Environment, which has boosted my productivity and focus, developing webpages and making illustrations. I have been using OS X since 2004 but not anymore :)

1493: keep up the great work :-)

1494: The hidden notifications at the bottom of the screen are my biggest gripe. If I get email, etc, I want a notification that I can see without checking for it. User/Group and printer maintenance have been dumbed down to the uselessness as well. I've recently switched to KDE because of these, and stability issues. I actually like some of the ideas of gnome-shell, but it has some basic usability features for me.

1495: This survey is very badly written.

1496: Make some sense for people with the need to run multiple windows and see them at one glance.

1497: Gome 3 should is a good experiment not but not usable as 2.00

1498: Please put the panel bottom :)

1499: I'd probably use it instead of XFCE if it were not for all the (reported) rendering bugs I'm having. It would also give an impression of better quality if GTK2 and GTK3 had unified theming (scrollbars, for example).

1500: One of the reasons I first started using linux and gnome was the many options for custom themes. I loved that i could make my desktop unique and "mine" like the rest of the system beneath it. Gnome is doing its best to focus on a single vision or how everything should look.