Gnome3 for the experienced (FUN Stuff!!!)

[telenux]

Thanks. I had to use the *left* ALT key and I had to hold it down while choosing 'Power Off' simultaneously which led to more choices including restart/reboot.

But, what is the point of that? Is that a Mint or Gnome3 'feature' I don't like it at all. Is that supposed to be intuitive because I don't see it.

Sorry, I don't like it.

EDIT: Are tablets and Mac computers using this process? I just googled 'left alt key and reboot' and it seems so.

Is it a trend to not to have 'restart' in the menu for security reasons?

[xircon]

There is an extension for that:

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/ ... atus-menu/

[gavinhc]

But, what is the point of that? Is that a Mint or Gnome3 'feature' I don't like it at all. Is that supposed to be intuitive because I don't see it.

To repeat what proxima_centauri said, this is 100% a part of Gnome3. The Mint team doesn't touch the Gnome3 packages coming out of the Debian repos. The Mint devs are now backing Cinnamon and MATE as their primary DEs and appear to have little interest in supporting Gnome3.

I agree that it is counter-intuitive, which is why I have installed the extension xircon linked to. I recall hearing that the Gnome devs were talking about changing it in a future update of Gnome3, but I can't actually find a source for that now, so it may just be wishful thinking.

Are tablets and Mac computers using this process? I just googled 'left alt key and reboot' and it seems so.

Is it a trend to not to have 'restart' in the menu for security reasons?

It is the trend among tablets and smartphones, both of which tend to run the same operating systems, to not have an visible shutdown or restart option because these devices tend to never be shut off, only put into "standby mode". While this is used in iOS, Apple's mobile OS, the latest iteration of MacOS X, their desktop OS, uses basically the same sleep/restart/shutdown menu that has been part of the OS for years.

[MALsPa]

I agree that it is counter-intuitive, which is why I have installed the extension xircon linked to. I recall hearing that the Gnome devs were talking about changing it in a future update of Gnome3, but I can't actually find a source for that now, so it may just be wishful thinking.

Hopefully, they'll change it. Seems silly not to have it a shutdown option there by default, and it's one of the most common complaints about GNOME 3.

I use the Alternative Status Menu extension, though, and it works fine. I also like the Quit Button extension: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/156/quit-button/

[telenux]

Thanks for the info, guys! My apologies for any speculation that Mint (devs) had anything to do with it!

I've read a little about Gnome3 being a major disappointment to people. Is it me or are KDE and Gnome doing a lot of drastic things that are turning people off? I think some are going back to KDE but when 4 came out, I didn't like it so I moved to xfce. There's still a KDE feature that is really annoying to me and it's the notifications. I don't have the latest KDE with my Debian install but when I think I updated, the message is still popping up. That's just one thing but still... Now, Gnome3 is doing major modifications and even Ubuntu is moving to their own DE, Unity?

Personally, I think it's all due to the prominence of smartphones and mobile devices. I think many developers are trying to design to be more versatile. Even Ubuntu is looking to get into the 'mobile game.'

Ok, I rambled on long enough. I am not familiar with the newest editions of the desktop environments and anything related, so it was quite a surprise to see no options to reboot. I suppose it was easy to guess I'm not a Mac person either.

[Stanssongs]

Great info guys, thanks.
I have been editing config files and desktops ever since support for 10.10 stopped, and have done it so far on openSUSE 12.1, Fedora 16 and 2 Ubuntu's until I found Mint.
I think I will stick with Mint!
It came out of the box with a menu on the panel at least! and some other great features, and seems very stable, and generally great in most all respects in fact.

I customised one desktop on another box earlier tonight, (Mint 12 ) and although I still like a little, but I got icons on desktop etc.


If I wanted to throw out my big flat screen monitors and use a 2 inch screen and poke at some little keys with a toothpick and perhaps a magnifying glass, (my eyes are getting old), I would quite possibly consider myself too crazy and addle brained to compute anyway.

There exists, separate server, notebook and desktop editions, of some distro's, so why not make a Mobile edition and leave those of us that want to get some serious work done or at least those who wish have the option to somewhat customise their desktop environments on a real computer alone

It is sort of hard to do be productive (for me at least) when you have a blank desktop to work with, and have to go back and forth trying to get a text editor to paste your code in, then look for where the web page or whatever you were making went, and trying to find some application that has an icon with no text or not enough text in some cases in the "Activities" screen, (until you memorise the icons) and other gripes and issues I have encountered, that to me at least comprise most of the negative attributes of Gnome 3x , Unity, and all the other new blank, immutable or un-editable by design (out of the box at least), DE's that seems to be the new trend in Desktop designs, seem So much less conducive to productivity.
In my humble opinion at least...

What part of "Desktop" edition do they Not understand? lol...
Just my two cents anyway...

P.S.
I am liking Mint12 more and more each day! Great job

[GregE]

This is neat. An extension that updates your extensions from extensions.gnome.org

http://www.webupd8.org/2012/05/gnome-sh ... dater.html

The instructions are a bit wrong - there is no ./install.sh

do this instead

./autogen.sh
make
sudo make install

You must have gnome-common installed.

Restart the shell and activate with Tweak Tool and it runs through the normal notification process. My extensions all needed updates.

Works fine with Gnome Shell 3.2 and Linuxmint/Sid

[autocrosser]

Very nice!!! I've installed it & will see how it works.....

Experimental is almost ready to run 3.4---I "fudged" & install the needed components from Ubuntu. Currently, Experimental is only 15 updates away from 3.4 & only only 9 of those are core updates.

The problem is a transition with cogl5 & libffi, so if someone wants to run 3.4---those & their depends would need to pulled in also. I must say that 3.4 is a nice upgrade..things are smoother & load a bit faster than 3.2--can't wait to get the "real" Debian packages--I'm been told that that most likely won't be until early June. So I would guess that Sid will see them sometime around mid-June.

[karashata]

Experimental is almost ready to run 3.4---I "fudged" & install the needed components from Ubuntu. Currently, Experimental is only 15 updates away from 3.4 & only only 9 of those are core updates.

How many of the Ubuntu packages needed to be pulled in, roughly..? I wouldn't mind trying that if I don't have to pull in too large a bundle of packages from Ubuntu to install the handful of packages that Debian experimental hasn't gotten updated to 3.4 yet. I've been running GNOME 3.4 on my Ubuntu-based Linux Mint installation after updating it to Precise Pangolin, and though I haven't seen too much improvement in performance under normal circumstances, it does seem to run a little more fluidly than 3.2 did when the system is under more significant load.

[autocrosser]

Well--I enabled Precise, Ricotz & Gnome3-Team....did it about a week ago & I pulled about 25 packages....If you're running Sid I would guess about 40+ packages.... Might pollute your system a bit much.....

I would enable Webup8team, Ricotz & Gnome3-Team first--then carefully add the others if needed.....
If you are game---here are the sources:

## Gnome-Shell & Extensions ##

#deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/gnome3/ubuntu precise main
#deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/gnome3/ubuntu precise main

#deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ricotz/testing/ubuntu precise main
#deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ricotz/testing/ubuntu precise main

#deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome3-team/gnome3/ubuntu precise main
#deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome3-team/gnome3/ubuntu precise main

#deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-desktop/ppa/ubuntu precise main
#deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-desktop/ppa/ubuntu precise main

#deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise main restricted universe multiverse
#deb http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main

[GregE]

Gnome Shell 3.4 is in Experimental

And I have added it to my Mint/Sid and it works.

Now to put back my extensions.

[xircon]

Thanks Greg, got a whole day off tomorrow, so will have a play. Does it fix the icon problem? And play nicely with Cinnamon?

Steve

[GregE]

Thanks Greg, got a whole day off tomorrow, so will have a play. Does it fix the icon problem? And play nicely with Cinnamon?

Steve

Hi Steve,
I do not use Cinnamon.
What is the icon problem? If you mean big icons in the applications menu, then yes it is still a problem. But the right theme can fix that (but not Atolm). I used Icecream Shell in 3.2 to get small icons, but it does not work in 3.4 as the text sits on the icons rather than under. Still looking at themes.

I am using the Atolm 3.4 theme with fonts scaled to 1.1, and a nice selection of extensions from extensions.gnome.org. One good one is Window list extension which puts a task bar on the top tool bar. I moved clock to right to give it a lot of space. Set up like this it looks like Cinnamon with the tool bar at the top.

cheers
Greg

EDIT: Mictlan 3.4 theme provides small Application menu icons.

[karashata]

For what it's worth, one can fairly easily shrink the icon size in the application overview by editing a few values in /usr/share/themes/<theme name>/gnome-shell/gnome-shell.css from whatever theme you wish to use. For example:

Code: Select all

.icon-grid {
	spacing: 36px;
	-shell-grid-horizontal-item-size: 70px; /* was 118px */
	-shell-grid-vertical-item-size: 70px; /* was 118px */
}

.icon-grid .overview-icon {
	icon-size: 48px; /* was 96px */
}

The values in the comments are the original values the default GNOME Shell theme uses. By making those values smaller, the overview icons were shrunk, and the overview grid was adjusted to fit more icons into the available space.

[Lippy]

Thanks Greg, got a whole day off tomorrow, so will have a play. Does it fix the icon problem? And play nicely with Cinnamon?

Steve

Gnome Shell 3.4 depends on Clutter 1.10, which will break Cinnamon 1.4 as that depends on Clutter 1.8. There is a newer version, Cinnamon 1.4 UP1 which can co-exist happily with Gnome Shell 3.4 and this is the version used in Mint 13. However, I think the only way to get that working on LMDE atm is to compile it from source as the update isn't yet available in the repositories over here.

[xircon]

Cheers Lippy, I am running UP1, was replying to the post on my way to work from my phone.

The Icon problem I referred to is I currently can not apply any icon theme, just the ugly default. I have updated to experimental and still have the same problem But I have only installed the bare minimum so far, anyone know of a solution?

Cheers

Steve

[zerozero]

Thanks Greg, got a whole day off tomorrow, so will have a play. Does it fix the icon problem? And play nicely with Cinnamon?

Steve

Gnome Shell 3.4 depends on Clutter 1.10, which will break Cinnamon 1.4 as that depends on Clutter 1.8. There is a newer version, Cinnamon 1.4 UP1 which can co-exist happily with Gnome Shell 3.4 and this is the version used in Mint 13. However, I think the only way to get that working on LMDE atm is to compile it from source as the update isn't yet available in the repositories over here.

Lippy, you have here http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=190&t=90277 instructions to build cinnamon clutter1.10-compatible, and here http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 40#p580424 pre-compiled debs (if you feel lazy )

[GregE]

The Icon problem I referred to is I currently can not apply any icon theme, just the ugly default.

Steve,

I do not have that problem in 3.4, and I did not have that problem in 3.2. Using Gnome Tweak Tool/Advanced Settings I have always been able to change them.

You could try creating a new user called xircon2 and log into a clean config and see if the problem is system wide or just stuffed up conf files in your personal setup.

Greg

And thanks Karashata, resetting icon size in the theme is an obvious answer - sometimes someone just needs to state the obvious.

[Lippy]

Thanks Greg, got a whole day off tomorrow, so will have a play. Does it fix the icon problem? And play nicely with Cinnamon?

Steve

Gnome Shell 3.4 depends on Clutter 1.10, which will break Cinnamon 1.4 as that depends on Clutter 1.8. There is a newer version, Cinnamon 1.4 UP1 which can co-exist happily with Gnome Shell 3.4 and this is the version used in Mint 13. However, I think the only way to get that working on LMDE atm is to compile it from source as the update isn't yet available in the repositories over here.

Lippy, you have here http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=190&t=90277 instructions to build cinnamon clutter1.10-compatible, and here http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 40#p580424 pre-compiled debs (if you feel lazy )

Thanks for the links, zerozero.

I'll be honest; I've been a bit hesitant on doing this myself because I haven't had much time lately. I should have a free day tomorrow though so this is something I could do.

[xircon]

Yep, new user works fine, will start another post.