Thoughts on the Gnome Shell and Gnome 3.0?

[exploder]

I was kind of excited about Unity but from what I have read so far 11.04 will give me the two panel setup because I have an nvidea card.

[linuxviolin]

I was kind of excited about Unity but from what I have read so far 11.04 will give me the two panel setup because I have an nvidea card.

Yes! Great! Fantastic! lol Sorry...

[exploder]

Yes! Great! Fantastic! lol Sorry...

We will see.

[mmesantos1]

Yes! Great! Fantastic! lol Sorry...

We will see.

Hi Exploder,
I was reading something to the effect that Nvidia and ATI video card users would not get Unity at first boot after install but once the drivers were installed post install then reboot you would then boot into Unity or have the choise to since you had compiz running with the proprietary driver. So it looks like to get around this Ubuntu would have to have an option to install the driver for those cards during install process like they do with some of the codecs for playing MP3's and so on which is available in 10.10. Of course no decision has been made on this issue so only time will show the end result.

[exploder]

Thanks mmesantos1! What you are suggesting makes good sense, that might explain the recent overhaul that was done with ubiquity. There has been talk about major work on the graphics stack, improving performance and tracking it, using Banshee and using the global menu. These guys are definitely getting a lot of press! Mark Shuttleworth is pushing for higher quality standards as well. If this trend continues, I should be able to walk in my local Best Buy in 2012 and check out the latest Ubuntu powered machines, (you never know). At any rate it's nice to see such a large amount of effort put forth for the common good. Succeed of fail these guys are forcing the competing operating systems to produce a better product or fall to the wayside.

[OldManHook]

What Windows Vista anyone ,Unity + Ubuntu + Mark = Apple 2 < Look from here that what MAYBE good for buntu might not be good For Linux in General.
Banshee,as music player (and its not Mono) It just don't work with Big music collections-I-Pod support Sink
Lots of Press< But for What? As For Best Buy,buntu machines (we know) About as much as the Snowball in H .
That' some of my take: But one Question. Isn't all this going to require Window 7 class computers and high speed Internet (From what i read on this Forum and on Ubuntu forums many of the computers are not going to cut it.

[simpleblue]

Gnome 3 is only 55% complete! So please remember this!

I am using Fedora 14 (just install Autoten for ALL your codecs!) with Gnome 3 right now and I don't see any reason to go back to regular Gnome. I have yet to see Gnome crash and it's FAST!

I find it to be very intuitive. It seems to automatically add programs you use to the panel, and it also adds documents, music, videos, pdf's... to the lower right of the panel for easy access. No more looking in directories on Nautilus. As well, you can just type what you're looking for and it will search while you type (just like Mint-Menu). So many times I wouldn't know where certain programs are so I end up searching menus when all I have to do now is type the first three letters and it's right there!

I also find that 'dirty' desktops (many programs overlapping eachother on a screen), for me at least, is getting very old and tiring and while I like the multiple desktops alot, I find that the Gnome 3 solution is more clean and accessible for me. Though the 3D cube is nice to look at and show friends.

It's also as fast as regular Gnome. I notice no regression at all. Infact, it might be faster. The Gnome team seems to have put alot of thought into making sure it maintained speed. I noticed that some people were complaining about speed and I think it may be because of the animations, which are quick, but not instant. Please know that if there were no animations then the desktop would look extremely cheap, and people like at least a little eye candy, even if they don't realize they're getting it. Take all the desktop effects off regular Gnome and still there is animation with opening and closing windows.

I like the fact that the info such as time, icons, menu are at the top as it doesn't strain your eyes as much as looking down, and also, your mouse is more likely to be near the top of the screen. And to keep things out of your way, and still give you info, the notifications are at the bottom, which I think is a good idea, because you can easily choose to ignore them if you want and they don't seem to get in your way.

I haven't heard it mentioned, but in the lower right corner notifications are stored until you check them out. It's nice because they are in auto-hide mode until you go to the corner, and they they'll pop up, so they save room. When you click on it, then it will provide you with more info, such as in an email (time, author, program...).. One thing that can be improved is when you click on a notification it does not bring you to the program. It will say that the program is "ready" but you have to goto it yourself.

Anyways, had to get all that good stuff out of my system.

Question: Is Gnome 3 in the Mint repositories?

[linuxviolin]

I am using Fedora 14 (just install Autoten for ALL your codecs!)

For the record, Autoten makes much more than just this and you can also use easyLife in place of it...

I don't see any reason to go back to regular Gnome.

Me, though!

Though the 3D cube is nice to look at and show friends.

No, thanks.

and still there is animation with opening and closing windows.

Well, it's not the same "effects and eye-candy" than the stupid 3D cube or other. It's not quite the same thing.

[pluraldave]

It's also as fast as regular Gnome. I notice no regression at all. Infact, it might be faster. The Gnome team seems to have put alot of thought into making sure it maintained speed. I noticed that some people were complaining about speed and I think it may be because of the animations, which are quick, but not instant.

In my experience it depends if you set gnome-shell to run at login (i.e. in gconf editor) or replace Compiz post login. The first method performs better than the second.

I haven't heard it mentioned, but in the lower right corner notifications are stored until you check them out. It's nice because they are in auto-hide mode until you go to the corner, and they they'll pop up, so they save room. When you click on it, then it will provide you with more info, such as in an email (time, author, program...).. One thing that can be improved is when you click on a notification it does not bring you to the program. It will say that the program is "ready" but you have to goto it yourself.

There is an icon in the top left corner of each notification. If you click that icon it dismisses the notification and brings the relevant app to the front (at least in the version I'm currently using. It isn't really obvious that the icon does anything so that could be worked on. Also it would be better if "dismiss" and "goto app" were separate.

Question: Is Gnome 3 in the Mint repositories?

You need to be careful not to confuse Gnome-shell with Gnome 3. Gnome-shell is in the Ubuntu repositories (which Mint uses) but it is behind the development version (2.28 for LM9 and 2.35 for LM10 I think). Gnome 3 is a whole set of updates (including Gnome-shell) which should be released in March 2011.

[tdockery97]

My thoughts on Gnome Shell/Gnome 3.0:

What comes will come.