I'm not sure why these rants end up listing trivialities. Who cares whether it's called Activities, Menu, foobar or is a hamburger icon? It's what it does that matters, and what it does is pretty neat. Definitely better than Windows 10 attempt at the same thing.
That said, I don't use Gnome3 either. I use the task bar, AFAICT there is no way to have one in Gnome3 so it's a non-starter for me. Given they have a mostly empty bar at the top, I am buggered if I know why they don't provide some taskbar widget. It's worst reason I guess - religious objections.
The other thing I that causes me to curse it very time I use it its insane desire to maximise everything. Maximised everything is exactly what you need on a 6" phone, but gnome3 doesn't work well there. It clearly targeted at desktops. I use a 43" 4K screen. I paid for those pixels - and I want to put every one of them to good use. Maximising a single web page is not a good use.
Which means unlike a conventional window manager which remembers and respects where I put things, I have to reposition everything every fucking time I reboot. And if a window is hidden I can't just click on the task bar, either I have to move to top left corner then click or press a key.
This isn't "getting out of the way". This is shoving the designers idea of good work flow down my throat. If their goal was to get of out of the way of a "power user" (an archaic term, but it accurately described most Linux users) this is vision of an ideal work flow would be the default and they provide the tools to change it.
But those tools are completely absent. That arrogant omission is, gnome3 devs, why half the Linux world view you as mad control freaks.
Thanks, my google foo failed me. So it was there all along.
If they've provided some way for me to say what a window's size and position should be rather than having their "everything shall be maximised" shoved down my throat it's worth trying again.
When I use Gnome3 now I am struck by how well everything works, albeit for their definition of works. Random things tend to break under other WM's from time to time which is irritating. From what I can tell this is because they depend on gnome's applets to fill in the bits they don't have time to do, but gnome is a moving target.
Random breakage is probably going to get worse as the move to Wayland accelerates. Sigh. We do live in interesting times.
I would not rely on extensions for fixing the mistakes of the Gnome UX wankers, as given half a chance they would scuttle the whole extension system once and for all.
FWIW, you can get a taskbar if you use "gnome classic" (which otherwise seems to be identical). It usually comes installed alongside gnome shell. If using GDM, click the wheel on the login screen and select "gnome classic" before entering your password.
I think GNOME 3 is the best desktop environment out there. I didn't like it when it came out, but over the years I changed my mind. I feel very constrained whenever I use Windows or OS X for a short time.
For example, I don't think I ever clicked on Activities. You just hit the "Windows" key and type what you want. That is faster than any clicking.
Gnome3 is one of the worst I've ever used. The main reason is that most functionality comes from this broken and unstable by design extension system. I ended up liking Unity the most, because it is stable and integrates well. It's also the most well thought out modern UI on Linux so far. Cinnamon is a second choice. While it suffers from the same extension madness as Gnome3, it's at least useful out of the box without the need for extensions. And it's nearly a modern desktop (no cascade of menus, exposé like overview of windows, ...)
I actually like OSX (it's my main OS at work) but I miss the configurabilty of the Linux world. I'm afraid, I'm too spoiled to get any joy out of Windows anymore, though 10 was the least frustrating so far.
I have no idea why people cling to Mate or XFCE. They look and behave like something horrible from 2004. I've been there and I don't want to go back there. At the same time, I'm glad that people are free to cling to the past in the world of Linux.
Spotlight on macOS has been able to do both of those for a while. Windows, however, you'll still be crossing your fingers hoping the query "device manager" brings up Device Manager, not a web search.
I hope I don't come off as too insulting, but I don't see anything noteworthy about this rant that's worth sharing. It's not particularly insightful, nor notably well-written (the author rambles, but that's typical for rants like these). Not to mention that he contradicts himself when he mentions how Windows is rearranging all the menus from where they used to be, but concludes by saying that gnome shell is the only desktop forcing him to change.
The author's opinion has been shared countless times, as has its refutations. There's nothing new or interesting here.
Actually, I mostly use that blog as a place to post comments from online discussions elsewhere, often as much for my own later reference as anything else. I am taken aback to find that a friend has linked to it on HN and it's attracted so much discussion!
If I had meant it to be widely-read, it would have been rather different and submitted for professional publication -- probably on the Register.
The only point of yours that I'd disagree with is that I contradict myself inasmuch as Win10 is different from earlier versions. Yes, it is; but it is not _completely_ different. It retains many major UI elements, such as the taskbar, which function very much as they did before. There is something called a Start Menu again, but this works significantly differently from in earlier versions -- but then, it has been substantially reworked in previous revisions of Windows, as well.
I don't generally use Windows much and have not done for many years. However, sometimes paid office jobs require me to, and I like to keep my hand in. As I'm used to launching apps with a search command in both OS X and Unity, I simply did so in Win8. I was not discommoded by the disappearance of the Start Menu. However, having one back again that's only superficially like the old one actually requires rather more adjustment, I have found.
Win10 is quite similar to Win8.1 except that the Start Screen has been reframed as a menu, and the Charms bar has gone. Win8.1 was of course very similar to Win8. Win8 was different to Win7, but not massively; and so on.
GNOME 3 is _very_ unlike GNOME 2. There is little commonality in the UI. I'd say GNOME 2 bore a closer resemblance to KDE, Xfce and LXDE than it does to GNOME 3.
Of course, new versions of major Linux desktops have often prompted people to fork and continue the previous version. KDE 3 begat Trinity, GNOME Classic Mode begat Consort, and so on. Generally, these forks have languished -- remained obscure or died.
The fact that GNOME 3 begot both Cinnamon and Maté, and that both of these have proved, relatively speaking, very popular and successful and seem to be in relatively rapid, active development speaks volumes, I think.
Used to use Gnome Shell. Left it for XFCE for two reasons... somewhat randomly occurring fallback to LLVM pipe mode where software rendering is used instead of graphic card acceleraion. (I had to put in some sleep in launch script to prevent it, but wasn't perfect either.)
Anther one is its behavior of treating IPv6 address as IPv4, so for example if I type in IPv6 address in network setting, it tells me it's an invalid address. Previously entered IPv6 address would be converted to some random IPv4 address...
Is the author unaware that you don't need to click activities, you can just mouse to the top left corner of the screen? This is Linux, it doesn't have to say activities if you don't want it to. You can get themes with OS logos and such, if you want.
> > OS X and Unity and Windows Vista/7/8/10 all give me app searching as a primary launch mechanism; it’s not a selling point of GNOME 3.
> This is just false; "app searching" as a "primary launch mechanism" works perfectly well in GNOME 3.
I think your parent's point which you quote was not that GNOME 3 doesn't do this, but rather that it's not unique in doing it—which is why it's not a selling point. (Just as, for example, one wouldn't mention, say, multi-tasking as a selling point of a modern OS, even though it is surely crucial.)
I set it to autohide on smaller screens, such as sub-14" notebooks. I do miss the old "dodge windows" config option, though -- that was very handy. A sort of auto-autohide that only triggered when you needed it.
I added a comment on LiveJournal, but it apparently got marked as spam. [1] Reposting here:
Like most software, GNOME 3 requires a bit of learning before you can use it most effectively, but it's actually a really easy learning curve because GNOME is designed to be intuitive.
The biggest thing I'd recommend is learning the keyboard shortcuts. Pressing the Super (aka Windows) key will open the Activities overview. Pressing the Super key and then typing the name of an app then Enter will launch that app (I never use the mouse to launch an app). Super + Tab switches between running apps. There are a few more here: https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/shell-keyboar.... It's actually shorter and easier to remember than the man page of even a simple command line tool like "ls"—and you probably have dozens of command line tools memorized, including complex tools like find, sed, and curl.
This may sound preachy, but life is a lot better when you stop worrying about customization. Learn how the software works and adapt yourself to it. Think of how many places you have to do this in the real world: bicycles, cars, election ballots, transit systems, and grocery stores all have "UI"s that can be counterintuitive or slow, which you don't have much control over. But you don't complain because you can't change their UIs. GNOME is far easier to use than any of these, but because other desktops offer more customization, users can feel like GNOME is lacking. But if you accept that GNOME is not really intended to be heavily customized and just try to get used to the vanilla experience, you may actually be really happy using it.
Caveat: if there's something that makes your workflow 3x faster, definitely spend a few minutes setting that up. But things like the position of the app title vs the position of the clock are not worth splitting hairs over. The GNOME team actually cares deeply abut usability and although some design decisions may seem quirky, every feature is scrutinized through the lens of ease-of-use. GNOME's UI Design Principles talk more about this and are a good, short read: https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/design-principles.htm...
[1] LiveJournal gave me the following message after posting:
Your anonymous comment has been added. According to this journal's settings, it was marked as spam.
It gave a similar message when I tried authenticating with Google. Not sure what's up with this.
Thanks for that. JOOI, I was not notified of any such comment. I did get and unscreen a single comment, but it's a different (anonymous) one – visible there now.
You should be able to sign-in to LJ to comment using any OpenID. In fact OpenID itself actually originated as an LJ-affiliated project by one of LJ's developers.
I do learn to adapt to the provided UI on many devices and OSes /where I don't have a choice./ But on Linux, I do have a choice, so why should I spend the effort adapt to something that doesn't work the way I'm used to or in a way that I like, when I could just switch environments to something that I find more comfortable?
When I worked at Red Hat, I switched from GNOME 3 to Xfce. Yes, it's old fashioned, but I can, with some effort, set it up to work much like Windows with a vertical taskbar – a layout I find convenient and flexible.
As I said in the blogpost, on Windows I use a vertical taskbar on the left screen edge. On Mac OS X, I move the Dock there. On Unity, well, that's just where it is and it's hard to move, but I don't want to, so I'm fine with that. On GNOME 3, I get that too, but in a limited, rather inflexible and unhelpful, form.
The primary question is: is there a benefit to me in switching and re-adapting to working in a system that's significantly unlike any of the others that I use? And the answer, _for me_, is no. I don't get enough reward to justify it, so I don't adapt - I switch to a desktop that works in something approximating the way I like.
Although I've used Windows since v2.01 in 1989, I switched away from it at the turn of the century. Now, OS X and Unity give me a fairly consistent desktop. With tweaking, Windows and Xfce give something very broadly comparable. GNOME Shell is left as something of an odd-man-out.
But that's just me. I am very happy to see its increasing polish and that it's winning people back.
That said, I don't use Gnome3 either. I use the task bar, AFAICT there is no way to have one in Gnome3 so it's a non-starter for me. Given they have a mostly empty bar at the top, I am buggered if I know why they don't provide some taskbar widget. It's worst reason I guess - religious objections.
The other thing I that causes me to curse it very time I use it its insane desire to maximise everything. Maximised everything is exactly what you need on a 6" phone, but gnome3 doesn't work well there. It clearly targeted at desktops. I use a 43" 4K screen. I paid for those pixels - and I want to put every one of them to good use. Maximising a single web page is not a good use.
Which means unlike a conventional window manager which remembers and respects where I put things, I have to reposition everything every fucking time I reboot. And if a window is hidden I can't just click on the task bar, either I have to move to top left corner then click or press a key.
This isn't "getting out of the way". This is shoving the designers idea of good work flow down my throat. If their goal was to get of out of the way of a "power user" (an archaic term, but it accurately described most Linux users) this is vision of an ideal work flow would be the default and they provide the tools to change it.
But those tools are completely absent. That arrogant omission is, gnome3 devs, why half the Linux world view you as mad control freaks.