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| GNOME 3.6 released |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-09-28 20:44:12 |
| "Today, the GNOME Project celebrates the release of GNOME 3.6, the latest version of the popular free desktop, as well as the GNOME developer platform. GNOME 3.6 is the third major update of GNOME 3. It builds on the foundations that we have laid with the previous 3.x releases and offers a greatly enhanced experience. The exciting new features and improvements in this release include a new login experience, integrated input methods, a refresh of the message tray, support for more online accounts, improved accessibility, and many more." |
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| GNOME 3 as a productive UI |
| By Jason Bourne on 2012-09-28 21:24:32 |
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In Operations Management there is a certain notion that the technology should always have a visual and intuitive features. Now if you understand this concept well, you will figure out why the Linux Desktop keeps failing through projects like GNOME 3. People should intuitively know how to use it and adapt fast to it. Notice that even though Windows 95 had a long way until the birth of Windows 7, it did keep its essence, visually and intuitively. Now GNOME 3 reaches version 3.6 and I get that nothing major has changed. There are some cool features, but my workflow is quite the same: unproductive. One of the designers behind the concept (a Red Hat worker) told the internet that GNOME 3 is for people who "fit it". Among other things, he also told that "the opponents of GNOME 3 were the same people who were dissatisfied with GNOME 2 after its release". I am sorry? How is that? How does he know for a fact that these are the same people? I think this guy should be questioned why he thinks the analogy of GNOME 1 towards 2 reflects anything similar as in GNOME 2 towards 3. Let me tell you something: this software designer understands NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING about computing productivity. Using GNOME 3 is unproductive. Changing applications is annoying. Finding stuff is time consuming. Going to "Activities" is more than time consuming. I'm sorry but I need to quote Dedoimedo now: "On the other hand, the self-professed philosophy of idiocy that guides Gnome 3 remains completely unchanged. The desktop is empty, bland, boring. The Activity panel is so difficult to access and use. The contrast and sharpness of icons and fonts is appalling. The GUI dynamics are equivalent to slamming a door on your gonads. All in all, it remains probably the least efficient, least user-friendly framework ever developed, being even worse than Windows 8, IceWM and Scrotwm combined." Dedo just said something that is the exact size and magnitude of what GNOME 3 really is: The worse ever made user interface. And I know he's not going on about just visuals, but production. It's because of GNOME 3 that Fedora is losing more and more ground. It's because of Unity that Ubuntu just started to dig its grave. These "software leaders" who made "brave decisions" on how users should "interact with their computer", just don't know how to conciliate production environment with user interfaces. So GNOME 3 and Unity remain those silly dream toys. The community is the real loser. Red Hat will be losing. I know people who operates RHEL don't give a damn about a GUI, but I also know people who operates RHEL completely on top of the GUI. It's even funny to think of a company like Red Hat be supporting design decisions like GNOME 3, even more coming from employees. Any production manager would fire away all these people, straight away. But when the money runs short, heads will roll. Gnomes' heads mainly. |
 - Score: 12 |
| Nothing Exciting |
| By tuaris on 2012-09-28 22:27:30 |
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Their used to be a time when this would excite me. Now not so much. MATE and Cinnamon on the other hand are very exciting. |
| - Score: 5 |
| Popular?! |
| By dorin.lazar on 2012-09-29 05:26:32 |
| Popular? When did that happen? |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: GNOME 3 as a productive UI |
| By franko on 2012-09-29 07:40:39 |
| You could try the Xfce desktop. It does not get in the way of being productive. |
| - Score: 2 |
| Please don't be so ungrateful : G3 is GREAT software |
| By torturedutopian on 2012-09-29 11:24:48 |
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I used to criticize Gnome 3 a lot. Then I realized (IMHO) : - most of the underlying technologies are essential to Ubuntu, Cinnamon etc. and are of very good quality - it managed to be stable almost right from the start which is far to be the case of other DEs. I spent years trying all combos of common distros / DEs etc. and G3 + Debian is the only combination that didn't disappoint me - you can tweak it a lot if you don't like the default workflow. Install Axe Menu, Panel Docklet and turn it into a regular desktop in two clicks and in a very clean & integrated way (from extensions.gnome.org) - it's a bit tiring to hear so many people hailing "forks" of Gnome Shell, when SO MUCH good work is put into it and when the essential was done by the GS team. OK, the defaults are not good for everyone but you have 1) extensions 2) fallback mode. - it's a bit tiring to hear complains about removed feature etc., when people don't try to understand what was also added. The new Nautilus removes a few little useful features, but adds some clever ones, and fixes important broken feature. And I hear people spitting at the developers and hailing developers who re-implement a button toolbar or things like that. It's not perfect. Depending on the use cases, it might make you lose quite some time with the defaults (but it's also a matter of getting used to it). But overall (stability, quality, extensibility, consistency) this is the best we can get, IMHO, in the OSS world. And I can tell you I was a Gnome 3 hater for a long time until I realized the real state of the other alternatives (even if, also, so much good work is also put in KDE, Cinnamon, Unity etc., so much good work wasted, IMHO, but poor testing, useless splits / divisions, bad management) A good development model, with a wide scope (not just tweaking the desktop !!!), and good testing is really what counts the most, in the end, IMHO. Edited 2012-09-29 11:31 UTC |
| - Score: 10 |
| RE: GNOME 3 as a productive UI |
| By SeeM on 2012-09-29 13:38:24 |
| You seem to be smart enough to just use Gnome Shell, as any other WM. |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[2]: GNOME 3 as a productive UI |
| By ndrw on 2012-09-29 16:09:31 |
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I am a big fan of Xfce myself but the problem lays elsewhere. We used to have a major popular desktop - Gnome 2 that was seen by all new Linux users. It wasn't perfect but it was adequate and it became a de-facto standard Linux desktop. That standardization was perhaps its biggest achievement. We know what happened later. The desktop has been abandoned by its developers. Worse, by making Gnome 3 explicitly incompatible with Gnome 2 they have effectively killed the latter. Yes, there is Mate but (1) it no longer has the support Gnome 2 enjoyed, (2) it is 3 years behind in development (2 years for development of Gnome 3 plus 1 year for renaming all components so that they don't clash with Gnome 3). Yes, we can say we still have Xfce (I've been using it even in Gnome 2 days because in many was it was better than it), Mate, Cinnamon, KDE, LXDE, E17 and, yes, Gnome 3 and Unity. But we no longer have that ecosystem Gnome 2 was. |
| - Score: 5 |
| RE: Please don't be so ungrateful : G3 is GREAT software |
| By ndrw on 2012-09-29 16:37:14 |
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Gnome 3 could become the leading Linux desktop again, provided that: 1. reversed some technical decisions (bring back a panel, get rid of the modal design), 2. detach from the designers and their ideas that brought (1). Only then Gnome could become useful to their users, and only then the project could win back their trust. And that would still mean that Gnome would have to work their way up from a much user-base than it used to have 3 years ago. As it is, it is a nice toy for 10-20% of Linux users but it won't be the dominant Linux desktop, and it won't be setting the direction of Linux development. |
| - Score: 10 |
| RE[2]: Please don't be so ungrateful : G3 is GREAT software |
| By Jason Bourne on 2012-09-29 19:29:01 |
| Agreed, you just summarized what needs to be done. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[2]: Please don't be so ungrateful : G3 is GREAT software |
| By satsujinka on 2012-09-29 22:56:47 |
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What exactly would bringing back the panel do? Similarly, what's wrong with the modal design? Honestly, there's really nothing particularly wrong with GNOME 3. It works fine, I didn't have any troubles using it when I sat down with it for a month when it first came out. That said, I don't use a DE on a regular basis. I'm a tiling kind of guy. |
| - Score: 2 |
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