Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu using GNOME is easily the biggest deal for Linux desktop in a long time.

The recent versions of GNOME in the last year or so have been rock solid. The designers have been tweaking it since 3 launched to make it pixel perfect. I like the style better than OSX and I'm a front-end dev. Especially in dark-mode, with the always black top bar, it blends perfectly with a terminal heavy workflow.

No semi-transparent background and grey chrome to distract from black terminals.

And splitting/floating windows is built-in with shortcuts so it's easy to have [terminal/dev tools][chrome] side by side without installing any 3rd party tools. I normally use a tiling WM (i3/BSPWM), usually combined with gnome 3 for window chrome/nautilus, but since the last reinstall I haven't felt the need as I like the new gnome desktop.

I hope their teams collaborate on a Gnome 4 release.

View on HN

The look is great but put any beginner in front of it and:

- they will lool for the desktop for ever, not understanding it's gone;

- will struggle with the dock, hidding, not opening new windows when expected, not showing when several windows are opened, etc;

- will have a painful wifi setup (the list of SSID don't refresh unless you close it, then go 2 menus down to restart it)

- will have a painful bluetooth setup (the menu doesn't even appear if it's off)

- will be confused when trying to minimised two windows to put side by side now that the icon is gone;

- will try to look for the button to put the laptop to sleep and look at you with the eye of a sad puppy;

- will see a lot a spaces wasted compared to unity because of the windows bar being back and huge;

- will look for their app tray icons (now at the bottom left);

- will activate the hot corner by mistake.

I use myself 15 addons to make gnome-shell usable, and you can't expect the average user to do that.

Gnome shell is still experimental. Not from a technical point of view, but from an ergonomic point of view.

A beginner to what? If they've never used a computer before, what are they comparing it to? If they're a Windows user wouldn't they have to make some adjustments to use macOS or iOS? If they're a Unity user they will just do what Canonical tell them to.

The only problems from your list that I recognise are bluetooth, which is no longer a problem, and the hot corner.

The hot corner is bad interface design and needs fixing.

I would say a he meant a "beginner of gnome 3".

But I have given gnome 3 a fair chance and was quite happy with it for a while, but then I updated it and all my addons and themes were no longer usable. That annoyed me and I change the desktop.

So I would say that not only beginner of gnome 3 have problems with it. But also many people that already have expectations to a desktop environment.

I install Ubuntu on my mother's computer and my flatemate's. They don't know jack about computers. They start "the internet". Unity was easy to use for them. Gnome, really, really not.

I'm not trying to debate if those are a problem with you because there is not debate. I witnessed it. I know I'm right.

People loving gnome shell are all computer literate. But we are a minority.

Most people don't know how to use alt-tab. I repeat. Most people don't know how to use alt-tab. Get down from your ivory tower, computing is now main stream. And Ubuntu targets noobs. That's the whole point of it, make Linux usable for the many.

A Windows user has had to relearn their desktop UI every few years anyway since Windows 8, and whilst Windows 8 largely bombed, 8.1 and 10 have not.

Perhaps putting icons back in the desktop by default might be a good default setting tweak that distributions can do. I never quite understood the reasoning behind removing icons, seems to leave a it if unecessary empty space that can be used for something useful.

2, 4, 5, 6 apply to macos as well, don't they? I'm not saying that's a good thing, but they're certainly not a new concept or hard to learn.

One thing I've learned being a designer is that people under estimate people's ability to figure out interfaces.

Most intial problems are around the information architecture to figure out what something does and how they can do something. The UX and UI issues are generally competitive advantages.

I concur that GNOME doesn't have much more complications compared to MacOS. Strictly from a WM and chrome perspective.

The general questions around how to use the OS are more specific to linux. And obviously it's not the perfect OS for total newbs. But it's continually getting better for average OS users. Especially as hardware support is less of an issue, which has always been issue number 1 with Linux. Things should just work and hardware is first with any OS.

I got a couple of other frustrations I have with gnome 3:

- No categories in the 'menu'. Sometimes I don't know the name of the application or just want to explore what is installed.

- Wasted screen space everywhere. I have a laptop with a small display, I need auto hiding bars and small interface elements. Gnome seems to be designed for HiDPI or very big screens.

- You need plugins/addons for everything. Why can I not setup simple behavior with just some settings.

- No backward compatible to addons. Having to resetup the whole desktop experience just because gnome just updated is very annoying.

I don't currently use gnome 3 so some of those points might have changed.

I'm a teacher; 16/17 year olds will hop between interfaces with very different logics/metaphors with ease. For example, a desktop PC with Win7, an iPhone and an Android tablet.

I might try putting a recent Gnome on my test laptop and seeing what they can do with it as we go into revision for exams. As I use old X series Thinkpads, I'll need to bring a mouse. The trackpad is always the thing people find hardest!

Does anyone have references to any user testing of Gnome Shell as it was quite a fresh approach when it came out?

Large scale usability tests are pretty rare for open source software. Gnome is one of the few exceptions having some testing paid for by Sun Microsystems for Gnome 1 and then again by Novell for Gnome 2 around 2005.

From this they developed the Gnome HIG (human interface guidelines), which was used extensively in Gnome 2 and formed the basis for much of what they wanted to accomplish in Gnome 3.

Since the Novell test they had some ad-hoc usability testing, but nothing large or ran by professional usability testers.

Example:

https://renatagegaj.wordpress.com/2016/08/23/gnome-usability...

What do you think about the huge title bars? Probably the most annoying thing about Gnome imho. I know you can adjust it, but still. If you Google you need to find a good fix that is compatible with your version.

I used Gnome for quite some time, but now I am using Cinnamon.

I like them, assuming I'm using a higher-than-traditional but not "retina"/doubled dpi, such as a 1920×1080 on a 13″ screen.

Most annoyances from gnome shell can be fixed by using the proper addons. The bad news is that it's time consuming and really you shouldn't have to do that. The good news is that toggling an addon is a one-click operation.

E.G: disable huge title bars: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/723/pixel-saver/

Funny thing about this, the behavior pixel-saver adds to GNOME shell was once standard - people didn't like it so it was reverted (I think I remember this back in the GNOME 3.8 days).

Pixel saver does not disable huge title bars.

It removes title bar for the maximized window. For a window that is not maximized, it does exactly nothing.

Cinnamon is the desktop I want. As far as I know it's the desktop everybody wants - I've never had trouble explaining it to people. Windows 7 basically solved the basic UI experience IMO and we've since wasted thousands of hours redesigning it rather then perfecting it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com