Ars Technica on GNOME3 | Hacker News Reader

Ars Technica on GNOME3

arstechnica.com

68 pointsbergie34 comments

What is the most popular operating system that will make use of Gnome 3?

I'm a bit confused, I guess, as to how much they show in their screenshots is "GNOME Shell" which would not be shipped with Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 11.04 won't include much of GNOME 3 at all, and definitely not shipped or included by default.

Ubuntu 11.10 is likely to be built on the GTK+ 3 and GNOME 3 platform libraries, but will not include either the GNOME Shell or GNOME Classic* user experiences by default (in lieu of Canonical's own Unity).

Both Shell and Classic are likely to be available for installation in 11.10, but unlikely to receive the level of integration attention that Canonical/Ubuntu has previously given to the GNOME user experience.

The best way to experience GNOME 3 at this point is to download one of the openSUSE or Fedora based Live CD/USB images from the website: http://www.gnome3.org/tryit.html

At least for the next six months, Fedora 15 will probably be the most popular distro built on GNOME 3 and featuring the GNOME Shell user experience.

* The 2.x style panels and so on, which are maintained by upstream but very much on ice in terms of new development.

Fedora 15 is going to ship with Gnome 3.

Is it time to address to the elephant in the room yet? Can we go ahead and admit to this growing affinity for ripping directly off OSX?

http://i.imgur.com/SbCBe.png

Can we address the elephant in the room? All these windowed GUI's are just ripping directly off of Xerox PARC. It's shameful!

this one.

I think it should be discussed at about the same time that the fact that people use Macbooks to run Linuxes on.

Let me address what seems to be your underlying motivation:

Gnome/KDE aren't just rip offs. For many people, and for many use cases, Linux+Gnome or Linux+KDE is a WAY better choice than Mac OS X.

In fact I wish Apple took some hints like for example giving us a choice of normal (as in Windows/KDE/Gnome like) window management.

"Normal" window management is the reason I haven't jumped to Linux yet. The persistent muddle of window > application hierarchy is very annoying, especially for anyone who performs actions in headless GUI applications.

Apple's UI hierarchy is completely different that Windows and Gnome, this is why application commands are represented in the menu bar, which is separate from a single window.

If UI what's holding you back, then you don't need Linux.

I use Linux for many reasons. The desktop environment ranks very low among those reasons.

In fact I wish Apple took some hints like for example giving us a choice of normal (as in Windows/KDE/Gnome like) window management.

We should form a support group. I'd had a macbook for close to 2 years now and I still can't get over how terrible and nonsensical the window management is. It's only my laziness that keeps me from installing Ubuntu on it.

In fact I wish Apple took some hints like for example giving us a choice of normal (as in Windows/KDE/Gnome like) window management.

As a lifelong Windows user who has continually heard about the superior UI of OS X, this is what's kept me from ever buying a Mac. I've tried a few out (I have some Mac user friends), and I just really hate the dock style.

Similarly, it's also kept me from buying Windows 7 until I've had a chance to see how configurable the window management in that is.

While W7's taskbar acts like OS X's by default, it's a single checkbox away from making it act like earlier Windows taskbars. (Still no virtual desktops though.)

Thank you. Does that disable jumplists and such as well? Those seem useful; I just dislike the combined launcher/window and application grouping.

Jumplists seem to work fine.

For reference: Right click on the taskbar, click Properties, and change Taskbar buttons to Never combine.

Shame to see you're being poopoo'd — there are clearly huge similarities with the upcoming OS X Lion — although, to be fair to your detractors, you did pick the worst example.

The new Application Launcher looks exactly like Launchpad. Darken the wallpaper, display installed applications as icons with the names below them, just as in Springboard.app.

The window selector looks exactly like Exposé — not even a new feature of OS X. Darken wallpaper, windows appear in a miniaturised form of themselves to give you an overview of all open windows.

The workspace manager looks just like Mission Control's space selector. In Lion the spaces are shown horizontally at the top of the screen, but both Gnome and Lion show the spaces on the opposite side of the screen to the default dock position. I have to say, the space is used more effectively in Gnome by stacking them vertically.

The switches (instead of checkboxes) as visible in the YouTube video embedded (0:04) are clearly inspired by iOS' ON|OFF switches. As are the sliders (visible at 0:05).

(Tenuous one, but the Close buttons used in the Exposé view are very similar to the "Remove Widget" buttons used in Dashboard when holding Alt.)

(I don't know what the old System Preferences window of Gnome looked like, but it does look awfully similar to OS X's.)

Now, admittedly, there are of course differences (such as being able to close windows from Gnome 3's exposé view) and I don't expect everyone to invent an entirely new UI — I acknowledge that the use of a windowed environment isn't Apple's invention. But I do refute the idea that this UI hasn't taken inspiration from Lion and I refute the idea that it simply doesn't matter.

I'm not a UI expert, but I think it's unfair to take a feature from OSX compare it to Gnome and if they are similar assume that Gnome copied that feature or idea.

Really for each example we'd have to consider it's history, and how it relates to similar elements and features. Perhaps both OSX and Gnome were inspired by a third party? Maybe it's just the most obvious way to implement that feature?

You might disagree with the idea that "it simply doesn't matter", but I don't actually see any refuting of that idea in your post. Could you offer a reason why it does matter?

Well, thankfully they ripped off the window positioning mechanism from Windows 7, making Gnome 3 already better at window management than OS X.

Who cares? Does that matter?

I think the Applle ripoff of virtual desktops is a far more egrerious offender. Not that I really care; as far as I'm concerned it's better if we don't concern ourselves about who was the first to come up with an idea.

I don't see any similarities at all. Maybe they did borrow some stuff. They borrowed some stuff from Windows 7 as well (the window snapping). I don't see anything wrong with it. This is the most beautiful desktop environment I've ever seen, although I haven't had a chance to use it yet.

Just a few examples of what (I'm guessing) he was referring to:

The dock (Gnome left, OS X Right:) http://d.pr/pUgC

Launchbar / Application Launcher http://d.pr/1cGv

Exposé / Window Selector: http://d.pr/5Vr9

Neither the dock or launch bar were invented by Apple (both have history in NextOS/Openstep)

both have history in NextOS/Openstep

But OS X basically is NextOS isn't it?

Well I think the history is more complicated then that, but yes, OS X has some code and ideas from NextOS/Openstep.

Unless your new design is 10x better, borrowing a popular precedent is probably a good idea. That said, I think GNOME would benefit from studying sources beyond just Mac OS X.

KDE 4.0 also has the system configuration options all together like OSX.

Not Invented Here.

>Is it time to address to the elephant in the room yet?

UIs are constantly ripping eachother off, all over the place. What would be considered relatively different UIs to us are in the big picture very, very similar. When a particular execution of UI makes good use of solid principles, you can expect to see it everywhere else. Things that work, work, and train users to expect it. In this Apple showed us the lines along which grouping in a control panel make sense.

So to answer your question, its not that we need to acknowledge the elephant. We have, and we happen to like the elephant so much that we've gotten accustomed to it. So accustomed that we don't need to keep pointing and going "Hey guys, theres an elephant in here". You'd just be met with "yup".

Aero Snap from Windows 7 seems to have been copied as-is as well. However, maximize and minimize buttons have been removed to conserve space which is quite a radical departure from the other OSes.

Probably not to conserve space, since who needs the extra 30px on most titlebars? It's just that GNOME like to eliminate everything they possibly can, to look minimalist.

I was kind of hoping to see a "shorter" window header. There's a lot of wasted space in all those screenshots. It seems many apps (Chrome, IE, Firefox come to mind) are pushing in that direction - due probably in part to the fact that most monitors are widescreen and vertical real estate is valuable.

Deleted comment

AFAIK at least Gtk+ and WM theme switching has not been added to gnome-control-center on purpose, it has been moved to gnome-tweak-tool (which is probably not going to be installed by default).

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