Comment by nu11ptr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nu11ptr | Hacker News Reader

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> GNOME 2 was perfect

I'm one of those rare people that like Gnome 3 way better than Gnome 2 or any other "windows 95" or "traditional-style" desktop. Other than command-line apps, I run like 5 main pieces of software regularly (IDE, browser, etc.) and probably 20 pieces of gui software total over the lifetime of my PC. I want something that:

1. Makes it easy to launch my main 5 apps (under 1 second)

2. Makes it fairly easy to run the 15 apps I run less often (couple secs max)

3. Looks pretty out of the box w/o customization so I can just get stuff done

The only environments I've used that tick all my boxes (subjectively of course) are Gnome 3 and macOS.

I think Gnome 3 especially does this extremely well. I flick to my upper right hot corner to expose my dock with my 5 apps - instant launch. If I want one of the other 15 I'm happy to type it in the resulting app search box. Done. I never understood why I would want to click and navigate for like 10 seconds (much less have to remember WHERE it is and WHY it is under a certain 'category') to launch one program from a Windows 95 style start menu. To each their own I guess.

EDIT: I should add a #4: Minimal customization. Gone are my days tweaking me DE exactly how I want it. While I do _some_ customization - it is very little (1 or 2 extensions)

I don't think it's rare to prefer GNOME 3 over GNOME 2; in fact, I would wager that that is the majority opinion.

By the way, I find it even faster to launch apps by pressing the Super (Windows) key and typing the app name. For example, you can press [Super] [t] [e] [Enter] to launch a GNOME Terminal instance. Just my 2c :)

I really shouldn't focus on speed. I start my apps and then let them run for a month or more (or whenever I reboot to for kernel patches), so it is more about annoyance than speed (and I've always found "start menus" annoying), so I've never bothered to figure out the keyboard shortcuts :-)

I use XFCE, a lightweight Win95 style DE. My XFCE start menu ("whisker menu") is bound to Start+Space, which lets me find apps by name. For apps I use frequently, they are bound to Start+[Key], eg, Start+F for the file manager, Start+S for Sublime Text (also used to open new windows in each app).

I do miss the Expose from macOS though, I don't think XFCE has that. (Edit: apparently this can be done with a third party tool.)

On manjaro (xfce edition), just press start and then type part of the application name.

I just figured it out a few hours ago. :-)

I bound it to Start originally, but then all my Start+[Key] bindings would open the start menu (and leave it open). This was a few years ago though, maybe the current behavior is different.

Add this to Application Autostart in xfce4-session-settings.

xcape -e 'Super_L=Control_L|Shift_L|Alt_L|Super_L|Escape'

Then bind xfce4-popup-whiskermenu to Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Super+Escape in the keyboard shortcuts. You can use another key combination, but that's what I use to avoid any plausible conflict.

The whole XFCE, LXDE, LXQT always leaves me confused but probably just because of the name :D

On Manjaro I've always used XFCE and it's a very nice DE for sure.

Yeah I think Gnome 3 nowadays is very good. Though I recently switched over to KDE and I think it’s also pretty great from a “gadget” perspective. The options offered in a right click in the file browser are a good distillation of the design differences between KDE and Gnome (as well as the screenshot widget…)

Definitely would have no issue recommending Gnome to a normal computer user. I like having the busier interface nowadays though.

It is hard to switch windows with mouse in vanilla GNOME 3

Windows or desktops? For windows, why not just alt+tab? Gnome really prefers having multiple desktops with close-to-fullscreen windows on each. And super+mouse wheel is fantastic on desktop machines, but the best experience to me is on a laptop with 3-finger swipes (because it is fast and doesn’t make me wait an animation a la osx. Which is funny because their swipe gestures are spot on on the iphone)

I found it more Intuitive to control my computer with mouse instead of keyboard shortcuts, as most regular user do.

I rarely do. I have 3 monitors and usually just place one window per monitor.

When I do switch, it is easy, flip to hot corner, pick window, done.

As you said, it takes two actions to switch windows in GNOME, but only one action in Windows (clicking an icon on taskbar).

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