Linux Mint Developer Forks Gnome 3
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Obviously that didn't happen, and I doubt that this "GNOME 3 with a GNOME 2 interface" will get very far either. GNOME 3 is pretty great for most people's workflow, and if you're particularly attached to some feature that's not present, you could try the GNOME 3 2D fallback mode (which looks pretty much just like GNOME 2), or XFCE, or LXDE. If those aren't conservative enough for you, there's still the various *box window managers, WindowMaker, pekwm, and dozens of others.
It's already the default in the current release of Linux Mint, they've just been hamstrung by the limitations of extensions in fully realizing their vision.
Also, recommending the fallback mode as a solution is disingenous. At least performance doesn't suck as badly as with the real shell, and it's not totally alien to existing users. But it still has a number of totally ridiculous and gratuitous differences to both GNOME 2 and every existing UI I've ever seen. For example how could the way panels are configured make sense to anybody?
And if that's not enough, the word is that the fallback mode is going to get killed once performance without hardware acceleration is good enough. (And the bar for that has to be pretty damn low).
as it seemed inevitable, i bit the bullet and upgraded. linux is my only OS so i use gnome3 all the time. i have grown quite fond of it. what's best is that it hides so many of the distracting ui elements (either on purpose or simply because so many widgets just don't work) that used to pull me away from my work that i feel i'm actually more productive now. plus i love that my windows key launches the lens (is it called that?).
i think gnome3 is much better than unity.
I similarly tried gnome-shell when Fedora 15 was released and hated it, but stuck with it for the same reasons. And it paid off. I'm a convert now -- I don't like everything (app-based Alt-Tab will never work for someone with 12 terminals running, I really do want nautilus icons on my desktop, etc...) but the things I don't I know how to tune.
I'm honestly more productive now than I was on gnome2. It's a great environment, and still getting better.
regarding showing nautilus style icons on the desktop, you'll want to get the gnome-tweak-tool and then go to Desktop and enable the "have file manager handle the desktop" option. You'll have to restart, logout, or restart the desktop manager to see the change, but this should do it for you.
Also, if you want Nautilus icons on the desktop, that option's available in gnome-tweak-tools (although I just found an extension that puts a menu of Nautilus bookmarks in the menu-bar).
But the traditional navigation is still present (though still a little buggy -- the MRU order sometimes gets confused, and sometimes the graphical popup of each window gets the wrong location), it's just bound to a different key and can be fixed.
Like the Windows anecdote, we have to account for the inherent confirmation bias. People who find the new environment adequate don't go online to rave about it and counter the negative opinions. The users giving the impression that this is "the most hated 'upgrade' ever", may still be the minority overall.
We are a Linux shop and we are about 60/30/10% split between Linux, Windows 7, and OSX. Fedora is what most of us are using now, but we have some Ubuntu. Everyone that uses G3 at work likes/loves it. I personally switched off Ubuntu to Fedora because F16 have newer G3 than Ubuntu with PPAs had.
I guess I'm also in the minority in that I think Unity is decent, especially with all these new vertically-challenges 16:9 screens. This problem becomes much worse on netbooks which typically have only 600px vertical, 768 if you're lucky. In a day and age where we have stuff like the Galaxy Nexus and retina displays, why are desktop and laptop screens so far behind in pickle density? Alas, an argument for another time, but I say "long live 16:10". I love unity on my HP netbook (which also has a magnesium chassis and a 1366x768 screen and TWO mouse buttons.)
Going back to Gnome2-style WM feels like a big downgrade to me. I hate the ask bar. I also really like the "alt-back tick" to switch between different windows of the same app in G3. That said, it needs an option to auto-hide the top bar and PLEASE LET ME HIDE THE ACCESSIBILITY ICON. I know there is a package in F16 to do the latter, but installing a package to hide an icon is idiotic.
-The top bar is almost entirely wasted space; -Having the bar at the top violates Fitt's law access to a window's close buttons; -Again for Fitt's law, the top-right corner is wasted because that menu is rarely accessed by most, and there's nothing in the bottom-left corner; -The messaging notifier thing frequently fails to let me know there are new messages, the accordion effect makes it hard to click individual notifications, and the popup notifications take an obscene amount of space at the bottom of the screen and often overlap with something I'm reading; -There's no way for me to tell at a glance what programs I'm running, so I often forget that I already have a window with work open and my workspaces end up even more cluttered and disorganized.
I could go on but that's just off the top of my head. All of those are objectively bad design decisions when you approach G-S from a desktop use case. Clearly they're trying to shoehorn a touch UI into a desktop UI, but they're different use cases and when an unskilled design team tries to smash them together, you get the worst of both worlds.
I don't think people dislike G-S because it's revolutionary; I think people dislike it because it's genuinely--and perhaps irreversibly given the silly politics Gnome plays--flawed.
The Mint guys seem smart, so if they feel that a fork is necessary then it's probably the only way to do what they want given the constraints. They've shown a good track record of putting quality solutions out, so if they release Cinnamon at some point I'm sure it'll continue to be developed.
Edit: I also find it a bit funny that G-S was developed at all, because with a little customization you can get extremely similar functionality in Gnome Panel. Just install AWN, enable the Scale plugin in Compiz with a hot corner at the upper-left, move your panel to the top, and set a gconf setting to remove minimize and close buttons. There--you've just re-created 80% of G-S functionality and without having to spend years in development.
And I don't follow the "no at a glance view" of your work space argument. Hit the windows button and Ctrl-Alt-Up/Down and you can actually see all your windows, with no overlap. That's something that was never possible before, and I love it.
Obviously there's a lot of taste at work. Gnome 3 is a big change, and big changes break workflows and piss off experienced users. But I honestly think a lot of your "objectively flawed" argumentation is just nonsense. Smart people can like gnome-shell and use it very effectively. You just don't like it.
Compare to Gnome Shell: Upper-right=settings/account menu (rarely used IMHO), upper-left=activities, bottom-right=missed notifications, bottom-left=nothing.
Where Windows puts something useful in all 4 corners, G-S only has something useful in 2. Obviously one can argue about what is and what isn't useful, but from a purely objective viewpoint, one can definitely say that Gnome-Shell doesn't take full advantage of those extremely important corners.
As for my other points, for example the top bar: how can you deny that it's mostly wasted space? It's 80% unclickable black bar. That's not "nonsense", that's just how it is. Other DE's put something there: the window menu bar, an activities list, etc.
True that I can get an activities list by pressing super. But that's not "at a glance." That's "at a keypress, then a visual scan, then a click to go back to what I was doing." Most other DE's provide some sort of window overview at an immediate glance, ie., an always-visible taskbar.
I think my other points also stand. I don't doubt that some people do use G-S effectively, but that doesn't mean it isn't deeply flawed. If it weren't, then more people would like it.
I guess the top bar argument is valid, though note that there are a bunch of gnome-shell extensions that like to use the space. And the significantly thicker windows panel is likewise largely a waste of space (just a big bunch of icons duplicating what in gnome-shell would be the overview).
Looks: you hate gnome-shell. Good for you. You're not alone, lots of people do. I don't begrudge you your opinions, I'm just calling you out for trying to turn them into "facts" when they clearly aren't.
Now, tell me, under Windows, how many times a day do you use a window's context menu, against, for example, the Start Menu? How many times do you expect a regular user to click on them? Furthermore, how many times can you activate a context menu from that position? Do you always use your windows maximized? You shouldn't optimize the corners of your screen for a windows button (because there might not be a window there). INSERT: the corners in gnome-shell always work the same way, independently of any window state.
Having something in every corner of the screen doesn't mean that it is universally useful.
The idea is to minimize distractions. Not to optimize for mouse clicks, hot corners, etc.
Defining your own criteria as the reason to call it deeply flawed it a bit easy IMO.
I'm also judging it by criteria used by many UI experts. How DEs approach Fitt's Law is an important metric. The law exists for a reason, because UI experts found it came up again and again in real-life testing.
Defining your own criteria by saying "works for me, wontfix" is also a bit easy.
These are the constraints for him, as far as I know (looking at the gnome-shell code):
1) extensions can't modify the original layout of the shell, because they are loaded after the shell elements are created. You can monkey-patch the shell, but only so much.
2) There is no easy way of destroying the panel (or other ui objects).
1) happens to be true because of the extensions constraint that they should have the ability to be turned on/off. That means that their entry point in the shell gets to be after the main ui objects are created. You can add new behaviors to them, and override them, except for their initialization (obviously).
The extensions system doesn't expose an API that allows for multiple entry points (for example, having extensions derive from an Extension class with Base and Restartless subclasses). This might be a design oversight, but for the most part it is sane, since it creates a base of code one can expect to be there, that any extension could depend on (again, simplifying inter-extension compatibility). Extensions written for gnome-shell won't be compatible with extensions written for cinnamon, which is extremely bad in my opinion. It means the developer community that's been growing around the platform might break into multiple directions, which can hurt users.
If there was a way of destroying the panel (or other main ui objects), though, there would be no need at all for this fork.
Care to explain?
Note: I'm a long time GNOME release-team member, GNOME sysadmin, GNOME bugmaster.
Maybe "politics" wasn't the best possible word choice but the idea is ego over engineering: a few guys at the top are making these decisions and more or less putting their fingers in their ears. At least that's the impression I've been getting.
Wording like "fuck off" is completely unacceptable; I either warn or ban people (everyone, random person, developer, etc) for that.
"A few guys at the top": That is not how it works. If you're respected, people listen to you. That is how it works within GNOME.
Saying "valid and thoughtful criticism": valid maybe for you. But GNOME isn't about supporting every different idea. If an idea completely goes against the thought behind it (quite simply: focus on one task at a time), then yeah, use something else. Having an idea and going for that, to some that comes across as arrogant. But simply stated, GNOME is not right for everyone. That is what is meant with this.
But at the same time, there is an extension system in place and loads of code is in javascript, loads of stuff can be done via gobject introspection (meaning: access libraries easily via javascript).
GNOME 3.0 was the initial release. Further improved with 3.2, more design ideas will be implemented in 3.4, etc. Not saying 3.0 is bad (IMO, it was great), but eh.. there is a goal and it hasn't been achieved.
I've been around during GNOME 2.0, a lot of the feedback was the same. I think your impression is off.
GNOME 2 is customizable using entry points common to anyone familiar with *nix, there were scripts, CSS files, dialogs, options, configurations and more. All this thinking failed after installing GNOME Shell. You may call it offending. However UNITY showing 3D buttons looking like made with a pshop plugin from end of the last century is not an option.
So how do you customize GNOME Shell? Here is the new entry point: open firefox and goto to https://extensions.gnome.org/ Yes, you change your desktop environment from within your browser. Add, try out or disable shell plugins from your browser.
And the best thing all is powered by JavaScript. The language running on every computer having a browser is used to customize your DE. So stop whining and enjoy the desktop revolution. Getting curiuos? Find the location of a extension and open it in your favorite IDE, change a string variable, save it, press ALt-F2, enter 'r' press enter and voila it is there.
There is even a debugging tool, (Alt-F2, 'lg', enter). Now go and implement whatever you were missing in GNOME 2.
It is time to see how users would build their perfect desktop interface.
For what it's worth, when I first tried out GNOME 3, I customised it the same way I customised GNOME 2: gconf-editor (and a little later, dconf-editor).
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/12/cinnamon-gnome-shell-fork-wit...
Unity isn't a fork of Gnome Shell. Unity-3D is a Compiz plugin and Unity-2D is written in Qt.
Works well in unity as well, provided you get rid of the global menu which is fundamentally incompatible with FFM.
Anyone still believes Linux has any chance on a desktop market?
Sure, it's still installed all over the place (just like Windows 98 and XP might be), but it is by all means a dead project.
Unity (and this fork, as I understand it) are based on Gnome (3!) and just replace the shell. So your list becomes
- Gnome (Gnome-Shell, Unity, this fork)
- KDE
- (list of minorities)
For me - while being a Gnome guy and preferring the gnome-shell option from that list - the choice doesn't really matter. It's as moot as arguments during the times of Windows XP were, about whether you should enable the classic mode or use the Luna theme.
2) that it's a different shell, not a fully different desktop environment isn't really that important, for a normal user it will already cause confusion (maybe even more as it requires additional explanation what's the difference between the two).
Don't get me wrong: the thing that you have a choice is one of the virtues of Linux, but at the same time what it causes is that:
a) Linux is doomed to fail on a mainstream desktop market
b) none of the available choices is and probably will never be as polished as commercial competitors (and fragmentation is one of the reasons of that)
2) Sticking with Windows comparisons: Moving from 98 to XP was different in quite some ways, to Vista and beyond was another change in lots of things.
We agree that choice is good. We disagree about whether there's too much choice right now. I see only two technical choices, KDE or Gnome, with the Gnome-Shell/Unity variants for the latter. No idea if this fork will prevail and be part of the list in the future.
The average user, the "grandma" that often comes up during these discussions, doesn't care. My gut feeling says that she'll end up with Ubuntu or Kubuntu installed (Maybe Mint. Maybe Fedora) and use what is available.
And quite frankly, what _is_ available is ready for every casual/average home user, in my opinion.
https://lists.launchpad.net/ubuntu-manual/msg02859.html
Is there a comparable tome ready for Gnome Shell based workflows? I'd really like to find one.
https://help.ubuntu.com/11.10/ubuntu-help/index.html
and the paper manual. I especially like the keyboard hints embedded as they go along.
The barrier to Linux on the desktop in that situation is not the desktop being used, but the main bit of software being used.
Provide Line 100 in Linux, or EMIS (Egton Medical Information Systems or similar) on Linux with some decent support system and you'd get a lot of uptake.
Remember that small offices (under 20 people) often have no IT department, they have the guy who knows about computers and a support contract. Other people won't know how to CC or BCC, or how to sort a column of numbers in a spreadsheet. See also Google showing that the vast majority of people were using the + operator incorrectly.
But specifically in this sub-thread:
Right now, I don't even think PCs as we know them - where we manage locally stored data and applications rather than the curated experiences popularized by Apple - will be a meaningful chunk of the market.