I like Gnome Shell | Hacker News Reader

I like Gnome Shell

malexandre.fr

119 pointsThagor80 comments

I tried really hard to keep using Gnome Shell, and even managed to do so for many months. But then there was the 6 monthly version bump and all the extensions broke.

I have two problems. The first (shared with Unity) is that I have a dual monitor setup with large screens. I usually have at least two of each top level window (eg emacs, browser) and many terminals. A panel has turned out to be the most productive way of managing them, providing the panel lets you do drag and drop to change ordering. Every Gnome release cycle the old panels break, new ones appear, and they keep missing functionality. The only way to get a decent stable usable one is to use fallback mode which Gnome is killing in the next release.

The second problem is "random stuff". When I tried Gnome Shell the most recent time, the System Monitor applet showed up at the bottom and only if you moved your mouse to the bottom of the screen. That is beyond spectacularly useless - it needs to be always visible. You get many many niggles like that, that add up to a whole lot of annoyance.

It seems to me that the whole experience is being optimised for a single 11 inch screen where one program at a time is run. Quite frankly Android is a better bet in that kind of scenario.

>When I tried Gnome Shell the most recent time, the System Monitor applet showed up at the bottom and only if you moved your mouse to the bottom of the screen. That is beyond spectacularly useless - it needs to be always visible.

But the System Monitor is an external extension to the shell; the problem you have with it is not gnome-shell's fault at all.

That makes things worse! Am I supposed to not use the System Monitor at all and count that as an improvement? I believe the System Monitor applet is somewhat part of the official extensions - ie it is in the gnome-shell-extensions package.

This is one of many little niggles that add up to an unpleasant experience. Another example is whether additional workspaces go horizontally or vertically.

AFAIK, there are no official extensions. The gnome-shell-extensions package is just a collection of extensions which grew together in a development repo before the extensions website (http://extensions.gnome.org) existed.

From the website:

> Since extensions are created outside of the normal GNOME design and development process, they are supported by their authors, rather than by the GNOME community. Some features first implemented as extensions might find their way into future versions of GNOME.

For another system monitor (this one attaches to the panel, so it's always visible, and is plenty configurable), check https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/120/system-monitor/

EDIT: GNOME's stance on extensions might be changing, see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=685744

I don't actually want a choice! When I use Gnome 2 or Gnome 3 fallback mode, there is exactly one system monitor and it works. The extensions site lists 3 named system monitor and 3 pages of search results with similar descriptions. And my prior experience has been every extension breaks on Gnome version change. And usually they don't end updated so I have to go find another set of extensions.

I am one of those (apparently few) people who actually agree with the Gnome approach of less configurability and options. (Right up until one I use is removed of course!) As standard I do not need a large choice of system monitors, workspace managers, window switchers, volume menus etc. I need one good official one, that works out of the box and is still present as Gnome does its biannual update.

This shifting blame in a lazy fashion, I see this a lot with open source projects.

If you want to provide a good desktop experience, go the distance. Make sure I have a usable system, be accountable for everything that is installed by default and/or I need to actually use the system you are offering.

I don't care if Apple uses a subcontractor to make their Activity Monitor app. If it doesn't work, it's Apple's fault.

> Make sure I have a usable system, be accountable for everything that is installed by default and/or I need to actually use the system you are offering.

Agreed. But how does that apply here, really? The system monitor is not installed by default and is not needed to use the system GNOME is offering. The case here is more alike if Ubuntu bundled some vim plugin into their default installation and people throwed shit at vim because the plugin doesn't work.

And I'm sure that's exactly what people would do. It isn't fair, but we're ever going to have the year of the linux desktop, somebody needs to start owning these little mistakes and quirks.

Raymond Chen from Microsoft on maintaining backward compatibility from Windows 95 to Windows XP:

Look at the scenario from the customer's standpoint. You bought programs X, Y and Z. You then upgraded to Windows XP. Your computer now crashes randomly, and program Z doesn't work at all. You're going to tell your friends, "Don't upgrade to Windows XP. It crashes randomly, and it's not compatible with program Z." Are you going to debug your system to determine that program X is causing the crashes, and that program Z doesn't work because it is using undocumented window messages? Of course not. You're going to return the Windows XP box for a refund. (You bought programs X, Y, and Z some months ago. The 30-day return policy no longer applies to them. The only thing you can return is Windows XP.)

...

This is just the tip of the iceberg with respect to application compatibility. I could probably write for months solely about bad things apps do and what we had to do to get them to work again (often in spite of themselves). Which is why I get particularly furious when people accuse Microsoft of maliciously breaking applications during OS upgrades. If any application failed to run on Windows 95, I took it as a personal failure. I spent many sleepless nights fixing bugs in third-party programs just so they could keep running on Windows 95. (Games were the worst. Often the game vendor didn't even care that their program didn't run on Windows 95!)

I agree with the last bit. Neither Gnome nor Canonical have any competing devices in the mobile market. They don't have developer base or user mass to support their ambitious mobile projects. Why leave desktop users behind in hope that mobile users will pick up Gnome or Unity. Even if they are able to bring their shells to market, the deciding factor in mobile market is availability of quality application. A hugely successful project like Android has not made its mark in tablet market due to lack of tablet optimized apps. All this mobile-driven development is work in futility.

I too am mystified by Gnome and Canonical. If they want to compete in the tablet/mobile space then they need to be good at something. Anything will do such as price, freedom, apps, developer productivity, distribution, popularity, localization, tools, privacy, security etc but I can't name a single thing. And the competition is constantly improving - being better than Android/iOS today is useless if you ship in 3 years. Not to mention Mozilla/Firefox are also messing in this space diluting effort and attention even more.

The only thing Gnome and Canonical have to show so far is a homescreen/launcher which is by far the least useful/interesting part of the tablet/mobile experience.

On the being constructive side, what they should be doing is what happened to the GNU project. Do not try to take over the whole world with your stuff all at once. Instead run parts on existing platforms, and provide alternatives or replacements for the other components until it is possible to run completely "native". This way the development effort can be used most effectively, feedback is quick, and you have a working system from day one. What Gnome and Canonical seem to be doing is following the model of Hurd!

> The only thing Gnome and Canonical have to show so far is a homescreen/launcher which is by far the least useful/interesting part of the tablet/mobile experience.

I wish the general public agreed, but the number of awful websites for new desktop wallpapers or icons or mouse pointers or other trivial customisations tells me that a lot of people think the 'home screen interface' is super important, and they don't care (or even know) about other more important things.

Canonical and Gnome have destroyed my previous arguments about the benefits of benign dictators or of directed committees. There's some gentle backlash against Ubuntu (a little bit is from people who know what they're talking about, a lot of it is from people who just don't like the popular Ubuntu) and there's similar backlash against some of the Gnome stuff.

I really wish that tablet / phone / touch interface things were spun off into separate projects, to allow people to continue polishing existing projects rather than focusing on monumental change. That'd allow people to continue using one interface on desktops and the other on tablets. Because they are different, and have different needs, and you can't really kludge one metaphor onto both devices.

Once users are happy with everything else, then they turn to customising home screens. If the entire system was only a home screen no one would touch it! (And arguably many are doing personalization rather than customization.)

That's what KDE has done: the big rewrite of KDE4 let them use the same libraries to power two different shells, for distinct purposes. That's a good way of doing it. Though it does not solve the problem for the rest of the applications.

> The first (shared with Unity) is that I have a dual monitor setup with large screens.

Unity supports large multiple-monitor set-ups without any issues! Each monitor is provided with a copy of the launcher. IMO this makes it far easier to interact with applications when using a mouse.

Personally, I have Unity running across 3 x 24" screens without any issues at all.

Luckily it's very easy to disable having the launcher on every screen because that's just about the most annoying possible default.

It really gets in the way of dragging windows across monitors. Let alone having windows placed "over the fold". Something I often do when things start getting crowded.

I first started using GNOME when GNOME 1 came out. GNOME 1 and 2 weren't ever very satisfactory for me, so I spent a lot of time trying alternate window managers (mostly WindowMaker and openbox, but I also spent a considerable amount of time using awesome).

GNOME Shell is my favorite GNOME so far. I wish the extension system was documented (I would like to write some of my own, but the intitial investment is too high right now). I'm currently just using two extensions (Message Notifier and windowNavigator).

The problem has never been Gnome Shell though, and the flak against would never have occurred if a few simple things had been done. A lot of people love Gnome Shell, but many more people simply hate it. But the Gnome developers insisted that they knew best, and that they alone had the "One True Way". And this lead to a lot of shoddy PR that everyone involved should have known was coming -- telling people that they're wrong for disliking something never wins you support.

After some time using (and customizing) it, I now quite like Gnome Shell but its sudden major change from Gnome 2 left me pretty shell shocked (arf) at first.

And to be at all comfortable with it I'm using about 15 extensions.

So now I see Gnome Shell as basically the core of a framework to develop your own desktop system. Not ideal, but I like it more than xfce (and cinnamon, last time I tried it).

Ubuntu Unity and Gnome Shell on Gnome 3 both seem to take a few weeks to 'get into' I find.

Currently GS on Gnome 3.6 as provided by the Gnome Ubuntu Remix 12.10 has my attention, seems a good fit to my end user like use cases. The only plug-in at present is the one to put the hibernate command back on the power/system settings menu.

I find GS gives me the illusion of being more responsive (perhaps because when invoking the search screen there is no dynamic search going on) and is somehow 'quieter' in operation.

My main problem is the lack of task bar: - I need to see what windows I have open, it gives me context - Without a taskbar, I'm not able to switch windows quickly

I like the visual context too, some of the dock extensions did a fine job last time I played with it.

The problem with relying extensions is that the Gnome team don't care about or even particularly like third party extensions and have no qualms about breaking them every update.

I think that this is more to do with just the fact that it's so new and immature that it's going to take a while for things to settle down... I expect that the interfaces the extensions depend on should stabilise fairly soon.

Like many others I also gave Gnome Shell a chance to impress, I recently tried 3.6 for a few days... but

1. It is an unacceptable UX to go "I wish I had feature X, but I don't, so lets go google search for a shell extension that provides it" then use the extension affiliation for Chrome / FF to install it. I got way too frustrated after looking for a way to make the super key not take over the whole screen (like Win7 / Unity don't)

2. There is a dire lack of a unsettings / Ubuntu Tweak style configuration editor for Gnome Shell. I don't want to read a book to figure out what my desktop can or can't do in the form of the shell manpages or help pages. I don't want to be forced into having the panel only show up in superkey mode, or to have to scrounge for a setting to enable that behavior, etc

3. I just plain don't like the usage of web technologies as a way to alter the desktop. In general, scripting languages inherently waste memory and cycles in favor of getting something done fast. But when you want a fast responsive desktop maybe the overhead of jaggermonkey (I think that is the JS backend they are using) is just insane.

How to disable the super key overview manually:

Edit /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/main.js

Comment this line:

global.display.connect('overlay-key', Lang.bind(overview, overview.toggle));

Restart gnome-shell with this command:

gnome-shell --replace

It's just Javascript, so it's very easy.

That's an 800+ line, system-wide file under the control of the package manager. Just because it's "easy" to hack it doesn't make it a good option.

I'm sorry, but this is rubbish. You are talking about editing a file in /usr, which means your fix is guaranteed to break at the next upgrade. And this is not "easy". Or at least not "easy" in the sense that Gnome "is not meant for users who don't want to select their terminal emulators". This is neither discoverable nor maintainable.

What's wrong with sane defaults and a configuration panel?

I have never enjoyed the idea of extensions for essential functionalities like power menu. With release of newer versions of Gnome Shell every 6-8 months, extensions break. Like Firefox, there will always be some extensions not working. You have to log-out to enable extensions. I don't like to reboot or log-out my Linux box, not for trivial things like extensions. I only reboot when there is a kernel update.

I am still unable to understand where do they want to take notification.

I like both Gnome and Unity. Gnome Foundations and Canonical should be left to pursue their own objective goals as long as they don't destroy projects that are used by other Desktop Environments like XFCE, etc.

You don't need to log out to enable extensions, just reload gnome shell. Press Alt-F2 and type 'r' without quotes.

I actually don't even need to do this, they just enable immediately. (Version 3.6.1, if that's relevant.)

Extensions enable and disable without relogin at least since 3.2.

Like other comments, I don't need to reload or log out my gnome shell when adding an extension. But it's true that I used Shell only for the last 6 months, so I'm not really aware of the broken extension problem, but it's clear that it can be a huge probleme, especially because even though Shell is good, it misses some things out of the box that are really useful, like I said in my blog post.

What distro are you running Gnome on? I ran 3.6 on Archlinux and some extensions didn't come up automatically. For example, the gnome-shell-system-monitor doesn't apply changes without log-out (I am not sure about reload, never tried that).

I'm currently on Linux Mint, and before that I used Gnome Shell with Ubuntu 12.04.

"Power Off" is now a default option in 3.6. It seems like they're using extensions to get a feel of what the most popular feature requests are, then adding them to the default experience. You may disagree with it, but a hard number of extension installs is more to go on a couple blog posts.

I Like (or liked) Gnome Shell too. But to me it is still broken. There are a lot of whys that i don't understand:

Why is it that some apps maximize, or take up half the screen and lose their title bar? I like my title bars. This should be an all or none thing.

Why are all the themes I find broken? I found the answer to this myself. The latest gnome 3 has a lot of changes which essentially break a lot of themes. I dislike the main theme as i find it is too "fat". Things are bigger than they need to be, and it makes me feel stupid. an alternate theme would fix this easily, as things are smaller in certain themes. Sadly my favourite shiki-colors themes are probably never going to support gtk3 and all the other gnome 3 themes i have found are broken in 3.6.

Why have you removed configuration options that you had in gnome 2? I found a lot of what i was missing in gnome tweak tool, But it seems like someone has decided that I don’t need those options, and it makes me feel stupid.

Why has connect to remote server in nautilus become unhelpful? I know from my experience from linux in teh past few years that i can access windows shares by going smb:// and ssh with sftp://, but in gnome 2 i had a nice list of what woul work, and what i required to enter to get to it. It was helpful when i was learning my way around accessing what i need to at my job. In gnome 3 i have a location bar to enter a URI, which seems daunting and unhelpful.

All these whys have lead me to drop gnome 3 at the current time and im trying to get along in xfce on another, which was okay until i found screen tearing is still a problem. At the moment im still using ubuntu 11.04 on my main work PC, and its just started telling me it is no longer supported, and im still on the fence of what to do.

I don’t want to go back to windows, I will miss the terminal dearly, and OSX is not for me, but i cant find a new linux based OS im currently happy to work on :(

Disappearing title bar is up to applications developers, not shell but the trend is to hide them when window is maximized.

> I dislike the main theme as i find it is too "fat".

But you just said you love title bars. They are fat space-hogs by definition. Regardless of theme.

>Why have you removed configuration options that you had in gnome 2? I found a lot of what i was missing in gnome tweak tool, But it seems like someone has decided that I don’t need those options, and it makes me feel stupid.

Because 1. GNOME is not a final product. It'll never be. 2. Regular users really doesn't miss them.

I don't think its contradictory that I want title bars and thinner theme. The title bar serves as the main handle to move a window. When its taken away it makes it hard to pull the window out of being maximized, depending on where there is free space that will let me drag a window around to pop it out of its maximized state. The title bar serves a purpose. The extra padding on tabs, buttons and menus doesn't help me much as I know what i am looking for.

I fully understand that gnome 3 isn't a final product, and like basically all Open Source software it is available "as is" and without any guarantee that it is fit for your purpose. I would have thought that the "regular user" for a system like gnome was a person like me. I guess that is no longer the case, which is fine, its just hard finding a new desktop environment that i'm comfortable in.

I was actually a fan of Gnome Shell until I went to the LinuxCon 2011 and started talking to the devs. It seems to me that they are trying to turn Gnome into something meant for beginning users while trying to train them with "good" habits. Example: shutdown can only be achieved by holding alt (without gnome-tweak). Considering I have limited power when I'm mobile, I usually shutdown (bootup time is negligible compared to standby power-loss on my netbook).

That being said, I've switched to Cinnamon and haven't looked back: http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/

'good habits' apparently don't extend to having a quickbar for frequently used programs. I don't understand the horror of that idea - pretty much everyone else, including mobile OSes, give the user the opportunity to be able to start favourite programs with a single action.

GNOME Shell has had a dock for favourite applications starting with 3.0. It's on the left side in overview.

"Power Off" is a default user menu entry in Gnome 3.6 now. :)

Seems like Gnome Shell has been in the headlines quite a bit lately, which is kind of weird since it's been about two months since the last version was released.

The articles on the development philosophy behind Gnome Shell are indeed troubling, but I still think Gnome is getting much better with each release and I can't imagine using a different desktop environment. As a developer who is acutely aware of design and user experience patterns, so much so I can't bring myself to use "ugly" programs even if they might be useful (which is why I use Sublime for coding), Gnome satisfies all my urges. If I wasn't so vain I know I'd try a tiling manager like Xmonad or Awesome, and those can be customized to look decent but Gnome satisfies all my design needs out of the box (with a couple one-click-install extensions for functional enhancements.)

Linux for the hackery stuff and tools, Gnome Shell for a beautiful and elegant user interface. And isn't that why OS X has become so popular with hackers these days? A Gnome installation is pretty much that, but with more emphasis on the hacking and open source aspect.

I like gnome shell, (although I like kde even more so I use that), but that doesn't mean I'm going to agree with the outrageous views expounded by the gnome devs: "Please Remove the tray icon functionality we don't use it anymore", "You have to decide if you are a gnome app or not", "I'm against having use themes", etc. I don't think it is the gnome shell that was under attack recently it was the attitude of the gnome 3.0 towards the user/contributors.

> There is of course the Alt+Tab switch window

To be more precise, the ALT+Tab works as in Mac (I believe). It switches between windows of the same application. Not between applications themselves. Which I just don't get.

Whenever doing anything I type in Vim in a Terminal, Alt+TAB to another application, and check the output. I am almost never in the same application between an Alt+Tab. It baffles me that this is default behaviour.

You can change the behaviour of the alt+tab via extension. I'm not sure I'm using one, but the first window selected by an alt+tab is the previous one.

There is rapid change in GS at present, and they are still puggling about with application switching.

GS 3.6 as on Gnome Ubuntu Remix, no extensions

Alt-Tab switches between applications, irrespective of how many windows a given application has open.

Alt-' switches between windows of the currently selected application.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8403291/gs-alt-tab.jpg

In the screen grab above, I've pressed Alt-Tab and reached the terminal window, then pressed Alt-` and am cycling between the two terminals. In practice you keep your thumb on the Alt and the pinky switches between the tab and ` (back-tick is above the tab on UK keyboard, it might be ~ on US keyboard, my memory fails).

Gnome shell breaking Alt+Tab is why I switched to XFCE / KDE and will not be returning until it's restored.

I also like it, needs some customizing though. But that's quickly done (and luckily possible at all.. yes i look at you Windows and Mac Users with the default settings all over! )

"The only missing point in here is the selection of a window while in explode mode. Maybe there is a way, but I haven't found it yet."

Marc has nailed it here for me. On the rare occasions I use the 'exploded view' I want to be able to tab between the windows.

I mainly use Alt-Tab and Alt-backtick to move between applications and windows at present, but adding a keyboard mode for switching within the dash would help with organising workspaces by task irrespective of application...

In the blog's comments, Felipe Morales linked this extension : https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/10/windownavigator/, and it's quite good. You can use alt+<Number> to select a window while in 'exploded view'.

Very nice too, works with GS 3.6 as in Gnome Ubuntu Remix 12.10. Thanks for pointing out the link.

I think some functionality along these lines should be provided by the basic GS though.

Felipe here: I would also recommend another extension that provided window search abilities to the overview, so I could type "hacker news" or "handler.py" and go to the window I needed to, but it doesn't seem to be updated to gnome 3.6. I've been looking at the code and I can't figure out what is wrong with it.

[1]: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/317/window-display/

I rarely use that many windows!

The 'exploded' window view shows windows on current workspace so being able to select one from the keyboard means I can group the windows by task/project in different workspaces.

Oh, you mean perform actions on the windows without leaving the overview? That would be nice.

EDIT: I seem to be have been a bit confused before.

This is actually an accessibility problem and as such it should just work by default (no extensions or anything). The difficulty is spending time to figure out the best way to do this as well as trying&developing the various solutions. I do hope it gets solved soon (GNOME 3.8 or 3.10).

Can anyone speak to how this compares to Quicksilver on OS X? It sounds similar, albeit with the added ability of being able to manage window sizing.

Never used OS X but Unity search seems to be better than Gnome's.

Unity is probably slightly better, but Gnome Shell's is a little quicker in my experience. Aside from that, Unity's search is getting Amazon ads and I can't imagine that's going to be positive for the user experience.

There is a kill-switch in System Settings, has been since the brown stuff hit the fan and I expect Canonical realised they had to do something. This has been discussed in another current HN thread...

apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping

Like most things in Linux, terminal commands are the solution to everything, so I like comparing the out-of-box experiences. :)

Gnome-Do is pretty precisely analogous to OS X's Quicksilver.

Gnome 3 is the "Windows Vista" equivalent of Linux. It looks better? yes, but at what cost? it takes a lot more resources. I hope Gnome 4 pulls a "Windows 7" and comes back as a modern, optimized DE, with a "no 50 watts GPU/CPU required" mode for people that don't want/have it. Until then, Mate desktop it is.

I have no graphic card, and just an old i5 from 2011. It doesn't eat much of my computer power. For a light processor maybe, but I can't talk about that.

Old i5 from 2011, I hope you are trolling me.

You know just how hugely powerful an i5 processor is? the "no graphics card" that you actually have inside your CPU is more powerful than the latest gamer graphics card from 5 years ago. And consumes a lot of power too.

Gnome 2 ran quite fast on a 500 Mhz ARMv5, 200 milliWatts idle. Yes, it is a niche application, but it shows just how much hardware (and batteries!) Gnome 3 needs.

Your original post compared Gnome 3's performance to Windows 7. Windows RT is even snappier than Windows 7, and I doubt it'd be performant at all on the machine you mention.

I run Gnome 3 on a four year old laptop with a Core 2 Duo and Intel GMA X3100* integrated graphics. No performance issues.

* View the internet in multiple colors! Run games almost a decade old on "low" settings! Sometimes capable of displaying HD YouTube videos without jittering!

My GPU is from 2007 or so and doesn't have a fan. It runs GNOME 3 perfectly fine. At that time it wasn't the fastest; I went for the cheapest fanless GPU that would still be supported by Linux.

That compositing requires more resources, yes, but IMO you're exaggerating on the resource requirements.

You still are talking about a x86 architecture with a discrete GPU. It would be nice if it worked fast with no GPU at all like Gnome 2 did, so it can be used in Virtual machines, OSes with crappy drivers (*BSDs), weird architectures (MIPS, ARM, etc.)

Gnome 3 sacrificed all that compatibility to gain some nices graphics, I think it's not worth it.

It doesn't require a GPU for hardware acceleration anymore, Gnome 3.6 uses LLVM for hardware where GPU acceleration isn't available.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAxM...

So it in case you don't have a GPU, it only requires a huge assload of CPU to work.

Why not turn the damn effects off? it is that hard?

Chiming in here to say Gnome has run great on all the hardware I've tried it on, which is more than I can say for Unity which is jittery on even mid/high-end-ish hardware.

I really like gnome shell. My rule of thumb is once you get it working don't go for updates.

You've spelt 'thoughts' wrong.

I was about to correct your spelling, but decided to look it up just in case and learned something: while in the US the past tense of spell is "spelled" other English speaking countries use both "spelled" and "spelt"...

I guess it's ok to mention the spelling issue as the typo is located in the top bar of the blog, not in an obscure comment.

Another glitch that could be corrected: the Me/Twitter link links to twitter.com, not to the author's profile.

Thanks.

i loved gnome2 but i dont like the gnome-shell! gtk3 is really really cool and thanks to gnometk3 we have mate and Cinemone

but the best thing is elementary os Luna this is an amazing distro and the best desktop for me.

i also like crunchbang linux on slower boxes.

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