GNOME 3.8 Released

You can re-enable the minimize button using the Gnome Tweak Tool without too much trouble. Admittedly, I think that button should be enabled by default, and it is annoying to have to install a different package, but the option is available.

This. I really love Gnome 3, and I really don't get all the bad vibe it's been getting. With a few extensions you can get back pretty much everything you might miss about it, and it's really slick and stable (especially compared to KDE).

For me the problem isn't so much the new stuff, but what is continually lost. For example, I was a heavy user of emblems and a frequent user of spatial mode, but they are now gone without replacement. I now stumble through hundreds of folders that all look the same.

Want to change the colors they've chosen? No can do... but you know what could do that? Windows 3.1 (and basically every other OS since ~1990) could. :/

That gigantic new clocks app is less useful than the elegant Calendar/Locations dropdown from Gnome2. It's still around in classic-mode but it no longer stays open by default (dunno why).

Five+ years ago I remember there were also helpful apps, like a "service control manager" gui, similar to the Windows MMC that actually worked. Oh, and Ubuntu removed sessions too.

My experience is that the Linux desktop loses as much as it gains every year. Almost twenty years of work and it still feels like a 0.5 alpha. The SGI I worked on 20 years ago could save my session automatically for x-sake, and the GUI was about as good.

Are you talking specifically about this version? If so, how hard/possible is it to install Gnome 3.8 on top of an existing X, say under Ubuntu 12.04 LTS? Thanks!

If you install gnome tweak tool then you can set all buttons to the title bar of your windows, except for the menu button on the left side.

As extension developer I agree with your sentiment, all the missing parts are slowly returning, Gnome 3 shell is not bad, it was just put out to the world way too early.

I was very critical when I saw the first versions of gnome shell but things are really going well for it.

It has many development languages to choose from like Python, C, C++, Vala and even Javascript. It uses CSS as styling. Several backends to output to X, Wayland coming, HTML (which is impressive and good use when owncloud is integrated). Soon you can use your desktop everywhere not like VNC but realtime.

It's not that stable: I'm running 3.2 and it is full of memory leaks, to the point that I have to restart it every so often when it's using upward of 700MB of ram.

Other than that, I agree. It can be hid away nicely so that u can work in full screen bliss, and the extension ecosystem looks like it could rival Firefox interms of variety.

(Edit: maybe the leaks are caused by the extensions I'm running, and hopefully it gets better in later versions.)

> The only thing I miss is a minimize button,

You can easily add a minimize button to gnome 3 — somewhere in the various configuration settings, there's a "title bar layout" parameter which lets you set specify which buttons to use, and where to put them (roughly).

[...rummages around...]

Ah, try the following in a shell to get the classic Apple Mac button layout; other variations should be obvious:

    gsettings set org.gnome.shell.overrides button-layout close:minimize,maximize

[The equivalent GUI app is "dconf-editor"]

So what do you think this means for MATE and Cinnamon?

I liked Gnome Shell but I have large dual monitor systems and run multiple copies of the same apps. The least worst way of dealing with those has been a taskbar. I tried to use extensions but they broke on every new release as well as having random quirks, so I gave up and use the the legacy mode. I'm hoping the new classic mode actually works well. Example issues I've found before are being unable to reorder taskbar buttons, not bringing apps to the foreground when hovering over their buttons during a drag and drop, not having a usable system monitor (I have no need to sort through 3 pages of candidates on a website) and hiding the message area.

I believe that to be status quo bias. I remember discussions with people who preferred Win3.1 to Win95.

You may or may not consider it a "major next-gen UI", but I'd throw Ubuntu's Unity in that list as well.

While I'm on the topic, I love the way Unity consolidates system bar, app title bar, and app menu bar. This single screen real estate saving technique is what keeps me using Unity. Every time I switch into Gnome, *box, etc., open Firefox, and see 3 bars all taking up screen real estate, I go back to Unity.

Are there any other shells/window managers/whatever that do this same bar consolidation???

The desktop UI has reached something of a local maximum which users are content with.

In the absence of justification for refining the desktop UI, UI vendors have developed another excuse to change shit on people: the mistaken impression that more tablety UIs are more progressive and easier to use on the desktop. Which is false on its face, given the different ergonomic constraints between a desktop PC and a tablet.

I use Gnome3 but with Cinnamon simply because its one of the few ways to be both using a newer desktop environment and have an experience (after a little bit of moving things around) that looks like what I am used to, like and want. I love tablet UIs... on my tablet. I realize designers/developers of UIs want the elegance of one UI paradigm to rule them all, but content production on a desktop and content consumption on a mobile devices are not at all alike.

I'm not convinced Lion (or Mountain Lion) is getting a 'huge' pushback from users. I heard isolated groanings on launch from people who didn't like adapting to natural scrolling or the new saving paradigm, but that all disappeared within a few weeks. My friends with Windows 8 on non-touch laptops have, after several weeks, continued to have the opinion that the touch-UI (née Metro) is 'stupid,' and they're not huge nerds either.

Weird, but GNOME 3's notification system is what sold it to me. I hated to have tray icons visible all the time, specially because I don't neeed them all the time at all. But that's just me, I guess.

people are often rosy-eyed about things they used first/most so they often think things are nicer than they really are.

i remember for the longest time i thought my time with dwm were some of the nicest and yearned for tiling wm's in windows, but after trying it again i'm really glad i switched to win vista/7.

They will yearn for Gnome 3, just like they yearned for Gnome 1 when Gnome 2 was released.

Making a new UI is fun :) People like to hack on fun things. It keeps the momentum.

I never really understood why people feel the need to keep the UI mostly the same. It may not be as good at the first release, but why do people object to them breaking everything at first? What, was everything perfect already?