With all due respect, my take on Gnome 3 is as follows:
I appreciate the hard work that goes into Suse and Gnome. I really do. I’ve purchased SLED before (although I ended up using OpenSuse instead), so I’ve contributed in at least one way to the community. I’ve coded in C, C++, and other languages, and I wish I were as smart as the developers who create and maintain Gnome. However, I have stopped using Gnome as of the version 3.2 release.
I believe that Gnome has lost sight of its purpose. A desktop environment is a means to and end; it is not the end in and of itself. A desktop environment is meant to facilitate the use of all other programs of the system. Gnome 3 does not do that though, because it is too cluttered. It is built around being pretty and dazzling the user. A couple of years ago, when OpenSuse started packaging KDE 4 with its releases and stopped packaging KDE 3, I switched to using Gnome 2. KDE 4 was not an improvement over KDE 3 because it became too cluttered and had too much eye candy. A desktop should focus more on being functional than on providing eye candy. I didn’t like the “plasma” or the widgets of KDE 4. In the same way, Gnome 3 has too much candy and is too “busy.” I also believe that the “activities” tab that a user must click on in order to launch programs does not facilitate ease of use.
I recently upgraded my system from Suse 11.3 to 12.1. I was expecting Gnome v3 to have some minor changes that would make it slightly faster or fix some bugs. I was shocked at the way it has changed radically. I did not even recognize it. I thought I had added another desktop by mistake. Radical overnight change is usually not a good thing. History shows us that too many radical progressive changes caused civilizations to fall. I know I’m not the only one who believes so, and I think there are a lot of people out there who have silently switched from Gnome to XFCE without bothering to post about it. But with ample free time tonight, I’m sitting here with a beverage and listening to some concert piano while I type this. I respect the hard work of the developers of Gnome, but I can no longer use Gnome as my desktop.
Now that Suse does not come packaged with Gnome 2, I have switched to using KDE 3.5.10, which I added with the “one-click-install.” I just discovered KDE 3.5.10 yesterday, and was very pleased to find out that it is still available for Suse. Without it, I would either use XFCE or use another GNU/Linux distribution altogether. I like how it has a small amount of eye candy, yet is conservative and focused on functionality. I was seriously considering switching from Suse to another distro because of Gnome 3. That’s really saying something too, because I have been using Suse for years, and have only experimented with other distros. When KDE 3.5 is no longer available for Suse some day, I won’t know what to do.
I’m a kde user and love it.
kde4 is everything kde3 was and more. You should look again at it.
Funny, right now I’m typing to you from 12.1 Gnome 3 Tumbleweed (I do a deal of experimenting) and it’s certainly not like Gnome 2 and takes some getting your head around. But IMO, it is great, even though kde has my heart.
KDE 4 was not an improvement over KDE 3 because it became too cluttered and had too much eye candy. A desktop should focus more on being functional than on providing eye candy. I didn’t like the “plasma” or the widgets of KDE
I use KDE 4, and have a very minimal desktop layout, with everything on the panel along the bottom, just as I essentially had with KDE 3. I have the desktop theme and icons set as I like them, and my desktop wallpaper is simply a favourite alpine image. I have no desktop clutter. It essentially behaves as an evolved KDE 3. As Carl mentioned, maybe you should take another look at it.
KDE 4.0/4.1: Yes, I agreed with you completely! Quick, back to KDE 3.5.10!
KDE4.4: Hmm, not so bad anymore… But Dolphin? Where’s my wunderbar Konqueror?
KDE 4.6: OK, not so fast as 3.5, but I like the wobbly windows. Most functionality is back, and a lot of new useful things, like places in Dolphin…
KDE 4.7: Definitely a keeper, but to have performance akin to 3.5 I have to disable 3D effects (ALT+SHIFT+F12)
KDE 4.8: Wow! KDE 4.7 on steroids! MUCH faster, how is it possible? I think the developers did something illegal, or perhaps are into black magic… The non-KDE apps that ran faster with composite disabled? Not so anymore. 4.8 is definitely a keeper.
So, as the guys above said: you may want to take another (unprejudiced) look at it.
(But perhaps we’ll go through this cycle again with KDE 5.x)
My reaction to gnome 3 is similar. I actually gave up on gnome while it was still at gnome-2. It worked fine at that stage, but it was getting to be too hard to configure it the way I wanted. I somehow got the feeling that the gnome developers were trying to tell me how to use my computer. At that time, I tried XFCE and KDE4 (I think it was 4.4.4 at that time). Of those, I preferred XFCE, but I had some technical problems with it, and those problems did not show up in KDE4. So I went with KDE4.
I agree with other commenters. KDE4 has continued to improve. Yes, it has more eye candy than I need, but it mostly works very well and is easily configurable for use in the way that I like. Gnome-3 is sort-of usable, better in fallback mode than full gnome shell mode, but it is not nearly as usable as XFCE or KDE4.
At present, I am primarily using KDE4, except on an older slower system where I mainly use icewm (the full icewm, not the “lite” version that is auto-installed).
If the desktop would suit only the technical user then *nix would not
attract the normal user and therefor growth in a userbase.
This is one issue that *nix faces in competing between Windows and OSX.
Eye candy is a big piece of a desktop and so is the uniform UI. One
problem that plaques *nix desktops are the not so uniform approach in
applications.
Gome 3 will please a certain circle of people and so does KDE 4. Since
it is all about free choice, anyone can use the old version if it suits
better.
To me it seems that most people argue from a technical perspective. How
does the current UI suit a regular user? Maybe it is what people want.
To me Gnome 3 was interesting to work with, though it is not a desktop i
would like to use.
But the lesser option approach seems to be right since most people don’t
want to deal with to many option that confuse more than they help.
On 2012-03-24 06:56, JohnNinCO wrote:
> I believe that Gnome has lost sight of its purpose. A desktop
> environment is a means to and end; it is not the end in and of itself. A
> desktop environment is meant to facilitate the use of all other programs
> of the system. Gnome 3 does not do that though, because it is too
> cluttered. It is built around being pretty and dazzling the user.
I agree entirely.
I have been a gnome user for 15 years, with some KDE apps. Now in 12.1 I
use xfce, it is similar to what gnome was.
Have you seen Windows 8? It also has this kind of bloat.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 05:56:02 +0000, JohnNinCO wrote:
> I believe that Gnome has lost sight of its purpose. A desktop
> environment is a means to and end; it is not the end in and of itself. A
> desktop environment is meant to facilitate the use of all other programs
> of the system. Gnome 3 does not do that though, because it is too
> cluttered. It is built around being pretty and dazzling the user.
I don’t see how it can be too cluttered - in my experience, it’s exactly
the opposite - my desktop on all of my G3 systems is completely blank
except for the running apps.
I find it facilitates using apps quite well, because there’s no clutter.
Perhaps you’re looking at fallback mode, which looks more like G2? I
find having icons/folders/whatnot on the desktop clutters things up.
On 3/24/2012 1:21 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 05:56:02 +0000, JohnNinCO wrote:
>
>> I believe that Gnome has lost sight of its purpose. A desktop
>> environment is a means to and end; it is not the end in and of itself. A
>> desktop environment is meant to facilitate the use of all other programs
>> of the system. Gnome 3 does not do that though, because it is too
>> cluttered. It is built around being pretty and dazzling the user.
>
> I don’t see how it can be too cluttered - in my experience, it’s exactly
> the opposite - my desktop on all of my G3 systems is completely blank
> except for the running apps.
>
> I find it facilitates using apps quite well, because there’s no clutter.
>
> Perhaps you’re looking at fallback mode, which looks more like G2? I
> find having icons/folders/whatnot on the desktop clutters things up.
>
> Jim
>
Actually i read even on Windows blogs that people consider Cinnamon as a
alternative in regard to Win8.
I need to try that out…
On 3/24/2012 8:40 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 21:27:57 +0000, JoergJaeger wrote:
>
>> Actually i read even on Windows blogs that people consider Cinnamon as a
>> alternative in regard to Win8.
>> I need to try that out…
>
> I didn’t even know that was an option on Windows…
>
> Jim
>
>
>
Haha, na of course with Linux. But that would be kind of awesome if
there was an option.
Gnome 3 is really growing on me. But having said that I only use it on my own laptop at home. At work I use SLED11. It remains to be seen how Gnome 3 would perform in that environment. I wonder which desktop SUSE will choose for the next generation of Enterprise products.
Clutter on GNOME 3 ?? Maybe after too many visits at http://extensions.gnome.org , but not “as is”. Yes, it’s different, yes, one has to get used to it. But GNOME3 got me, after a couple of weeks of finding out. ATM I can say I use GNOME 3 and KDE completely as and when I like it. Must say though that KDE 4.8 still impresses me.
On Sun, 25 Mar 2012 19:06:02 +0000, Knurpht wrote:
> Clutter on GNOME 3 ?? Maybe after too many visits at
> http://extensions.gnome.org , but not “as is”. Yes, it’s different, yes,
> one has to get used to it. But GNOME3 got me, after a couple of weeks of
> finding out. ATM I can say I use GNOME 3 and KDE completely as and when
> I like it. Must say though that KDE 4.8 still impresses me.
The two things that get me about the extensions.gnome.org site are that
(a) some of the extensions I’ve installed from there are no longer
available there, and (b) there doesn’t seem to be any way to be notified
when an extension is updated.
As a result, I’ve got a couple extensions that I’ve installed that I
haven’t found updates for (they’re probably on github, which means
download/compile, no biggie for me but kinda defeats the purpose of the
extensions site), and even visiting the site, the only way to see if
there are any updates is to go through each of your installed extensions,
one by one, and see which ones say “there’s a newer version available”.
That piece of G3 is about the only thing that annoys me.
>
>With all due respect, my take on Gnome 3 is as follows:
>
>I appreciate the hard work that goes into Suse and Gnome. I really do.
>I’ve purchased SLED before (although I ended up using OpenSuse instead),
>so I’ve contributed in at least one way to the community. I’ve coded in
>C, C++, and other languages, and I wish I were as smart as the
>developers who create and maintain Gnome. However, I have stopped using
>Gnome as of the version 3.2 release.
>
>I believe that Gnome has lost sight of its purpose. A desktop
>environment is a means to and end; it is not the end in and of itself. A
>desktop environment is meant to facilitate the use of all other programs
>of the system. Gnome 3 does not do that though, because it is too
>cluttered. It is built around being pretty and dazzling the user. A
>couple of years ago, when OpenSuse started packaging KDE 4 with its
>releases and stopped packaging KDE 3, I switched to using Gnome 2. KDE 4
>was not an improvement over KDE 3 because it became too cluttered and
>had too much eye candy. A desktop should focus more on being functional
>than on providing eye candy. I didn’t like the “plasma” or the
>widgets of KDE 4. In the same way, Gnome 3 has too much candy and is too
>“busy.” I also believe that the “activities” tab that a user
>must click on in order to launch programs does not facilitate ease of
>use.
>
>I recently upgraded my system from Suse 11.3 to 12.1. I was expecting
>Gnome v3 to have some minor changes that would make it slightly faster
>or fix some bugs. I was shocked at the way it has changed radically. I
>did not even recognize it. I thought I had added another desktop by
>mistake. Radical overnight change is usually not a good thing. History
>shows us that too many radical progressive changes caused civilizations
>to fall. I know I’m not the only one who believes so, and I think there
>are a lot of people out there who have silently switched from Gnome to
>XFCE without bothering to post about it. But with ample free time
>tonight, I’m sitting here with a beverage and listening to some concert
>piano while I type this. I respect the hard work of the developers of
>Gnome, but I can no longer use Gnome as my desktop.
>
>Now that Suse does not come packaged with Gnome 2, I have switched to
>using KDE 3.5.10, which I added with the “one-click-install.” I just
>discovered KDE 3.5.10 yesterday, and was very pleased to find out that
>it is still available for Suse. Without it, I would either use XFCE or
>use another GNU/Linux distribution altogether. I like how it has a small
>amount of eye candy, yet is conservative and focused on functionality. I
>was seriously considering switching from Suse to another distro because
>of Gnome 3. That’s really saying something too, because I have been
>using Suse for years, and have only experimented with other distros.
>When KDE 3.5 is no longer available for Suse some day, I won’t know what
>to do.
I hear you. I never got along with Gnome. I really like KDE 3.5.
I wouldn’t touch KDE 4 due to the bugginess. I think they have finally
solved most of it except for the kmail2/kdepim/akonidi disaster. Still
way to much eye heroin. I understand they are trying to appeal to
shallower folks, but people that have grown to command line comfortably
for some things (like troubleshooting) find that too distracting and
really want some way to really turn it off rather completely. That is one
of the things really missing. Otherwise XFCE ain’t too bad.
Kde 4.8 is a great D.E.,and you can make it what ever you want it to be cluttered or non cluttered,the cycle in linux is simple,changing between Gnome and Kde,when Kde 4 camed I changed to gnome 2.something,when Gnome 3 camed I changed to Kde 4.6,it’s simple cause the cycle is like between Windows releases when they change from Vista interface to Seven interface!
