> I wouldn’t call it a “progress” if I need to use keyboard so frequently
> to do things that require one click in old gnome…just to make DE look
> “clean and elegant”.
And this is where people will differ. Myself, I prefer there to be
keyboard shortcuts because I type quite quickly, and if I have to stop in
order to use the mouse for something, that slows me down.
XFCE with GTK3 experimental theme. IMHO this is how G3 should look like (or even better).
Nice, simple, fast, lightweight. And it looks like GNOME.
Gnome3 shell should be optional, especially since it requires hardware acceleration.
My headless server runs Tumbleweed with GNOME2 (because of Vino VNC) and has no 3D hardware (1.4Ghz VIA C3 with integrated graphics). I wonder just how much G3 will mess it.
Voted no. I’ve moved to Gnome 3 and the shell without any fuss or problems at all, and I don’t really see the point of grasping at Gnome 2 any more. Anyone who doesn’t have a graphics card can run Gnome 3 without shell or effects the same as Gnome 2 just fine.
From what I’ve seen Gnome3 in fallback mode has very little functionality compared to Gnome 2. I’ve only tried the live cd so far, but if I had to “upgrade” to fallback mode, I would seriously have to consider going back to KDE.
According to my information gnome3-panel (fallback mode) is not a true alternative G3 mode. It’s just “compatibility mode”. It will never have full G2 functionality and it should NOT be used. Moreover it will be removed from Gnome3. They just don’t say when.
There is of course small hope that they’ll change their minds and gnome3-panel will be fully featured.
Anyway GNOME2 Live CD is useless. Live CD can’t be even updated after installation.
I’d rather install 11.4, lock some GNOME packages in YAST and update system via Tumbleweed.
I would say when SP2 is released it will possibly be up to 2.91 still lots of years left for SLE 10 so security fixes will be backported by Attachmate folks I guess.
I’ve seen Gnome 3 shell with extenstions. It’s not that bad
It can even have a proper MENU and quick launch bar
Although I’m a little worried, G3 Shell with several extensions should be usable.
I gave Fedora 15 a shot and I was hardly able to stand Gnome3 for 1 hour of usage. It was a pain to move the mouse all around. I work with serveral gvim windows at a time - I could switch between them with a simple Alt + Tab - which I cant do in gnome3 because of the utterly useless window grouping feature. Yes I had raised the issue in their dev-list couple of times, except for few users who felt the similar pain none of the devs cared - they said do it with a plugin. All I asked was an option to be provided to turn on/off this feature. Yes anything can be done with plugins - but the concept of a DE gets split up into multiple components which I need to manage individually.
With today’s desktop resolutions getting bigger - people like to see and have more stuff on their screen which they can always take a look at without opening, resizing or moving the active window. That was the concept of taskbar where you can see all your open windows. Their decision to change the very basic definition is obviously a revolutionary step - but how it would be accepted we gotta wait and watch.
I even gave the fallback mode a try (the setting for fallback mode was not that obvious either).
But as with new releases you can’t help or force devs to support the older ones. I’m happy with gnome2 as it is now.
The worst thing that could happen is I’d just have to stick with my current 11.4 on all 3 of my machines and wait for gnome3 to mature.
I couldn’t disagree more. I’ve been running Gnome 3 for a couple of months now, and it’s been joyous. From the speed, the ease of use, to the general attractiveness of it, it’s been perfect for me. Far from “utterly useless”, I’ve found the desktop wall feature has enhanced my enjoyment and efficiency when using my desktop PC every day. I’ve not found the mouse any more cumbersome especially at all. But my favourite bit so far is the workspaces. I never really got into using them on past distros, but with Gnome 3 it’s so easy, and crucially their implementation makes sense. Anyone tinkering at your PC would be able to figure them out very easily. That is a real win imho. Another massive plus is how stable it all is. Coming to it after using Gnome 2 and Unity on Ubuntu, it’s clear that Gnome 3 has had serious love. I haven’t had nary a bleep or a stutter out of it. Rock solid. I doff my fez to the devs. Stunning.
I think realistically for those still desperate to have something approaching Gnome 2 functionality, then XFCE has to be where you look now. My parents have Xubuntu 11.04 (XFCE 4.8) on their PC and it’s absolutely brilliant. Easily as good as Gnome 2, if not better in some ways. I’d recommend it any day. I really enjoy using it on their PC, and would have no qualms about running it on mine if I weren’t happy with Gnome 3.
I might also suggest to those wishing to try out Gnome 3, that they do so with openSUSE. Fedora’s cool, but from my own experience it’s been so brilliant here that I’d have to say check it out on openSUSE before you try any other. That’s not flag-waving, it’s a genuine recommendation.
If you install compiz on top of xfce, with cube and expo - it’s even better! And even faster (compiz 3-4x times less CPU time than xfwm4 on my machine).
