Any Gnome 3 fans here?

I have modified my Mac GUI to work a bit more like Gnome 3

 

That was actually the impression that several of my friends got when I introduced them to a demo Fedora installation that I set up c. 2009.

"Wait, don't you have to like, type commands and stuff?"

"Nope."

I think this speaks more to the public perception of Linux than it does any benefit of GNOME 3 or Unity.

 

Gnome 3- I promised I would wait until Ubuntu 11.10 came out to try it. I've seen a few videos and thought to myself that it looks like the place that all those netbook distros were trying to get to a few years ago. Of course it will probably be too heavy for my netbook which is where I would really want to run it. Anyway, I am reserving judgment until it matures a bit even though I suspect that I won't be able to even run it on the machine that it's most suited for.

Unity- I wanted to love unity. I loved 10.04's netbook edition and I like launcher/dock/panel thingies on the left hand side of the screen. Unfortunately Unity has not survived on any of my machines (made it a few months on my netbook which was the longest). It's buggy, it's laggy, it's still not very customizable, it crashes compiz forcing a reboot, the app menus suck worse that the paperclip assistant in office, and window management is crappy. I find myself clicking through more menus to get to the same place that I could get in one click with Gnome 2. How is this an improvement?

With Unity and Gnome 3 I think the danger is in designing a DE that is potentially tablet ready while alienating the keyboard and mouse set.

XFCE 4.8: I've been away too long. Major improvements in 4.8. What XFCE 4.8 is teaching me, I think, is that I'm slowly crossing over into retro grouchdom. Just give me a couple of launchers, applets and menus on a panel and get out of my way with your ram-guzzling Unity and Gnome mash up cuz I'm coming in just under 300mb!! Throw in Thunar and some crappy matrixesque screensaver from the late 90s and I can do pretty much anything you can while actually keeping track of the various windows I have open. This baby retro grouch suddenly finds himself attracted to lxde/openbox as well.

KDE: Has always sucked, albeit in style. Sorry KDErs.

 

I like Unity, but it feels to much like a rip-off of Mac OSX, down to the little indicator lights beside the icons on the dock to the way the bar on top operates, the location of the close, minimize and maximize buttons. I like it fine, it just feels like a copy.



Gnome 3, made the Windows key really useful, but it lacks the ability to navigate Activities screen via keyboard. But I am hoping this interface keeps on developing. I think Android users might like it.

I do agree Each distribution should include a light DE, but downloading one is not hard. But why limit all DE's to be the non-eye candy type. Isn't Linux about options and choices.

 

^^This, i could get really into Unity if it was not for the app menu, i mean i want to get a app X but first i have to click the ubuntu logo then the all apps and THEN expand the list off app just to find it, to me this is to cumbersome and just annoying. also the new recommendations at the bottom that was introduced in 11.04 really me off eating up the little bit of screen i have on my netbook. screen saving is why i went with ubuntu netbook remix.

so true

 

I agree about the options with DE - and that is one more reason why I'll remain with openSUSE. They do strong testing on gnome, KDE, LXDE, XFCE based environments and there are few people who do testing and file bugs on the other not-so-popular DEs as well.... So always I've got a choice and I can switch amongst them knowing it will reliably work....

Kubuntu has not been that case - I've always found it poor in performance compared to Ubuntu....

Each distro follow their own model based on how many devs they have and how much they can manage.....

 

Yes, this part is what I like least about the Unity Interface.

Gnome 2 was the standard. I would take three actions.

Select the (1) drop down menu, (2) move the mouse over to the sub-category and (3) click the icon.

Gnome 3 is a bit "cleaner" than Unity but can take a step more than Gnome 2.

(1) Go to Activities, (2) Select Application and (3) scroll to look for the app or select a sub-category (unless it is one of the first 20 which will already be displayed) and (4) select the icon.

 

I personally am interested in seeing how Unity has developed over the last 6 months in Ubuntu 11.10.

I would like to see more control over it. Customizations and such. And some more optimization as well. Unity, IMO, is a good concept, but lacks features and the raw speed we've come to know with Linux.