Antonio Ospite explores Gnome 3 in fall-back mode and tries to make it look and behave more like Gnome 2.32 again. This summer Linus Torvalds made it to the news for complaining about the gnome-shell design; Gnome fall-back mode is the solution for those like Linus who can’t – or better, do not want to – use gnome-shell just yet.
IIRC Linus moved to Xfce. Eric Raymond after several hours is also looking to move there. I’m moving away from Gnome to Xfce as I upgrade.
Gnome Shell is a crippled, half-working version that still requires a lot of manual or quirky programs to configure it to get anywhere near the earlier experience.
It’s important to understand ESR’s objections to Gnome 3. You can read them here:
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3822
His biggest objection to Gnome is this: “While you can add applets to the fake GNOME panel, you cannot remove them or shuffle them around. Eventually, by making a fresh account, taking checksums of its dotfiles, adding an applet, and taking checksums again, I found out that the new panel configuration lives in a file called .config/dconf/user that is an opaque binary blob.”
ESR is right, using binary blobs for configuration is a major UNIX sin. As he writes: “burying my configuration inside an opaque binary blob ^aEUR“ that is unforgivably stupid and bad engineering. How did forty years of Unix heritage comes to this?”
I haven’t been able to try the new Gnome out out, as it doesn’t like Virtualbox.
Usually I don’t care what ESR thinks of anything but….binary blob configuration? What in the holy hell?
I mean, even MS is moving away from the binary blob registry ad somehow, somewhere, someone in GNOME thinks this abomination is a good idea?
In Gods name, Why?
For shame.
ESR should lay down the crack pipe, and you with him.
you two obviously haven’t been working for the past 6 or 7 years to optimize the startup time of a complex system, with multiple moving parts, all reading the configuration from a centralized source (necessary so that you get notifications when anything changes, instead of using a ton of file system notifications and run through the kernel limits).
using text for the database is stupid, wasteful, and totally inefficient.
text for configuration is useful if you have to read it once, and the only write operation happens as the user opens the file with a text editor; imagine if we said that Gnome users had to stop the session to change the settings, and that there would be no settings UI whatsoever.
oh, well, this is ESR, who doesn’t believe in allocating memory, and left a static array of 1024 multi-kilobyte structures in GPSD:
http://gypsy.freedesktop.org/why-not-gpsd.html
No, but for more than 15 years. Actually, not at all. I don’t spend much time at optimizing the startup since it’s a waste of time, unless it’s ungodly slow but that’s usually not the case and when it is it’s never due to the use of text configuration files..Startup, as the name implies, happens very seldom and it’s not worth spending too much time on. Run-time performance is what counts and the configuration format has very little to do with that.
Wrong, wrong and wrong. What’s stupid is using a configuration format that can not easily be repaired and managed by humans, what’s wasteful is spending time on optimizing things that has little to no impact and it’s inefficient to spend time on solving a problem that does not need solving.
You know, I could swear that this has worked perfectly fine up until now in both GNOME and KDE. I distinctly remember there being UI’s for settings in pretty much all GNOME and KDE apps.
It’s ironic that the configuration is in a binary blog for the sake of ‘speed’ and yet a good chunk of the Gnome Shell ‘code’ is javascript which is all text!
OK, so you check to see if the text file has changed (timestamp should be sufficient, filesize if you really want to get fancy) on startup. If it has, you parse it, and convert it to the hidden binary blob. If it hasn’t, you just use the binary blob.
There, you get the speed benefit of the binary blob, with the ease of configuration of the text file.
Alternately, if you don’t want the overhead of checking for the binary blob, create a “configuration compiler” that you manually run whenever you change the configuration.
I don’t even really hate the interface of shell that much, but the binary configuration is an absolute sin. I was playing with it, now that I now its using binary configuration, I’ll never switch to it. That is by far the worst part of gnome 3.
So, the ‘binary blob’ comes from dconf, which provides an implementation of Glib’s settings API. If you don’t like it, there’s nothing stopping anyone from writing a replacement that uses text files – in theory, it wouldn’t be all that hard, as none of the Gnome code should be using dconf directly…
I like Gnome 3. Yes, it isn’t perfect and I have to fiddle with text files more than I’d like to, but overall I still like it.
Me too !
Me too !
I moved to Xubuntu years ago. Gnome and KDE became huge, bloated, slow, and buggy… XFCE was a drink of cool clear water on a hot afternoon.
All my systems now run Xubuntu – all the advantages of the Ubuntu devs and repos with all the goodness that is XFCE.
Gnome Shell is Gnome Shell, it’s not Gnome 2. It’s not MEANT to be anything like the earlier experience. If you use it as a desktop environment in its own right rather than just “They took away my Gnome 2” then you’ll be much happier.
The whole thing is indeed not Gnome 2, it’s called Gnome 3 – such name suggests a reasonably incremental modifications; something MEANT to be reasonably close to earlier experience.
I suggest LXDE
I’m still using GNOME 2. I’ve just stopped using Ubuntu.
I’ve been trying out GNOME 3.2 + Shell for the past few days out of curiosity and honestly… it’s not as bad as all the angry comments make it seem.
Sure, there are some things which leave you baffled trying to figure out the reasoning behind them, but overall I really like its concept of virtual desktop management (task oriented, grow as needed, does a good job of exposing every opened window from the overview), the way the ALT+Tab deals with multiple instances of the same application and the fact you can disable all notifications easily if you want to minimize distractions.
Some tips which will keep you sane if you decide to try it out:
* Install gnome-tweak-tool to change the fonts and other useful settings
* If you hit ALT while selecting ‘Suspend’ you’ll get the ‘Power Off’ option instead (really, GNOME devs?…)
* Left click opens an application, CTRL + left click opens a new instance in the same desktop, middle click opens a new instance in a new desktop
And if you’re trying it out on Ubuntu 11.10…
* apt-get install gnome-shell
* apt-get purge appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-qt
(gets rid of a couple of annoying bugs related to Unity’s global menu bleeding over into GNOME shell, re-install if you want the global menu back on Unity)
* apt-get install fonts-cantarell
(if you want the new GNOME default font, but really, it’s awful, just use Deja Vu)
* apt-get install gnome-sushi
(if you want the new nautilus file previewer, kind of pointless imho)
Alright, feel free to flog me now.
They are working on it:
https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/raw/master/shell/…
I like that they try to keep menus uncluttered, and the change above would make it more clear that there’s some other options than just “Suspend”.
Yes, there’s lots of things to do still, but personally I think GNOME 3.0 was already very solid release despite its weaknesses. GNOME 3.2 improved it and GNOME 3.4 looks again better.
Worth to follow:
https://github.com/gnome-design-team/
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell-list/
IRC:
#gnome-shell and #gnome-design
Edited 2011-10-22 07:23 UTC
Why would it be so hard to add an extra menu item that says “shut down”?
No,GNOME 3.2 + Shell is worse than that. It’s like people like you decided that turning all computers and other devices into something a Teletubbie would use is a great idea.
Edited 2011-10-22 14:10 UTC
I like Gnome-Shell. I think it’s a very natural and “organic” work flow. Does that make a Teletubbie or a stupid person?
I can certainly understand why some (or even most) people would not like Gnome-Shell, and they are free to use whatever shell they like. I don’t see the big conspiracy to convert all computers into Gnome-Shell, and I don’t see the need to hate and insult people who just have different preferences.
I’m on the fence about it myself. The more I use it on my netbook under Arch, the more I like it. It seems to be made just for such a device, and it’s a far cry better than Unity. I think in the long run I’ll go back to Xfce for a while, but I’ll continue to play with Gnome-Shell from time to time.
That said, the binary blob config files bug me, and the fact that it took me ages to figure out how to get it to shut down really pissed me off. I doubt I’ll ever use it on the desktop machine.
Maybe not conspiracy, but with how Gnome is now the closest thing to the Linux DE, Gnome-Shell will probably end up being pushed to quite a few folks (who could do better without the… experience)
So – why “hijack” the brand like that? If toying with such quite radical changes – a new name would be appropriate; even within similar theme / meaning.
MIDget (get it? MIDs) could probably do fine. Or Dwarf. Goblin would fit, perhaps; Leprechaun or Imp – certainly.
Or Brownie (the Scottish folklore type – but yes, it should recollect the That ’70s Show kind which Hyde made)
Edited 2011-10-28 23:32 UTC
And settled for LXDE. My applications are full screen most of the time anyway. The only thing I’m hoping that will finally take off is E17 (after the new Duke came out, I was hopeful again).
Give Bodhi linux a try. They have worked wonders with E17 and gave it a fully integrated experience. The Bodhi team includes some E17 developers too so any feedback and suggestions gets straight to them. It’s a live installable CD so nothing to lose really. Tried it myself and instantly fell in love with it, installed on my media PC and will be there permanently.
I’m using Lubuntu
After I had found a reference to where they took a lot of design ideas from, I decided to give it a good fair shot. The design ideas came from the Nokia N900, which I love.
I do have a touch screen PC and Gnome 3 is very cool on it, though it does have some downsides. I blame it partly on Hardware though. My HP Touchsmart TX2 uses the n-trig multitouch screen, and because it is capacitive, it doesn’t regocnize touch from fingertips, and the spot to activate the notification area is too small on Gnome 3 to activate from there.
Otherwise I am now running Gnome 3.2.1 on Arch Linux. I am glad they fixed the ‘bug’ that you couldn’t hit enter at GDM to select the user you want to log in as.
The two biggest downfalls of Gnome 3.x would be 1) Hardware support. If you have an ATI card, it’s crap. Finally the 3200HD works with the open source driver on my Touchsmart, but the Catalyst driver still fails. Supposedly fixed in 11.10? Last I used was 11.8 and it was broken horribly.
2) Discoverability. This was the issue with Gnome 2 on certain things as well, like the Control+L for typing in location on the file selector. With Gnome Shell is FAR more irritating due to a lot more hidden keyboard shortcuts are there. Since it’s such a new paradigm of doing things, there are no old habits to depend upon. Like the Alt+Suspend will show the Power Off. That alone should have been fixed with 3.2.x. It should detect if it’s a laptop or not, and then change the setting based on that!
Also the lack of any screen saver options besides times that it activates and whether it locks the screen is retarded. I mean come on, NO option to disable it? No option for boobs to fly across your screen, if you so choose?
I realize that we are literally only in the second release, and Gnome 2.x took 16 releases to get to where it was. (Yes, 16 releases, since only even numbers are considered releases) That’s 8 years of development. Gnome-shell has been in development probably for around 4 years (I am not 100% sure on this). But now that it’s out in the world, I would probably suggest most people to wait until Gnome 3.4, which I am guessing that Debian Wheezy will ship with. This was my original intention, and in the mean time I had switched to KDE4. I had so many issues with it and practically became religious again when I switched back to Evolution from Kontact.
Whatever Gnome 3’s faults are, it has some seriously cool potential. Check out the Old Steampunk theme for it, http://samriggs.deviantart.com/art/Gnome-Shell-Old-Steampunk-251805…
It still needs updated to 3.2.x, and has a few weird issues, but is really nice. Reminds me of old Enlightenment DR13 that first got me started in Linux.
As I said, wait until Gnome 3.4, before you really start to judge too deeply. Remember KDE4.0~ It was terrible. I really think KDE4 sucked before 4.6.5 came out (and I used just about every .X release between 1 and 6. I would try it for about a day before it crashed all over the place).
Gnome 3.x isn’t even as stable as Gnome 2 is, but I believe it will get there. But yes, for now, switch to something else and feel free to enjoy it! I mostly just miss wobbly windows now…
The following should disable the screen saver:
sudo chmod -x /usr/bin/xscreensaver
Should disable it permanently for all users. If you ever wanted to turn it back on again:
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/xscreensaver
tl;dr;
Seriously Gnome was pretty much Windows 98 with some panels … it was alright …
http://piestar.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/lucid_vs_windows.png
Lets not pretend it was the best thing ever .. It was decent and usable … I personally had to put up with shit like CDE at university.
Edited 2011-10-23 01:06 UTC
Quite curious flavour of heresy you have there…
Actually, fallback mode is a very poor atempt to emulate what GNOME 2 was, and its destiny is marked and sealed as doomed by GNOME guys themselves. It will vanish at a certain point and no longer be present on future GNOME 3 releases.
However, there is a fork of GNOME 2.32 called “MATE” (as in MATE tea).
I would encourage and ask people who are big developers in Linux community to turn towards THIS project and forget about GNOME 3.
MATE does not conflict with GNOME Shell, so you can have them on the same machine (as for ArchLinux and Mint 12).
But my point here is this: Developers can go for MATE and pick up from the the point where ex-GNOME 2 devs left; change, improve and do what GNOME developers were expected and supposed to do in the making of GNOME 3. With enough taskforce, MATE could be ported to GTK3, get rid of ancestral GNOME 2 bugs, and be utilized with GTK3 applications. MATE can be big.
It already started, and if one person could take this step, I believe the big fishes, including Linus itself, could help this blow GNOME 3 away.
I see this as a light at the end of the tunnel, if it happens.
I have used MATE myself on Arch Linux, and I must state that it is an exact clone of GNOME 2, and has no major caveats. However, many extra applications commonly used in GNOME 2 that have undergone transformations when ported to GNOME 3 look quite garish in MATE, and many graphical tools of GNOME are not present and resolving these issues would resolve the preliminary problems of the fork.
GNOME 3 Fallback is the same as GNOME 2 and unlike GNOME 2 is actually still being developed (although admittedly there’s not a lot of developers working with it).
The Mate developer would be much better off making Fallback better. It’s a lot less work to maintain gnome-panel and some applets than all of GNOME. And by working with upstream instead of against it, his work would automagically get into all the distributions and he could use the official bug tracker and git repository.
The main thing that needs to be done is that most applets just need to be ported to the new GTK3 GNOME Panel library. (The 20 or so standard applets have already been done.)
http://www.vuntz.net/journal/post/2011/04/13/gnome-panel-is-dead,-l…
No, it’s not the same. I want my configuration tools. I want my applets. I want my choice back. G3-Fallback is just a mimic. If you are able to run compiz with it and find a way to choose your mouse cursor and pointer size, then yes, it MIGHT be close to G2.
So you are suggesting that GNOME 3 be forked. Yes, that could happen. Why not. We have all the big guys (Eric Raymond, Linus and Co.) who are against the Shell. Forking G3 to behave just like G2, could be an alternative too.
My experience is that extensions already make GNOME 3 crash prone, and they are not being ’embraced’ by the GNOME foundation. They will be standing there as a shadow, since GNOME team wants the user not to be doing much of tweaking. And that gnome-tweak-tool is simply horrid, a plain hack. It’s not even shipped with GNOME.
Nevertheless, we still have no “constructive” or “do it yourself” attitudes from the criticizers of GNOME Shell or GNOME 3. They’re landing into XFCE, which makes the problem worse, as I am not fond of XFCE. They should criticize and point a direction. If Linus himself would just speak about users to go to MATE, or Eric Raymond would just call out for a new shift, these kind of things would start a snowball. If they’re only criticizing just for the sake of criticizing, then we don’t have much of a choice in the future. I know they’re into another kind of programming, but… who knows.
All I know is that I like when Linus speaks out, it really shrivers the spines of all these folks who are doing crap. They all get mad. He has a very straight way of saying it, and it bothers people. And that’s what I like it. There is reason behind it, and there is logic. He’s more than Linux creator, he is kinda of a preacher. When he speaks, the congregation shakes.
Edited 2011-10-23 23:58 UTC
I will pray for the success of the Mate Desktop Environment. I hope MDE can provide Wayland and improved user-friendly functions that GNOME 2.32 left.
I’ve +1 you only because I want Wayland too.
Thanks, this article has helped me improve the latest Ubuntu release which has gone backwards as far as gnome is concerned, imo.
I switched to Gnome 3 and the Shell after three frustrating years of unfixed bugs and constant regressions with KDE.
Gnome Shell is to me the ultimate paradigm, probably the best there could be. The notification area is not that great, though. Then again, it’s more like a legacy compatibility thingy than something that truly belongs to a Gnome 3 desktop.
gnome-fallback mode is CRAP. I used gnome for almost 10 years and gnome 3 drove me to macintosh. The inability to turn off the bottom panel and merge all the stuff on it to the top one made it unusable compared to gnome 2.
Of course you can do that. I tried it myself:
1) Alt+Right-click on bottom panel -> “Delete this panel”
2) Alt+Right-click on top panel -> “Add to panel” and add window list and workspace switcher
3) Move the clock from center to right with Alt+Middle-click + drag
And on Macintosh you can customize your panel? lol.
Edited 2011-10-22 08:26 UTC
If all these anecdotal reports are representative, I have to say that Gnome 3 is the best thing to happen to Xfce in years.
I just hope all the people jumping ship don’t start pressuring the Xfce devs to make Xfce even more like Gnome 2.x.
I’ve been using xfce since 11.04 came out. Xubuntu is worlds better than Ubuntu right now.
From everything I’ve seen, the Gnome devs are self-righteous, arrogant pricks who think they know better than their customers what the customers want, without even bothering to ask. And by customers, I mean users, because that’s what they really are.
I hope xfce becomes the big DE over the next year, and they are smart enough to not permit ANY KDE4 or GnomeShell devs to even touch xfce, much less submit code to it.
Yeah, and when XFCE gets more users they start to demand more features and modifications. If XFCE devs doesn’t do what customers – the users – wants, the devs has become self-righteous, arrogant pricks and the users have to find a new DE again.
As with most free software projects, the vast majority the developers are creating the software as a hobby. They will develop the stuff they like developing. They don’t care about customers or market share, and with every right.
I know I am not going to give my spare time creating something a do not enjoy doing just because that is what the customer wants.
Linux will never be more than a toy on the desktop. Some of the responses in this thread about the devs just doing it for a hobby and they don’t need to worry about what the users want just confirms it.
It’s not like that, it’s more like a dynamic evolutionary process.
The better a program confirms to the users wishes the more developers that program attracts. If Gnome 3 is a direction that users do not like it will be forked and the fork will gain more users than Gnome.
Gnome will die and the fork will live.
Oh, and I am perfectly happy with this great toy called Linux, and I hope you are happy with your choice.
Too bad that programmers and heavy users (those with biggest influence) are, by human nature, perhaps even most blind (excluding, say, non-users of course ;p ) to the faults of their darling software package / collection; most arrogant about pushing it, and the decisions, course of changes favoured by them.
Oh well, life goes on / another project hopefully shows up (one with better internal organization, hierarchy; remembering that programmers are typically horrible UI designers)
As much as I dislike GNOME Shell (and Unity), I’m not going to respond by heaping scorn upon the developers. They are not my employees, and they’re not putting forth these (IMHO) crappy interfaces for me. For a long while, I liked what they were doing, and was happy to use GNOME. Now, I’m unhappy, so I choose to use a different product (LXDE). It’s not a big deal.
I concur …
I immensely despise Gnome 3 and Ubuntu’s Unity ….. But hey, they’re developing it and for “some” insane reason believe a Kiosk/Tablet/phone interface belongs on the desktop …… Myself I “may” move over to XFCE but currently for the last couple of months have revisited KDE. Not bad, I do miss a few things with Gnome but I have to give the KDE dev’s credit. They have two versions, one Desktop and another interface for devices like Kiosks/Netbooks/phone’s.
I think this is where the plasma architecture they moved to for KDE4 scores points – it’s supposedly quite easy to put together alternative interfaces (over the same underlying system) with it.
Arguably, Gnome Shell is (or could be) as extensible as Plasma, if not more. All the technical bits and pieces are there (JavaScript, development console, online repo: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Extensions). It’s just the process, design targets and the defaults that are missing the reality. Compare it to Firefox – all the customizations are fine and dandy but no one would touch them if the basic product wasn’t actually solving real world issues.
I used to despise KDE4 for doing the same Gnome Shell is doing now (essentially adding complexity to the interaction while removing actual functionality – all for making the desktop look better) but I have to admit they didn’t go nearly as far in this process as Gnome Shell did. In fact, within an hour of fiddling with options and without installing any add-ons, I could make KDE4 as usable as KDE3 or XFCE. I’m still using XFCE as it is more stable and lighter on resources but I could use my custom KDE4.
Regarding XML vs Bin
That is one advantage of Apple’s Plist XML Files, they can be XML or they can be Opaque Binaries, they can be interchanged and converted back and forth seamlessly.
Regarding Startup Time
You should use some kind of lazy loading methodology of just starting the services as they are needed (similar to Apple LaunchD, etc). in the case of the shell that could be done, you first see a launchbar (Start Menu, Dock, or whatever) then you load the shell, then you load the window manager and finally the desktop. (This exact order is not a requirement it should be smart enough to give priority depending on the services (I also mean GUI Services) and order programmed for startup, it should also show a little bar that allows you to easily calibrate startup priority.
(Not directed at the gumoz)
The performance argument for binary configuration files is completely bogus.
It’s 2011. We have Gb’s of memory and CPU’s in the multi-Ghz range with multiple cores. Anyone who seriously argues that parsing a few Kb’s of text file is going to affect start-up time of an application in any noticeable way is either disingenuous or have no clue about how computers works. This is the worst and most pointless kind of premature optimization.
Want to make your applications and DE better? Create better user interfaces and useful features. That’s what users care about.
Absolutely no-one, except a small number of morons, cares about shaving off a few milliseconds in startup time.
But it is good troll bait for you.
Edited 2011-10-23 01:03 UTC
That’s pretty much all it’s good for though, and just barely.
It’s not milliseconds, it’s seconds as I understand it. Loading settings under GConf goes from 3 seconds (anecdotally they cite 10 seconds is possible) to 0.2 seconds under dconf (by extension I suppose GSettings has a similar performance characteristic).
So the new binary format/system does help them out, although not purely because it is binary, it is better in other ways as well.
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2009-October/pdfJ…
So it’s a gconf problem, not a text file problem.
And..10 seconds? Seriously? How crappy must your design be for it to take 10 seconds to read some settings from a text file?
Edited 2011-10-23 06:45 UTC
depends how big the text file is.
That’s a design failure. If you have a settings file that is so large that it takes 10 seconds to read from it you need to fix the design. You could, for example, break it up into one file per application which is what KDE does. If *one* application creates a text file that big for settings than you’re obviously storing stuff in the settings file that shouldnt be there.
I was kidding …
Ooooopps, my mistake.
Sure, it was a gconf problem, and part of the solution that they design was to make it binary: as far as I know the settings are mmap’d shared and then all processes can read from it at start-up, that’s not possible with a text-file.
As far as I know, no-one even used a text editor to modify the settings anyway. There is both a command-line and graphical tool to edit gconf settings, so I’m afraid I don’t see the sin in going to binary.
What makes you think it’s not possible to mmap text files? it works just as well with “binary” as “text” files.
Because you still have to lex and parse the text file, which is a lot more complicated than the system needed to examine GVariant data. The dconf system was basically built to be very fast, faster than text, and I really can’t see the disadvantages in designing it for speed.
If you don’t like their decision to use dconf: that’s fine. But please, don’t insinuate that they are somehow amateurs for not using text-files. The dconf system wasn’t a premature optimization, it was in response to a performance problem.
This has nothing to do with mmap’ing files and everything to do with parsing data.
I’m sure it’s faster (by whatever few milliseconds), that’s not the point.
Just because gconf can’t effectively handle text files it doesn’t mean that text files are ineffective. XML isn’t the most efficient and quickly parsed format.
Why aren’t they writing GNOME assembler then? That would really speed things up. Or at least statically link everything because all that dynamic library loading and symbol resolving is even slower than reading and parsing configuration files.
Maybe we should stop using languages like Python, Ruby and Perl because they’re “slow”. Is GNOME going to be C/C++ only since for Python and other interpreted languages reading config files is far from the most time-consuming task when it comes to startup.
Edited 2011-10-24 05:20 UTC
You’d never mmap and share a file you had to then repeatedly parse, since deserialization of GVariant data is basically trivial, the clients can do it at will. This is mostly besides the point, though.
The switch to binary was *part of* a switch to a faster system, and the entire switch saved them seconds on the start-up time.
It’s not premature optimization when they analyze their start-up, see that config loading is taking too long, then address that. That’s PRECISELY how you should optimize. You may not agree with their solution, but it works, and it addresses the problem.
There’s no real reason to hate on binary files (or text files), each have their advantages and disadvantages.
So you parse the file once on load, stuff the settings into shared memory, and carry on. The end result is basically the same: some region of memory with all the settings stored there, shared amongst the system.
If the parser is slow … you optimise the parser. Why rip it out and replace it wholesale with a binary option? Hasn’t the horror that is the Windows Registry been enough of a red flag for everyone to avoid recreating it?
The switch to binary was part of a move to another system. They were changing every part of the system anyway, and I don’t think binary files really scared any of them. I mean, so many of the files that we use are binary, why are configuration files the only taboo?
Maybe it’s just been a while, but in many years I haven’t heard of anything bad related to the binary nature of the windows registry. Could you remind me?
It is too bad that:
1) It feels so much unpolished than GNOME 2.
2) Its name is stupid, to the point of calling it “Shite” much better…
3) When I went to their IRC channel, just to speculate if they’re going to take this opportunity to rise, between GNOME 3 and Unity, developers said no one f–king cared.
4) I am glad that Linus and Eric Raymond care, just as I do. I want too my sane interfaces back. But it won’t be KDE or XFCE.
5) Linux Mint 12 will be shipping GNOME 2.32 again. So after dumping Ubuntu and saying a definitive goodbye to sabdfl and his bootlickers, I may stick with Mint 12.
6) I would imagine that Fedora would have f–ked up again, for Eric Raymond, for adopting GNOME Shell as main desktop.
7) It is a fact that, out of 100 people used to Ubuntu and Fedora, 50 of them has gone back to Windows 7. So this was a real f–k up in Linux DE world.
Edited 2011-10-22 17:01 UTC
Citation please? Even if true, I don’t think the powers-that-be at Fedora would care. On the other hand, those at Canonical might.
I so agree, xfce is perhaps the stupidest name I’ve ever heard, how the F@!k do you pronounce it, is it “x-force” ??? So, yes, calling it ‘shite’ would be better because at least people know how to pronounce it. And WTF is it with that stupid rat.
I really can’t understand switching to xfce, just use fallback mode is you can only understand how to deal with a Windows95 UI clone.
FWIW, I never cared for Gnome 2.x precisely because it was basically a clone of Windows 95, I much preferred Gnome 1.x as it was more CDE like. Anyway, I really do like Gnome3 for the most parts, finally, we have a new and nice interface that is NOT a clone of Windows 95. My only gripe with Gnome 3 is the lack of a built in configuration editor, its lame that you have to install Gnome Tweak Tool (GTT). At the least, the GTT developers should work on geting it to be a control panel icon / extension / pref pane (not sure about the internals of the Gnome control panel).
Gnome 3 is fine. It’s the shell that’s annoying as hell to use (unless you’re just dicking around on the internet – nothing wrong with that mind you). All you need is the frippery & the hide accessibility icon extensions enabled and it’s fine:
http://i1219.photobucket.com/albums/dd427/neruson1981/gnome-shell-c…
There’s no real need to go back into fallback mode unless, of course, you have a old computer but if that’s case you should probably just install lxde or openbox anyway…
Edited 2011-10-22 21:34 UTC
that happend to linux desktop. It does not look like it teleported from the 1990s, app switching is comfortable, desktop switching is awesome (best in any system i’ve used including OSX). I prefer it to Unity. KDE4 just rubs me the wrong way somehow.
what gnome and what kde distros are you comparing?
we have to be conscious of how everyone flapping their lips are generally reviewing products not created by kde or gnome.
since we’re really judging distros in this thread, we should should be explicit about which ones, which versions.
I’m not comparing any specific distros because how kde/gnome/unity works and looks (not talking about themes and wallpapers) does not change between them.
That said, I’ve used KDE4 and Gnome 3 on *buntu and fedora (each on both). Unity obviously on ubuntu only.
Edited 2011-10-24 10:42 UTC
It’s not bad actually. Configurability is average, files on the desktop are very poorly managed, and power management is even more limited than in gnome 2*, but the file manager is quite nice and, perhaps most important, after years of GUI history, that’s finally a DE that feels fast on recent hardware !
* Having to use .bashrc commands to disable bluetooth permanently and reduce screen brightness ? Seriously ? At least the screen actually turns off instead of displaying black, though
Edited 2011-10-23 10:12 UTC
Does LXDE count as DE yet?
(hm, it seems to have it in the name! 
)
Definitely feels fast …even on quite old hardware. It seems also curiously solid and reliable already. But, quite basic of course (OTOH, stays out of the way)
And it seems to be going quite mainstream (as far as one can use this term with Linux) – while not a totally reliable indicator, the position held by Lubuntu (for some time now) on Distrowatch ranking is nothing to be scoffed at (also compared to Xubuntu, or Kubuntu)
Edited 2011-10-28 22:59 UTC
I love it.
As someone else mentioned desktop management of the desktop itself is a little messy, also I didn’t like its default volume mixer so I am using the volume mixer from GNOME 2.x. But XFCE is fast, clean looking overall, and reasonably configurable.
Olivier should probably thank GNOME and Unity for the sudden increase in interest over XFCE.
I should thank Olivier Fourdran because I find that I have been more productive under XFCE currently than I have ever been under any other desktop. There are probably a number of reasons that can filter into that statement but how nice XFCE itself is should not be discounted.
In case anyone is curious, I am currently running XFCE under LMDE-32 bit.
I kind of like the idea of an integrated panel, wm, desktop, notifications etc. It could Potentially result in a more streamlined user experience, provided such capability was used for assisting users, not~aEUREURmaking them slaves of whatever new paradigms authors want to force upon them.
Unfortunately, Gnome Shell authors chose the latter method. They came up with a whole pile of new concepts (modal UI, differentiation between windows and applications), artificial limitations (one window per app without resorting to tricks, no task bar, no desktop list, can’t simply open a window on 4th workspace without putting something on first 3) and introduced quite a few of bugs (IM switching stopped working, desktop switching is sluggish).
I’m sure bugs will finally get resolved but knowing arrogance of Gnome UI team (ever wondered why there is no wrapping when switching between workspaces in Metacity? Not even as an option?) I^aEURTMm sure that at least some the brain-dead design decisions are here to stay.
What’s particularly annoying for me is the process – the way all these changes were forced upon all Gnome users. Gnome2 was screaming for improvements (like fixing gnome-panel in vertical mode), instead the whole thing was deliberately made incompatible with Gnome3 and its users abandoned. It’ll be good if the users consider only moving to KDE4 or XFCE rather than giving up on the idea of the open desktop altogether.
Fud, fud, fud… You can have any number of windows per app and it’s natively supported. Taskbar does exist but it is in form of expos~A(c) instead of the legacy panel with buttons. The same goes with desktop list. The Gnome paradigm states you don’t need empty desktops, and it’s easy to agree with it. Why is the number of the desktop so important to you? For no reason, just because it was like that in the past.
Just an opinion different of yours.
Opening a new window requires a different action than opening the first one. Same for switching between windows of the same application. I want to get rid of this feature(?), where is an option to disable it?
None of which are visible when I need them. To see them I have to perform an additional action that disrupts my work flow. I see this design (UI modality) as a very fundamental flaw that interferes with my work instead of supporting it. Sadly, the whole desktop is constructed bottom up around modality so I guess it won’t ever satisfy my needs.
My paradigm states that the mail program is on desktop 4, the browser on 5th and the communicator on 6th. Not a big thing but none the alternatives require me to retrain my muscle memory. Just another example of functionality sacrificed for glitter.
The point is, such strongly integrated desktop can be the best thing under the sun (if done right, that is with proper UI research, taking user feedback into account and adding enough options) or a nightmare if done by a bunch of narrow minded authoritative UI design wannabes.