One week with Fedora. A test against Unity.

[Starks]

Up until a few hours ago, I was running Oneiric pre-alpha, now I am running Fedora Rawhide.

I saved my browser settings, /home partition, and all essential apps; then made the switch.

I'll give Fedora at least a few days to impress me, but the onus is on me to figure out yum and rpms.

I will pose 2 questions to myself during this test.

1. Is the GNOME-Shell viable on its own?
2. How does it compare to Unity?

Let's do this.

[JDShu]

Why Rawhide and Oneiric? o.O

[Starks]

Nothing special.

Just primary-machine masochism on my laptop.

[wolfen69]

Well, it's not Rawhide anymore, as it went stable. I love Gnome 3/Shell. I had it briefly in ubuntu until an update killed it. But I'm real happy using G3 in fedora 15.

1. is gnome-shell viable on its own? Of course it is. It's just a matter of personal preferences.

2. "I don't have a real opinion about Unity vs. Gnome 3." all I know is I love gnome 3. It fits my personality. I did try Unity for a little while, but it wasn't for me. But I'm not going to talk bad about anything just because it's not my thing.

[Starks]

I'm using Rawhide, which is well ahead of FC15. It took 20 minutes to update.

The premise behind this experience is that several Unity window management quirks ruin the entire experience and I want to see if GNOME-Shell handles things any better.

My preliminary conclusion is 'yes'. GNOME 3 as a whole is not just polished in its current form, it's well ahead of Unity from a developmental standpoint. There's a lot of bugs and glaring issues to address between now and Oneiric. All the while, GNOME3 will be moving forward.

[el_koraco]

My preliminary conclusion is 'yes'.

Seems to be everybody's at the very start. Then, after a few days of zooming in and out and alt-tabbing, people get bored. It's more like you get used to the thing rather than you appreciate the change. It's not as buggy, though, and it seems like Mutter is going the Kwin way, whereas it's gonna remain a serious question of whether Compiz can be made into an acceptable window manager.

[Starks]

Don't get me wrong, as polished as the Shell is, it's still a pain in the *** in its own right.

The workflow is smoother when dealing with multiple windows of the same app, but such windows pile up like in Unity.

Plus, Shell takes up way too much vertical space. A global menu implementation that doesn't make the same mistakes as Ubuntu's would be nice.

[satanselbow]

1. Is the GNOME-Shell viable on its own?

Far more viable than Unity

2. How does it compare to Unity?

More viable, increasingly tweakable and (IMHO) faster, more stable, more ergonomic, usable and productive than Unity out of the box.

I'm kinda over the Unity v Gnome3 Shell already and have my feet firmly in the G3 camp. The most annoying thing for me is that the differences between the 2 are generally quite slight - but, to me, it is G3 that got it right and Unity that got it wrong. It's a shame that the whole Un v G3 thing has overshadowed the whole Natty release (which has made some great steps forward under the hood) and will possibly be remembered for all the wrong reasons.

It just leaves me with a Question 3:

Unity... why?

[donato roque]

@Starks I'm really interested in how your little 'experiment' turns out. Post your concerns and comments here on this thread.

I like Gnome3 and I also like Unity. I am not a fan of rpm that's why I'm using ubuntu 11.04 as an everyday computer.

[el_koraco]

Don't get me wrong, as polished as the Shell is, it's still a pain in the *** in its own right.

Seems to me like Unity's general design is better, but the implementation sucks. Another stark (see what I did there) difference is that the Shell seems more flexible with its design ideas - the Javascript/CSS theming, whereas Unity is increasingly going in a locked down direction. The only thing left for outside developers is to make lenses and indicators. Shell is also much better suited for touch devices. Not to mention that the application choosing management is not really thought out - seems like they wanted to change the drop down menu system, but haven't really come up with a much better alternative.

They're both going increasingly in the direction of a one application at any given time workflow management, no idea why. Personally, the only thing keeping me in the Gnome camp is waiting for the elementary Pantheon implementation, which shows some kind of promise. If it tends to suck, xfce it is. I'm even considering learning how to use a tiling VM, so I can be free of the quirks.