GNOME Desktop Environment

[alexfish]

Cats have a long criminal history, it's the eyes, I tell you, look at the eyes.

Have you ever notice your cat staring at you and then slowly blinking?
That’s your cat’s way of giving you a kiss.

Try to do the same back to this cat and see what happens. No thank you .

and never mind them eyes, look at them paws , I never did see such paws on a cat , I tell ya that CAT ain't human.

[jerrrys]

someone pass the popcorn

[KiwiNZ]

The cats are Alien and they are infiltrating our computer systems.

[neu5eeCh]

Just updated Gnome Ubuntu Remix on my Distro Hopping partition. Many more Gnome extensions are available. Nice. Gnome is almost usable now. The Gnome Message Tray (at the bottom) is still a mess. I do not like how Gnome puts it at the bottom. Wondering if there's an extension that will move the tray back to the panel (where it belongs).

I can now install user themes (User Theme Extension is available.)

In favor of Gnome: Have to say, it's really nice to be working in a DE that's aesthetically cohesive. LXDE, XFCE, Unity and even KDE all feel as though they've been put together with chewing gum and rubber bands. That facet of Gnome Shell *does* appeal to me. I don't like the new Nautilus one bit. Why they decided to get rid of the split pane (F3) is a complete mystery (even when I read the explanations).

I could imagine switching to Gnome Shell just for the feel of a professional product -- still though, there are a lot of usability features missing.

[kio_http]

Just updated Gnome Ubuntu Remix on my Distro Hopping partition. Many more Gnome extensions are available. Nice. Gnome is almost usable now. The Gnome Message Tray (at the bottom) is still a mess. I do not like how Gnome puts it at the bottom. Wondering if there's an extension that will move the tray back to the panel (where it belongs).

I can now install user themes (User Theme Extension is available.)

In favor of Gnome: Have to say, it's really nice to be working in a DE that's aesthetically cohesive. LXDE, XFCE, Unity and even KDE all feel as though they've been put together with chewing gum and rubber bands. That facet of Gnome Shell *does* appeal to me. I don't like the new Nautilus one bit. Why they decided to get rid of the split pane (F3) is a complete mystery (even when I read the explanations).

I could imagine switching to Gnome Shell just for the feel of a professional product -- still though, there are a lot of usability features missing.

Gnome developers don't want a huge codebase in Gnome 3X so don't expect much features. I kind of like gnome-shell though but its window navigation is not for me.

What part of oxygen and Air in KDE 4.8 or 4.9 do you find "put together by chewing gum"? What changes would you like to see?

[neu5eeCh]

Gnome developers don't want a huge codebase in Gnome 3X so don't expect much features. I kind of like gnome-shell though but its window navigation is not for me.

What part of oxygen and Air in KDE 4.8 or 4.9 do you find "put together by chewing gum"? What changes would you like to see?

The aspect of KDE that feels put together with chewing gum is organizational. Preferences are scattered higglety-piggelty in unintuitive places, slapped on here and shuffled off there in nests and sub-nests. Just right click on any KDE window border, for instance, and you get nested menus. KDE is a case study in sloppy organization. Strangest of all, KDE isn't customizable in ways that matter (to me). Try binding some of these menu items to the mouse or keyboard and it can't be done, or at least nobody on any KDE related forum, including Kubuntu, knows how to do it. Mouse integration with KDE is, in truth, surprisingly poor and, in my experience, worse and less flexible than XFCE.

For example:

Two features I enjoy are keeping windows on top and the "no borders" (maximized without window decoration) option. As it is, one has to use the ALT+F3 key combination to bring up a menu, then navigate to what one wants. No one was ever able to tell me where to assign a key combination that will toggle "window always on top" and the "no border" option.

Also, depending on themes used, apps like Chrome and FF can look like a mess. Chakra solves this by pretending that nothing exists but KDE apps. They do, so I've read, provide "install packages" for non-[gasp]-KDE applications.

[GeneralZod]

Two features I enjoy are keeping windows on top and the "no borders" (maximized without window decoration) option. As it is, one has to use the ALT+F3 key combination to bring up a menu, then navigate to what one wants. No one was ever able to tell me where to assign a key combination that will toggle "window always on top" and the "no border" option.

Bring up KRunner, type "global", select "Global Keyboard Shortcuts" and select "kwin" as the KDE component. Probably no satisfactory way of binding this to the mouse, though, although KDE does have a mouse gesture system of some kind.

Edit:

Oh, wow - I hadn't tried out the gestures in ages, and its pretty good, now - you can use the right mouse button and everything! (You couldn't last time I tried as depressing the right mouse button in any KDE app used to bring up the context menu straight away, leaving you unable to gesture with it.)

I can't find dbus calls for toggling window borders and such, though - there's very probably a way of doing it remotely, though, as Plasma is able to. Hmmm.

Edit2:

Woo - you can even send shortcut key commands to the application under the gesture - but not global shortcuts, alas.

[neu5eeCh]

Bring up KRunner, type "global", select "Global Keyboard Shortcuts" and select "kwin" as the KDE component. Probably no satisfactory way of binding this to the mouse, though, although KDE does have a mouse gesture system of some kind.

Edit:

Oh, wow - I hadn't tried out the gestures in ages, and its pretty good, now - you can use the right mouse button and everything! (You couldn't last time I tried as depressing the right mouse button in any KDE app used to bring up the context menu straight away, leaving you unable to gesture with it.)

I can't find dbus calls for toggling window borders and such, though - there's very probably a way of doing it remotely, though, as Plasma is able to. Hmmm.

Edit2:

Woo - you can even send shortcut key commands to the application under the gesture - but not global shortcuts, alas.

Thanks for the effort though. That's more than I've gotten on any KDE or Kubuntu forum. The fact that gestures works on shortcut key commands and not global shortcuts fits with my impression of KDE. The surface is increasingly homogeneous, but underneath the hood it's all cobbled together. It looks like a Ferrari, but is built like a Trabant.

[rft183]

I tend to enjoy Gnome Shell at first. However, the more programs I install the slower the menu becomes. It takes forever to load the first time I click on it during a session. Subsequent times are a bit faster. I hope they've fixed that issue in 3.6. It is the main thing that makes me keep switching back to Unity.

[Welly Wu]

I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.10 64 bit Release Candidate or Beta 2. I installed GNOME 3.6 and I am waiting for 3.6.1 to be released on October 15th, 2012.

GNOME 3.6.0 is a lot more usable now. It's much more stable with fewer bugs and there are a significant number of features and improvements that have been added. It has a cleaner look and feel and it is faster than 3.4.2.1. It's less annoying to use than the older version and it makes more sense to organize your digital work flow.

I like GNOME 3.6.0 a lot better than Ubuntu Unity 6.8.0. I have not noticed any major bugs or flaws yet, but that may come in due time.

I am going to use GNOME 3.6.0 this weekend to test it out more thoroughly. If you have Ubuntu 12.04.1 64 bit LTS, then it is well worth upgrading to Ubuntu 12.10 64 bit once the official release is pushed out on October 18th, 2012 and to install GNOME 3.6.1. The cleaner organization and faster performance are well worth the price of upgrading alone. It's much better than Ubuntu Unity 6.8.0 which I am starting to dislike because it is getting too commercial for my tastes.