Classic gnome is back in 12.04

[PhilGil]

In general, 3D drivers seem to be hit-and-miss in Linux. I had a similar experience with a Nvidia FX5500 - closed-source drivers worked fine in 9.04 and 9.10 but caused weird glitches in 10.04. Replaced that card with a Radeon HD3650 and have never been able to get the fglrx drivers to work - black screen freeze at X start.

Both cards worked fine with the open source drivers, but no hardware acceleration available.

[click4851]

that would be a shame then, because I'm not trying to start a fight. I just find it interesting that, as it has often been pointed out, variety is good....choice is good. Somethings change and grow, and some things change and wither away. I like some key things about the Ubuntu OS, I just don't happen to agree with direction Mark is taking the DE( and linux audio is a mess....but thats a topic for another time).

[forrestcupp]

It's not just that the older hardware doesn't have graphics acceleration -- the older hardware drivers may not be accepted by Unity. I have a desktop with an nVidia FX5200 card that is blacklisted by Unity, but runs fine with hardware acceleration on U10.04.

Wow. I remember those.

Is it an AGP card? If not, it might be worth spending $30 to get a cheap, updated card that would work better and save yourself a lot of headaches.

[haresear]

Wow. I remember those.

Is it an AGP card? If not, it might be worth spending $30 to get a cheap, updated card that would work better and save yourself a lot of headaches.

Yes, it is an AGP card. Actually I've not had any problems with it -- it is just blacklisted under Unity 3D, so it falls back to Unity 2D with software rendering. That feels a bit sluggish even with Unity 2D, so I've switched to Xubuntu and Lubuntu (11.10), and it works fine with both.

[3rdalbum]

@3rdalbum
I understand that fallback mode has been available in Gnome 3 and is not an Ubuntu project, but according to this story, indicator applet was ported to GTK3 and that Canonical has been devoting developer resources to "Ubuntuizing" gnome-classic.

Ahh, I see now. Thanks.

@forrestcupp
Actually, classic is essential at this point as Gnome Shell (and all the cool extensions) won't run on graphics that are not hardware-accelerated.

Soon, apparently. There is a new software renderer that is nearly at usable speed with Gnome Shell. I think the Gnome guys are just waiting for that.

[cwklinuxguy]

Any way to tweak it back to what Gnome 2 used to be? Can we insert a system menu, and can we make the "add to panel" thing be just a simple right click again? In addition, what do you mean by 2D and 3D versions? Gnome 2 was NEVER 3D, and if this is 3D, it is not in fact a clone of Gnome 2...

[PhilGil]

Any way to tweak it back to what Gnome 2 used to be? Can we insert a system menu, and can we make the "add to panel" thing be just a simple right click again? In addition, what do you mean by 2D and 3D versions? Gnome 2 was NEVER 3D, and if this is 3D, it is not in fact a clone of Gnome 2...

Gnome 3 does not require 3D acceleration, but (at present) Gnome Shell does. If your machine doesn't have hardware acceleration your session opens in fallback mode ("Gnome Classic" in Ubuntuspeak).

There are an abundance of ways to get an experience like Gnome 2. Off the top of my head there's:

1) Gnome Classic (doesn't require 3D acceleration)
2) Gnome Shell with menu and bottom panel extensions (requires 3D)
3) Gnome Shell with Mint menu and panel extensions (requires 3D)
4) Cinnamon desktop (not sure if 3D is required)
5) Mate - a GTK3 port of Gnome2 (no 3D required)

And of course, XFCE ad LXDE, both of which have the classic menu and panel UI's.

[PhilGil]

Soon, apparently. There is a new software renderer that is nearly at usable speed with Gnome Shell. I think the Gnome guys are just waiting for that.

Cool, I've been wanting to try out Gnome Shell but I'm one of the unfortunates who can't enable accelerated graphics on my main desktop.

[Primefalcon]

I'll have to give this a try closer to release, for now I am using LXDE.... though only because on Unity there is an annoyance, when resolutions are changed for whatever reason my custom gamma is reset to 1.0 which with my aging monitor is not usable. Which is a shame since I do like unity.

Also some applications such as zsnes and dosbox tend to crash if initialized in fullscreen mode in Unity which is not an issue in LXDE or even XFCE

[wolfen69]

Can we insert a system menu

It's there, just under "Applications". I timed it. It took an extra .6 seconds to access it as compared to gnome 2.

can we make the "add to panel" thing be just a simple right click again?

I timed this also. It took an extra .5 seconds to right click with super+alt. As I was moving the mouse towards the bottom panel I got my fingers in place.

In addition, what do you mean by 2D and 3D versions? Gnome 2 was NEVER 3D

It was capable of 3D if you had the proper video card.

Were the first two things mentioned really a big deal? How often are you adding things to the panel? Add up the number of things you add to the panel over the course of 6 months, and multiply that by the extra time it takes to do super+alt before right clicking. Let's say you need 1 extra second for each "add to panel" you do, and you do this 30 times (which is probably going overboard), that's 30 extra seconds over the course of 6 months to 5 years, depending on if you stay with LTS. Get where I'm going?

And having System in Applications, is literally one extra (slight) mouse movement. Btw, xfce is set up the same way. If people are constantly accessing System, then they are probably not getting any work done, or have nothing to do besides tweak their computers. In that case, the extra .5 seconds won't matter.

Sorry, I just had to expound upon your nitpicking. I truly do hope you can find something that won't slow you down like gnome-fallback will.

To be honest, I can't believe I just defended gnome-classic! I don't really care for it any more. Unity and keyboard shortcuts are all I need.